I
	I had been grappling with stasis. For so many nights I had found myself watching my empty soul flicker upon the ceiling, a loop of lust, avarice and failure in a realm removed from all markers of time but the presence of the moon. And when the moon was finished, the sun drowned out the images and I arose to flow with faceless others to fulfill the day’s desires. It was endless and torturous; I was caught between empty motions and acts of agency. I fucking needed a job.
	“Alright, well your resume is impressive enough, but tell me, why do you want to work for the Candidate?”
	The woman’s face was the color of old ivory, spotted gently with adult acne like so many stars in the city’s summer sky. Yes, it was clear that she too was possessed of crippling avarice, though at 26 she had already been consumed. She had forfeited her youth to the sin and was punished with pleather shoes.
	I have to admit, I don’t have a lot of experience in Politics but my immense penis envy was what originally attracted me to the ad. I too find myself not necessarily wanting to possess women, but rather to possess the world, to bend it over and assert my dominance. If I were a man this would easily be relieved with rough sex with prostitutes, but given my situation—and I know you understand—entering Politics will have to suffice.
	“I have to admit, I don’t have a lot of experience in Politics but I do want to become more civically engaged and I think working on a campaign is a great way to do so. I’m also very interested in Politics, I want to go into some kind of law or community organizing and I think becoming involved in the way that campaigning requires one to is an excellent way to get my foot in the door.”
	I thought about putting my foot in her face. I did not think the thought was deviant because I was assured that I would never act on it, and did not even desire to. I just reveled in the absolute absurdity. There would be a lot of agency in that act.
	“Okay, great answer, let me tell you a little more about the Candidate. It was a tough primary, we were definitely the underdogs but we pulled it out in the end, which I think speaks to who the pubic wants to represent them. The Candidate has gathered many great powers from drinking the blood of His opponents. This is the conference room where we keep in touch with the Upstate office and this is the pressroom this is where we do PR and also keep an eye on the opponent and also post their shriveled heads on pikes as evidence of the Candidate’s conquest. He thinks they keep Him humble.”
	Staring into the dark, dark campaign headquarters illuminated only by weak, flickering florescent bulbs, I imaged those bulbs as dark snakes sprung from the first serpent. The people around us moved like shades—tense, fearful and poorly dressed shades. I had not thought avarice had undone so many. I could not bear the thought of joining their ranks, but the snakes, those evil serpents promised me with forked tongues that all I desired could be mine were I just to submit.
	“Great, I’m really excited about you joining the campaign! I’ll see you tomorrow. Take some apples on your way out, they’re from Upstate and they’re delicious.” Delicious indeed.
	That night I lay upon my back and waited for the evening’s stasis to begin but, with no images, became acutely aware of time. I had not noticed before then that on my dresser sat a clock whose angry face glowed red with changing numbers. Instead of stagnating, time began to flow forwards like streams towards gutters during heavy rain. I watched the clock, astonished by this sudden linear movement of time for hours until it occurred to me that perhaps I should sleep. “That is what people do” I thought as I allowed myself to drift away in the forward current of time.
	The very next afternoon I began my training as a fundraising assistant. My job was quite simple: acquire as much money as possible for the Candidate through several questionable means. I worked through a database, tracking the giving histories of members of the Party for hours on end, profiling those who would give and contacting them over and over and over.
	I never said much at the office. I was deferential, appeared glad to be of use, cautious and politic. The muffled sound of my low heels down the office hallway as I shuttled important documents between higher-ranking campaign employees was indistinguishable from the sounds of all the others. The sounds of our collective low heels merged together like the sound of water in a small, but determined stream whose source was avarice and whose ostensible mouth was mystery. Yes, I blended in quite well; so well in fact that I forgot my name among the names of donors, hundreds of thousands of donors whose names were older than the very Hudson itself. Huntington, Cuomo, Witherspoon, the Candidate.
	My own appetite for power began to abate as a delightful consequence of integrating into this dynamic body of influence, and I grew fat on the leftover flesh of the Candidate’s kills. I was so well fed in fact, that I spent many bathroom breaks dry-heaving over various office toilets, running my mechanical hands through my hair and returning to the current of the Campaign, the sharp fix of which I could never get enough. Time too had returned and brought with it auxiliary goods: deadlines, schedules, and countdowns. Those first few weeks found me as fulfilled as a tick.
