Steel teeth gnashing against the brick are the only sounds in this alleyway at 3:13 in the morning. I am Hazel B.-L., and my life consists of erasing the things people would rather forget they ever said or believed. Most nights, it is just crude anatomical sketches or political slogans that expired 13 months ago, but tonight, I am scraping away a mural of a double helix intertwined with a rising sun. This was once a ‘wellness sanctuary’ that promised to reset the biological clock using ‘proprietary cellular infusions.’ Now, it is just another bankrupt storefront with $43 worth of chemical solvent eating through its lies. The physical sensation of the scraper vibrating up my arm reminds me that reality is stubborn. It does not yield to marketing, yet here I am, cleaning up the residue of a dream that cost some poor soul at least $15003 and left them exactly where they started, or perhaps somewhere much darker.
It usually starts around 1 AM, doesn’t it? The blue light of the laptop screen is the only thing illuminating the living room while the rest of the world is asleep and, more importantly, out of pain. You are watching a testimonial. It is always a grainy video of a man, let’s call him Arthur, who is 73 years old and suddenly scaling a mountain in Panama as if
