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   ooooo   ooooo  .oooooo.  oooooooooooo       HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #512
   `888'   `888' d8P'  `Y8b `888'     `8 
    888     888 888      888 888          "Teenage Angst Has Paid Off Well"
    888ooooo888 888      888 888oooo8
    888     888 888      888 888    "                 by Kreid
    888     888 `88b    d88' 888       o              3/16/99
   o888o   o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8
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        Alone in a very large bed, flat on his belly, thinking, sweating,
 there lay Ivan.  The sheets were satin but they had become sticky with his
 own filth and sweat, since he had been spending the majority of his hours
 in bed for several days now.  There in bed, Ivan was accompanied by
 nothing.  There were many items around his room which he had been living
 with for the past few days: several books, a couple bags of potato chips,
 and a bunch of empty bottles of hard liquor.  His room was definitely very
 full, but he made sure his bed was completely empty.  Ivan was definitely
 alone in that very large bed, his old and new sweat gradually sinking
 deeper into the satin sheets.

        The television was on, but Ivan could no longer bear to watch it.
 But it had a certain presence in the room, unlike anything else there.  It
 was alive.  Ivan had placed it on MUTE instead of turning it off, so it
 hissed and shot bright, happy images into the dark room.  The television
 was the only light, and it caused very rapid color changes in  the room as
 the happy people on the screen moved around in their nice city apartments
 and made jokes for the audience to laugh at.  Ivan did not notice this
 spectacle, of course, because he was on his belly, facing away from the
 television.  His eyes were closed; vision seemed irrelevant to him at this
 point.  He focused on the warm, damp, smooth satin pillow and how it
 cradled his face as he drooled into it.  The windows shook a little from
 the wind outside trying to get in.  There was a heavy storm outside, but
 Ivan's room did not seem affected much by it.  The television shone with
 defiance; it ruled the room.  Ivan ignored the whole scene.  No storm
 outside, and no stale room inside with television wasting energy and vodka
 spilled on the hardwood floor.  Just wet satin and warm drool and Ivan.

        Outside that large room of Ivan's was an even larger house, where
 windows were open to let the rainwater spill in onto the walls and
 furniture.  Doors were unlocked, valuables were unprotected.  Ivan, the man
 of the house, was not concerned.  The door to his room was locked, so he
 was safe enough.  About a month ago, Ivan's father would have made sure all
 the doors were locked and windows were closed, and his mother would have
 been in the kitchen paying the bills.  But that wasn't an option anymore.
 Tonight, Ivan's mother and father were together, locked in a small closet,
 dead.

        Ivan had killed his parents exactly thirty days before that stormy
 night.  He had drugged their food before dinner.  They were eating
 Mahi-mahi (dolphin) that night and Ivan had emptied out an assortment of
 the family's pills into the food while it was cooking.  Pain medicines and
 sleeping medicines from his parents' medicine cabinet, Zoloft from his own;
 a good handful of pills, popped open and spilled into a frying pan in
 which his parents' dinner-dolphin was cooking.  Ivan ate only hot dogs
 that night.

        That was a whopping thirty days ago.  It had been a long month for
 lonely Ivan, lying in bed and sweating.  Now his parents were long since
 dead, and they smelled horribly, and remarkably, nobody knew yet.
 Fortunately for Ivan, nobody actually cared about his parents.  They had
 plenty of friends who they invited over at night and had cocktails with,
 but none of these people seemed too concerned about a thirty-day absence
 for Ivan's parents.  Ivan was not surprised that his parents were not
 missed; nobody at those cocktail parties cared for anyone, anyway.  No one
 in that class had ever really known friendship; it was all just a matter
 of each "friend" gaining personal security and having "friends" to brag to
 when their kids got into Stanford.  Nonchalantly, they would say it: "Oh,
 Peter and I just got back from a college visit.  Oh, Princeton, yes,
 that's all.  Oh, yes, lots of driving, heh heh heh.  Oh, yes, they said
 they would love to have him there.  Oh, how are your kids doing, heh heh
 heh."  Ivan heard them every night, talking, talking, talking, and then
 asking questions to which they did not care what the answers were.
 Sipping drinks made with rum, laughing at each others' jokes, all at once.
 Heh, heh, heh.  Every night, but not since Ivan's parents had been locked
 away in the closet.  Now there were cocktail parties going on at the
 neighbors' houses, and people momentarily pretended to wonder where Ivan's
 parents had been for the past month.  "Oh, yes, I called them the other
 day.  Oh, I left a message.  Oh, I bet they're off on vacation somewhere
 and they forgot to tell us, heh heh heh."  Sooner or later people would
 just forget to talk about Ivan's parents.  The only memory of them would
 be a stink in Ivan's closet.  I guess I'll have to bury them tomorrow,
 thought Ivan, and he drooled a little more.  He didn't really care,
 either.  Heh, heh, heh.

        Ivan kept his eyes sealed shut and buried in his pillow.  Water
 splashed up against his windows and tried desperately to get into his
 room.  Outside, there was a very busy and confused world, and their
 televisions were not on mute, and their rooms were not hot, and their
 front doors were all locked.  Ivan rolled over on his side, tiredly licked
 his lips, and fell asleep.

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 [ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS!     HOE #512 - WRITTEN BY: KREID - 3/16/99 ]