Ed squealed with delight as he pressed ‘enter’. *How many people would read his comment and think of his brilliance? His wit?* He sat in his crudely worn computer chair with its torn leather flaps and cushion sticking out at his desk covered in candy bar wrappers, but he didn’t care. In fact, he couldn’t care. Reality was no longer a thing that Ed regarded as having much sway over his life. The internet was his reality, and more specifically, that all-too-familiar message board he characteristically begun his day reading and posting on. On that message board Ed was surrounded by people who thought just like him. They were inferior to him in many aspects, but their utility came in supporting his own conclusions and thoughts about the reality that he used to live in.

You see, Ed had lived much of his days in a very solitary manner. Ever since his parents died and he was forced to live in an apartment, the only human contact he had was at his desk job at the local macaroni plant and when he would run to the grocery store for fear of running out of his favorite childhood foods. His psyche hadn’t progressed much since his childhood, and his food palette reflected that.

To an outside observer Ed seem benign; some would feel bad for him, but ultimately his coworkers disregarded him as some ‘weirdo’ who chose to be weird, and therefore deserved all the social ostracization and castigation bundled with that notorious title. To Ed it was just another corroboration of the fact that the world was indeed fucked, there was no god (he would make sure to always emphasize that a capital ‘G’ was in no circumstances appropriate when referring to the idea during his emphatic harangues on the message boards), and the only way things could get any better was by forceful rebellion and brutal honesty. Ed had swallowed what many would refer to as the ‘red pill’.

Ed looked forward to the weekends. It was on these days that he could fully devote himself to his cause. Contrary to the common notion of ‘sleeping in’ on the weekends, Ed found himself catalyzed to wake early on his favorite days due to the manic energy that stirred in his brain at the excitement of the weekend’s duties. After waking, Ed would ritualistically brew a pot of coffee and run into the bathroom to empty the profane brew of junk food that festered in his colon. This was no ordinary shit, however.

He would plop his ass cheeks down on his yellowed toilet seat and lean forward as to aid in the shotgun blast propulsive force of his morning bowel movement. *Ca-koosh!* His asshole would gape and out it would launch an amorphous, steaming projectile into the toilet bowl that would send even the heartiest of constitutions into shell-shock—a shell-shock that would rival even the most traumatized veteran’s experience. And although this fecal launching was indeed impressive, Ed prided himself mostly on the unique stench that would waft its way to his nostrils after expelling his greasy colon baby.

*Ah, how sweet it is!* Ed would ruminate on all the floral notes of his shit like a grand sommelier searching for the slightest hint of tennis ball in a three hundred and sixty-seven-year-old chardonnay–so would Ed savor the stinky stench. And if he was lucky, Ed would go to wipe his ass only to find that no shit remained. *A clean pass. Hole in one. Maybe I should buy a lotto ticket today!* These would be the thoughts that would start Ed’s day.

With no shit to be found clinging, Ed would dance out of his bathroom—naked and singing—to the coffee pot. This was the font of his insanity, and he licked his lips feverishly as he stared dreamily at the black, bubbling liquid in his mug. Only with the foresight and intelligence of a god could one deduce the chaos let loose on the world by the simple imbibing of this liquid by its simple imbiber. Ed had grabbed his mug full of its inchoate, black liquid, and sat down at the chair by his computer. And so, our story begins.

It would take a couple minutes for the liquid to take its full hold on Ed’s brain, and thus, it gave Ed just enough time to read the replies to his latest posts from the day beforehand. He would systematically go through the replies and sift through each one to characterize whether the replier was friend or foe. Any semblance of positive connotation would elicit a friendly alliance, and therefore a ‘like’ by the all-powerful Ed. Any comment that contained an inkling of wavering loyalty or disagreement, and the comment would be smote by a click and delete. Ed was the God of this domain. Capital G intended.

Ten minutes into his housekeeping duties and he spied a troll among the ranks of his believers.

“You’re just a lonely, pathetic, beta-male that feels the need to be a pessimistic fuck about everything to justify your existence.”

Fortunately for Ed and unfortunately for the troll, the caffeine was beginning to exert its effects on Ed’s brain. His heart was beginning to race, and he began to see the crisis and the tendrils of the nefarious ‘chads’ in all things.

