Hope: A Tragedy

Maybe he was hoping he would come back as candy.

The food at Mother Earth’s was pure and natural and extraordinarily expensive. You paid more these days for the things you didn’t get—no sodium, no fructose, no corn syrup, no MSG, fat-free, carb-free, dye-free, wheatless, flourless, sugarless—and with each ingredient that wasn’t included, the price increased. A box of nothing—free of poisons, toxi

Wouldn’t that be great, though, Mr. Thomason, if some chairs could save the planet? If chairs could save the planet, I’d be the happiest motherfucker alive, let me tell you.

I’m Miss Holocaust, 1945.

Has a gun owner ever, in the history of the weapon, been satisfied with a small gun? If a small gun can save me, he figures, what can a big gun save? What can the biggest gun save? What can a bomb save?

He imagined the scene at the gates of heaven to be not unlike that at the finish line of a long and grueling marathon: everyone high-fiving, hugging, collapsing, elated that it’s over, yes, it’s finally over, pouring cups of water over one another’s heads and saying, Holy shit, dude, that was fucking brutal. I am never doing that again.

Tall people appeared to have it easy; that was what Kugel found so galling. Like things just went their way. Let’s go buy a house! Let’s get expensive diving watches! Why not, we’re tall!

Why did children always draw the sun smiling? he wondered. It’s a giant ball of fire, kids. It’s rage and fury. Whatever it’s doing, it isn’t fucking smiling.

On the contrary, my worry is that we will someday reach such an unsettling level of peace, such a level of happiness and joy, that we’ll engage in the most brutal war of all, a thousand Holocausts rolled into one, because peace frightens us. Expecting hell, we’re ill prepared for heaven.