“I’m not saying you need to go and just fucking shoot ‘em all. I’m saying like just leave them on their fucking poop island. Dude was just kind of stupid for even going there. I don’t know. That’s for sure. He maybe should have did a quick Google search on the island he was pulling up to before declaring Jesus.”

Dylan sniffled. He dumped a tenth onto a shard of glass and chopped the mound into rails. Beau shook his head.

“I mean, sweet, it’s like cool to see that and stuff, but like—and and these people just like don’t know any better. But—what good are they to society as a whole?  Besides to gawk at them?”

Dylan stared.

“What does that matter? How can we judge things based on how good they are to us?”

“I don’t know. To me, it’s just like one big island museum that you can’t even visit because they’ll shoot you with arrows.”

“Those are fellow humans. Those are our brethren. They have evolved to live differently.”

“I mean, they have never necessarily evolved.”

“Well, no, they’ve plenty, they’ve plenty evolved, but they haven’t been brought up to speed as far as technology and everything. It’s a very rare and precious thing, I would think.”

“I mean, just for them to be getting along like as long as they’ve been getting along—but like I’m sure they’ve seen some fucked up shit in their own little tribe like having to do like inhumane surgeries and shit like that. He’s got a nasty blister on his foot from running through—chasing a fucking monkey down to stab with his spear and eat it or some shit. Because monkey is on the menu. I wonder what monkey tastes like.”

Dylan snorted a long rail and passed the shard to Beau. Beau rolled up a twenty. He placed the shard on his thigh and hunched over. His nostrils burst into flames. Beau threw back his head and thrashed as ketamine soaked into his blood.

“But for them to just light up somebody with an arrow—what were they feeling about their fellow human when they lit that man up with a bunch of arrows? Did you think about it like that at all?”

Dylan snorted two more bumps off the point of a butter knife and leaned back, hands clasped behind his head like a cobra. Beau grabbed the roll of toilet paper on the coffee table and blew his nose.

“What were they feeling? Were they feeling like straight, like just fucking kill him? I mean, did they even attempt to do any sort of contact because it would sicken them or did they just go straight to that? What if they were like just completely barbaric savages, you know? Like they would just eat the brain out of your fucking skull if they could? I know they can’t be that savage, but there’s actually like really savage tribes out there that do cannibalize people.”

“There are reports of the tribe laughing at him while he was reading them Scripture. And then eventually they started shooting.”

“See, that was pretty, pretty savage of them, you know? What does that say about them and their, their their, their humanity? I just don’t know if you were thinking of it in that way at all.”

“Well, I don’t know if we can judge them.  At first, you brought up what is their worth—”

“Well, the way that I said it could have been construed in any way, but I was just saying like what, what are they? What is a tribe of uncontacted people besides just to be there to exist?”

“And isn’t that enough?”

“I guess, but—”

“Isn’t that miraculous and like amazing and like—”

“Oh I mean yeah, but like—”

“And so much can be learned—”

“But-but-but like I don’t think so at all.  Like if there’s no contact with them whatsoever—”

“Even though they’re not polluting into the ocean—”

“Now, are there people in the tribe that defect out and leave the island so they can like do something else or are they just locked there? Like you can’t fucking leave, you are poop flinga. You are son of greatest poop flinga in town. I don’t know, I guess I have a lot of questions.”

Dylan clenched his jaw so hard that Beau could see the shape of his bones. He bugged his eyes and levitated like a skewered skeleton. He looked down at Beau, but Beau didn’t look like Beau. Dylan slowly dropped to his knees and folded like a fetus on the floor.

Beau sank into the back of his crystal skull and watched Dylan through a wormhole at the end of his nose. Glaciers of candy glue gunked up the cavity behind his face. His guts bubbled against his skin. He wanted to shit and piss and puke and cry. Beau corked his asshole and crossed his legs and gulped back the lump of tears lodged in his throat. He closed his eyes.

Beau drifted toward a small island. Slender pygmies naked as night crowded the beach. Beau waved. Though he hadn’t read much of the Bible, snatches of verse babbled through his head. Beau opened his arms and spoke in a tongue he had never heard. The pygmies bared mouthfuls of big teeth and laughed. He was compelled to hug each of them.

Beau tried to belt a hymn, but he tasted the smell of kitty litter and gagged. Church keys nipped his neck, kicking cans of dread down his spine. His palpitant heart boomed like a call to prayer. The pygmies turned to stone and took aim. Beau lost his balance as arrows eclipsed the sea and the sky.

He landed gently at the bottom of a black dungeon. Two green pipes stuck out of the gray brick floor. A toilet flushed and out squelched the holographic heads of his ex and her ex-husband. They stared at him with tight smiles. He wanted to apologize for everything.

Beau opened his eyes. He was lying on the bathroom floor, curled around the Squatty Potty. He could see the hairy streaks of piss that striped the toilet. Beau found his feet and looked in the mirror. His eyes weren’t right.

Beau wondered when he would be good to drive. He wanted to go home and text his ex. He wanted to

know whether she had loved him or her husband more. It was unknowable. But he had a hunch. He brushed the gun on his hip and decided to start going to church next Sunday. There has to be something there.

Beau wandered back to the bedroom. Dylan had chopped apart another tenth. He gave Beau a look of dull surprise. His nose was red and scaly and a pearl of snot puddled in the groove above his lip. Beau grinned.

“Did you k-hole?”

Dylan nodded.

“Yeah. I think I did a bit too much. What happened?”

“I don’t even know, dude.”