I’m starting a gameshow called Tyler Dempsey Has a Gameshow. I play Tyler. I get an agent. The agent says get some money. Get some money, then we’ll talk about the gameshow. Get some money, I say, and hop a plane to California. California’s where the money is. I’m on the plane. The plane experiences turbulence and its wing rips off. Then we all scream. Mostly, I don’t wanna die, is what we scream. I just want money, is something only I scream. I cheated on my wife, a few other people scream. We’re going down, down, down, down. The oxygen masks fall but no one uses them. They didn’t tell us that in the safety briefing: you won’t use them. Because your body releases endorphins knowing you’re about to die and it’s like the cabin’s full of eight-year-olds on happy gas at the dentist. People are laughing, mumbling, and crying. It’s fucked up. The ground which is usually little gets bigger in the window. The window’s almost nothing but ground. Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh…BOOM!!!! The ground comes through the plane—carry-on bags, laptops, and people’s heads which were attached to their bodies are flying through the air, may have shifted during flight. The plane’s metal groans like my dog when I wake him up. I hold my head to make sure it’s attached and groan like my dog when I wake him up. I crawl from the wreckage. There’s a field, cotton far as the eye can see. I start eating non-survivors. Survivor’s guilt makes me sad which makes me hungrier so I eat more. I think food pyramid and pop a non-survivor’s eye on a cotton ball and swallow. Some cotton is on fire from impact so I throw on luggage and it’s a bonfire. I dance with bones I’ve licked clean arranged in a headdress. A farmer on a tractor asks am I okay? I have survivor’s guilt, I say, putting on a face while hiding the headdress. He takes me to his house. It’s him, three sexy daughters, and twenty chickens. I say I’ve heard this joke before. What, he says. Nothing, I say. The daughters’ skirts flutter like maybe we’ll be out back later. I smile and burp and for a second the eyeball almost comes up. Can I have some water, I ask. Cotton farming sucks, he says. I’ll say, I say. We were thinking—well, I guess what everybody’s thinking, right girls? I ask what? Maybe we’ll start a gameshow! What? There’s lots of money in gameshows. We want that money. It’ll be called, A Cotton Farmer Has a Gameshow. I’ll play the farmer. Ugh, I say. You’re our first guest! The daughters stand, unbuckling their overalls and lasciviously licking their buck teeth. Okay, I say. The little one works my zipper and the tall does corkscrew motions in my ear with her tongue. Then the middle one’s stroking my erection. You should take this to California, I say. They start eating me alive. I don’t want to die, I scream. I just want money, I scream. I cheated on my wife, I scream. My parts get strung across the room on scythes and rakes and other farm equipment on the wall. That’s how the cookie crumbles, America, the farmer says, winking toward the camera.