II
	I have hitherto spoken very little of my compatriots because their memory pains me. I conjecture that upon entering one the dark places of the earth, the souls of my fellow staffers—those animate fragments of divinity—had abandoned them and all hope. I tried always to avert my eyes when they passed as contact was jarring and filled my soul with an unshakable sense of sinister stasis.
	“Allllllright everybody! To! The! Conference Room! ” The voice of the Head of Staff roared through the office with the power of a lethal flashflood, filling our ears instantly. I was not unfamiliar with this ritual and I had come to associate it with the announcement with a Campaign victory; I began to salivate. The Head Priestess now stood before the altar as her disciples congregated before her, each checking the position of his ivory fetish.
	“Wait Marla, can we hang on a second? I can’t find my nametag.” A prayer to the Priestess issued forth and went thoroughly unacknowledged. We were about to feast. The Campaign could not stop for supplication of a plebian with no ivory.
	“Everyone have their nametags?”
	“No, I think I left it—”
	“Okay great, let’s get started. Now, we’ve been running an excellent Campaign: our numbers are up; our name leads in every story about the race; we’ve accumulated so many heads that we’re quickly running out of pikes. We’re doing a damn good job here, am I right?! Give yourselves a hand!”
	We all performed the first rite in hungry anticipation. Marla turned up her lips and widened her eyes, bobbing her head in order to solicit more worship. After a few moments she then raised her hands in a gesture which signaled a transition into the second rite.
	“As you all know at this point we are only a week away the election and a slaughter of unprecedented magnitude which will bestow upon each of you at least one carcass even you vegetarians and more importantly I’m sure, a small fortune of power and influence in state politics. So we are going to need you all back here tonight at seven ready to meet the people that make it happen!”
	A fucking mandatory office party. The shadow of disappointment hovered above us, brandishing its sharp teeth at each of time’s auxiliaries and threatening to descend. Marla’s insistence on such an inane exercise so close to the election likely meant that it preceded the revelation of some unfavorable development; it was a preemptive attempt to boost morale. As we groped together and shuffled away we were stopped again by Marla’s voice.
	“Oh! And everybody, out of respect for the needs and restrictions of our all of our staffers, we’re gonna keep this one dry, kaaaaay?”
	The shades and I returned to our desks with audibly clenching stomachs. A particularly malnourished-looking press intern sat on the floor of the conference room and began ripping away large chunks of his calf with his teeth, while several staffers approached Marla their requisite offerings.
	“A fucking mandatory office party? That’s bullshit.” The dry voice of another fundraiser carried from an adjacent cubicle.
	“Yeah, I hope they’re not doing this because we’re not losing. Besides, I have a really important networking thing scheduled—”
	“You mean that uh, fundraiser, kids cancer thing?”
	“Yeah, the Solicitor General’s kid or nephew or something has a brain tumor or a heart tumor. Fuck if I know.”
	“Wow, that really sucks for you man, the OSG!”
	“I know, I know. I’ve been really trying to build connections over there. Even if you come out of an internship from that office you’re set. Working in a place like the OSG, that definitely the path to being a Candidate.”
	I had become so enthralled by the conversation that I did not have time to look away when one of the men glided past my cubicle and our eyes met. My bones instantly ached so intensely from the cold that I thought each one might shatter. As disconcerting as this sensation was however, the image before me was far more disturbing. My fellow fundraiser’s face had transfigured into a grotesque image of my own smiling visage. The fat cheeks framed a mouth almost black blood that it flowed like a waterfall and pooled at my feet. When look up from the growing dark spot on the carpet I found my bloated doppelganger’s transformation was complete.
	“Who are you?”
	My double said nothing but raised a fat hand to a button on its jacket featuring its face and the slogan “The Party. The Candidate. The Future.” I looked from the button into the empty eyes and was wracked with unutterable pain. It was the most thoroughly horrible image I had ever seen and it filled me with such dread that I felt the whole world fall away. I collapsed onto all fours and wretched from the pain and utter disgust. When the sickness subsided, I opened my eyes to find my double had vanished. All that remained was a business card on which was printed only “Success.”
III
	Aside from that unpleasantness, the day was actually quite uneventful. I cleaned my vomit from the cubicle floor, raised a few thousand dollars and napped at my desk until it was time to decorate for the party. By 7:30 the entire Downstate Campaign staff congregated at their place of employment for mandatory fun. Marla, who smelled not unsubtly of gin, warned us that two things were strictly forbidden: talking about the Campaign and drinking. I suppose the rule against leaving was implicit.