*Another Chad. Another troll. Well, I have something in store for him!*

Ed began click-clacking away on his keyboard, and as his fingers danced along the keys, a contemptuous smile grew across his face. His lips curled, a vein began to manifest on his temple, and he even grew an erection. His mouth watered. He felt himself in a curious position: although he was crafting such a witty and thorough response that would be sure to send this troll to the farthest reaches of ‘cucksville’ in this sector of cyberspace, he couldn’t help but feel that every ounce of effort invested on his end was a subtle acknowledgement of his inferiority in the real world. *Perhaps I am the real cuck? Nonsense. The system is what is broken. I am the wise philosopher king, and this man is a criminal.*

He pressed enter and posted the damning reply to his unfriendly, digital interlocutor.

“Dear Chad,

Anything that you hold in life is purely due to a roll of the cosmic dice, my friend. You deserve none of it. You are vapid and lack any sort of intellectual, emotional, or character depth. All you do is lift weights, watch football, and parrot information that you acquire from passively being exposed to all the right-wing media propaganda that your dad watches. Very soon there will be an uprising, Chad, and I’ll be the first ‘beta-male’ to be at your throat. Except I’ll have a machete. Perhaps I won’t be so beta then.

Best,

Ed”

Ed smirked. He found his response foolproof. Firstly, he was able to target Chad’s likely insecurities, but he was also able to slip in a casual death-threat. And the lynchpin of the comment was that, after all, it was the internet, and so he could easily dismiss the whole thing as ‘trolling’ and therefore not actually be held accountable for how weighty or serious his response might appear. Perhaps his reply was a complete parody of Chad’s—a highbrow response poking fun at Chad’s lack of articulation. Ed also felt particularly invincible due to the vocabulary he used in his post: it would increase his credibility in the eyes of his believers. Nobody could know the truth. And in that state of ambiguity and uncertainty, Ed was indeed a God. His penis throbbed, and his mouth watered.

*I think it’s time to clean the pipes.*

Ed stood up from his office chair and heard the gentle un-sticking of his sweaty gooch from the torn leather. His penis was stiff, and he began walking over to his bedroom. He enjoyed the feeling of his erect penis wobbling as he walked: it tugged him about, so to speak, and made him feel like ‘King of the monkeys’—a title he often referenced in his mad ravings on the infamous message board. However, the message board mattered little to him at this moment. All that mattered to Ed was the fact that he had an erection, a phone to look up pornography, and some dirty socks to sully with his satanic seed.

Ed’s favorite porn was cuckold porn—specifically when the man that was sullying the beta male’s wife or girlfriend was much larger, intelligent, and conventionally attractive than the original beta male. Ed’s erection was hard for awhile, but he kept finding himself having to search for more extreme videos to keep his dick hard. After doing this for awhile, he managed to ejaculate, but his dick was almost completely flaccid at orgasm, so he had to pull quite aggressively. Afterwards he stared at his creamy abstraction layered upon his black socks and marveled at the complexity of the universe. He always ejaculated on the black socks because it allowed for the greatest visual contrast of his semen, and therefore it would reliably send him into these existential reveries. At times, he would think about some of the cuckold videos he had seen where the beta male was forced to eat the sperm, and this thought would solidify, once more, that he was not going to eat that Greek yogurt he had in his fridge for breakfast. That plain Greek yogurt had been sitting in his fridge for several months, and it was always decided against in this fashion. Cuckold porn had become the number one antagonist of Greek yogurt sales in his region he finally deduced.

Ed slunk out of his bedroom and back into the kitchen to grab a bowl of cereal. He poured his cereal, wetted it with milk, grabbed a spoon, and went to sit down at his desk. He shoveled the first spoonful of cereal into his mouth and noisily crunched it. *Mmm, frosting.* Ed always ate cereal with frosting. One could make the argument that this was just another manifestation of the semen-gobbling cuckold porn permeating his subconscious, but the mere suggestion of this thought to Ed’s face would send him into a flush faced, stammering panic.

As he ate his cereal, he began to think of what he would do today on this fine Saturday. His masturbation session had left him feeling quite empty indeed. His soul only now felt the hum of anxiety afforded to him by the coffee he had drunk greedily and his low place in the social hierarchy. *Perhaps today was a special day. Perhaps today I should take some action. Fuck it.*

At this, he stood from his chair and ran to his fridge. He swung open the door of the fridge, grabbed the plain Greek yogurt container and squeezed it all into his mouth. It was hard for him to swallow most of it, since it was thick. But as he worked on scraping the insides of his mouth with his tongue to guide the feet-smelling gelatin down his gullet, he walked to his bathroom mirror and turned on the light.

