| My name is Bedlam. You are lying in your own bed. Comfortable. Drowsy. On the brink of sleep. And then you are torn away. You are falling. Falling. Where are you now? My name is Vertigo. Do you see the sky? It is an ocean, and it is full of strange and hungry things. Things that have evolved for the singular purpose of feeding. It is falling towards you, but it is so large that you can't see it moving. You are in the sky now; where does the sky begin? This is my name. My name is an angry father with a belt and a drinking problem. My name is your wife telling someone else "I love you". Darling. Do you know what a Vegetable Caterpillar is? My name, by the way, is Cordyceps. There are fungi that act as parasites that infect bugs. The fungus slowly takes over the anima; the mycelium—that’s like fungus guts—they infect the tissue of the bugs until they eventually burst out, killing the animal in the process. The Chinese call them vegetable caterpillars, since they look like bugs made of plants. You are a vegetable caterpillar: that’s –your- name. Some of them affect the insects’ minds. Caterpillars and ants will climb as high as they can before the Cordyceps finish them off. That way, when the spores come out, they’re spread as far as possible. Ants know how dangerous I am, so they come along and pull the infected members off the trees, casting them to the ground or into a padded cell. My name is Gordian Worm. My name is that spore. I saw this guy on Oprah. He was pregnant. He had a kid. He was born a woman, and had one of those operations. A snip here, an implant there, a few shots...boom, Veronica’s Archie now. But the dude had a kid. Is he a man now, really? She’s pregnant again, this guy. Maybe what you are is a matter of opinion, and an operation and hormone therapy can change anything. Or maybe she’s stuck in that body she hated, that woman’s body. Only now it’s mutilated beyond recognition, and he’s what she’s always been. Maybe he can’t change anything after all. Maybe she’s always –been- a man, and his body is just rebelling against nature by breaking a few laws here and there. Is that why breaking laws makes you so angry—because your freak man-baby reminds you of the woman you never were? Maybe you’re just a vegetable caterpillar your whole life, and you don’t notice until that spore comes your way. I think he should climb to the top branch before it dies. Or just go on Oprah. That should spread me around nicely. What was the question? Oh, right. My name. My name is Hootie. Did you see that? The Country Music Awards, featuring a performance by Hootie. Hootie’s on the CMAs and Obama’s in the white house. There must be some confused rednecks right about now. It’s like everything you know about the world just goes backwards. You can’t trust it anymore. Have you ever been raped? The sky is full of potential...you can’t trust it anymore. My name is Uri Gellar, want to see me bend a spoon? You can make that old watch work with the power of your mind. I’ll get that James Randi one of these days. You mean the Skunk Ape? He had impure relations with my wife. God is a Cordyceps. Your name is God. The fungus goes in your ear. It attacks when you’re young and defenseless. The infection grows until it spews out of your mouth. Society is a Cordyceps. It’s spores pour from your mouth and infect the ears of some poor child. She’s a little boy, but nobody will admit it. They keep telling her she’s a girl, and she even has kids, but the doctors cut her tits off and Oprah parades it in front of the cameras like vegetable caterpillar right before the spores explode out of his mouth and then...my name is Oprah Winfrey.
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