In the mirror he saw a man with a weak chin that was covered by a very tangled and unkempt beard. And upon that beard was a thick, goopy layer of Greek yogurt. He smiled. *I’m leaving it. Fuck it. Gotta get some more, though.* He walked to his front door, slipped on some shoes, grabbed his keys, and with a slew of goopy yogurt congealing on his beard, he left his apartment to go to the grocery store.

On his commute to the local grocery store he blasted his favorite music—whiny teenage bands that screamed how sad they were—and pounded his steering wheel to the beat of the drums of the ‘beta-cuck anthems’ he treasured. The drivers in the lanes next to him directed bewildered stares in his direction; some stared with mouths agape, and some laughed. It seemed to be the trend that the younger the observer was, the more likely they were to see the humor in the situation: these were the people of the generation that had been accustomed to viral videos concerning beheadings, shemale porn, and crushing amounts of student debt—anything was possible in their eyes, including a potbellied, caveman with cream dripping from his beard.

Upon arriving at the local grocery mart, Ed stepped out of his beat-up car triumphantly. He slammed the door of his car, and for a second, as cued by an unusual *clank* he thought he had fucked up his car once more. But upon further evaluation he decided that all the caffeine running through his system was more than likely causing him to hallucinate—seeing as this was a regular occurrence for Ed ever since his parents had died. He strode hurriedly inside the grocery store and directed his efforts to the cereal aisle.

When he had reached the cereal aisle, many of the fellow shoppers took one look at Ed and began corralling their children, whispering, and scurrying out of the aisle. Ed was cognizant of this dynamic, and it led to a wry smile playing its way about his lips. Ed took his pocket knife from out of his pocket and began stabbing the box of raisin cereal. He was so happy. He had wanted to do this for so long. The cereal was marketed as healthy for containing bran flakes and raisins, but he had found out long ago by reading its nutrition facts that it actually contained seventeen grams of sugar without milk. This was just another manifestation of lies produced by the evil machine of capitalism that had subjected him to his life of servitude and suffering. With vengeful stabs and a maniacal smile he plunged his knife into the cereal box and laughed.

Not many moments passed after he committed to his heinous cereal killing until an employee had come upon Ed. Ed turned his head to meet the employee, and a gob of the only remaining non-dried Greek yogurt in his beard plopped to the floor. The employee stared at Ed stolidly.

The employee was a male of at least six feet tall (after the threshold of six feet was reached, Ed did not care to know the exact height, for any male over six feet was an enemy, no matter their beliefs) and had the most angular of faces. Indeed, this employee had a square jaw and seemed unimpressed by the theatrics that Ed had been orchestrating in this local grocery market. Ed was enraged. *How could this scenario not elicit excitement, wonder, surprise, terror in an individual?!* He looked at the employee’s name tag and it read:

**Hello, my name is: Chad**

“Ah, Chad, how convenient for us to meet!”

“Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave. You can’t deface merchandise like that or carry a knife like that in the store. It’s against policy.”

Ed started. The response from Chad had washed his crazed demeanor from his face for a second, but Ed quickly recovered and repainted his face with a contrived form of confidence and egoism.

“It’s time for the beta-cuck uprising Chad. What aisle do you sell machetes in?”

“Aisle 37, next to the Greek yogurt and black socks.”

Chad smirked maliciously. *He knew!*

“I haven’t seen you in awhile Ed! Ever since you started working that job you’ve been a hermit. Doesn’t look like life’s been treating you too well. Still single?”

Ed’s eyes began to dart around, and, after gathering his thoughts, he stood up and put his knife into his pocket and smoothed his beard to his face. He cleared his throat and replied,

“Yeah tinder hasn’t been working too well for me. I only match with fat girls who I don’t want to fuck or semi-attractive girls that want a man with a 200k salary. It’s just not fair.”

“Yeah man, life is pretty unfair. I couldn’t get a job after I got my degree, so I had come here and work. It’s embarrassing. I feel dead inside, but at least I have my girlfriend. Although, recently she’s been hanging out a lot with this guy from her work…they’re just friends though.”

“Are you sure about that dude? Maybe you’re getting cucked.”

“We’re all getting cucked dude.”

“True.”