	Scared shitless by the possibility of a second encounter with my demon, I shook hands and showed teeth when appropriate but was careful not to meet eyes; I dared not meet those eyes in dreams. I am aware that, in outside circumstances, my practice would likely have seemed odd or even off-putting. Fortunately, I was at the office of the Campaign, and most of the shades suffered from some degree of blindness due to advanced pathological ambition.
	Like many chronic conditions, the symptoms of our shared spiritual sickness became worse as the evening progressed into nighttime. First CVs and then prestigious diplomas were unsheathed from attachés in battles over who possessed the greatest tools of prestige and influence. Names were dropped and successful murders enumerated. By 11:00, almost the entirety of the male staff had evacuated to the PR room to compare genitalia. I felt glad. My own avarice was not nearly advanced as those around me, or if it was, I was better able to hide it. I leaned against the front door surveying the headquarters of the Campaign and its hungry disciples. It too was hungry, but I was in control and surely this would afford me more agency, and ultimately more success than these sad, sad shades.
	My thoughts were interrupted by a sudden blow to the back of the head. Dazed, it took several seconds to register that someone was trying to open the door and that my head was the impediment. I stepped to the side and allowed the person ingress. The man’s face I met was unlike any of my fellow staffers; his unblemished skin did not possess even a little waxen pallor and his blue eyes did not fill me with any frightening or unpleasant sensations. Though we locked eyes for several heartbeats I felt absolutely nothing. I did not even feel uncomfortable. Without thinking I pressed my top teeth to my bottom lip to voice the word that came into my head, Virgil, but I was interrupted by Marla.
	“Hey, well look who decided to stop by!” The Priestess rapidly drew herself up out of slovenly repose, resuming her robes and ivory. With long strides the man crossed the room, smiling and arms outstretched to embrace the Priestess. My compatriots emerged from their various sick-dens. Some rushed the scene bearing greetings and genuflecting, while others, like myself, crowded on the banks and smiled in polite confusion.
	“Hey everyone, I was just in the neighborhood and I wanted to stop by and say a quick thank you for all your work.”
	It was the Candidate. This milquetoast man, who I had first found remarkable only for his utter lack of disfiguration, was the conductor and composer of this symphony of avarice. The purpose of the entire operation was to serve his pathology, and yet he seemed no more capable grasping the world by the throat and squeezing it to the cusp of death than I was. He was a simple, unassuming man whose soul appeared intact.
	“I just got back for a Party fundraiser and guys, well, we raised $25,000 tonight!”
	Where was the blood? Where were the carcasses? Where were the heads? How was it that I could engage this man, look him directly in the eye and not only feel unthreatened, but even safe?
	“And I just want to say that none of this would have been possible without the support of my beautiful daughter and our King Charles, Sammy…”
	All I could see was teeth for miles, the teeth of my compatriots, the teeth of the Priestess. Even the heads seemed to smile down on the Candidate from their astounding heights. I was transfixed in utter bewilderment. They were worshiping a charlatan and I did not understand why.
	“Now I want you to give yourselves a round of applause! This is your campaign, I’m just the face of it!”  My compatriots clapped and howled furiously. The Candidate’s eyes again locked mine and, unafraid, I kept his gaze.
	“Isn’t that a lot of charming bullshit? They love it. You know, this whole time they thought they were getting good meat and, I guess they were, but I like to mix a little shit in too. You know, just to see how much they’ll take.”
	The shades continued their clapping and even began chanting the Candidate’s name, seemingly oblivious to the exchange taking place before them.
	“I can kind of see what you mean,” I said walking toward him. “It’s a great way to test how much control you possess over people. If you can get them to ignore the obvious truth, you must be pretty sucessful.”
	“That’s true.”
	“So, just to be clear, you’re extremely power-hungry right?”
	“Absolutely. I’ve been consumed beyond all recognition.”
	“Then why are you so—“
	“Non-threatening and quietly charismatic?”
	“Yeah, exactly!”
	“Some of us just have the ability to assimilate. Assimilation really is the key to success. Well, assimilation and the blood of your opponents.”
	As the cheering began to subside, the Candidate resumed addressing the crowded staffers.
	“Okay guys, I have to get home and put my little girl to bed, but let’s kill ‘em this week! We’re in the homestretch now let’s win! This! Office!”
	On his way out the Candidate clasped my hand firmly between his and met my eyes.
	“I don’t care how you rank in the Campaign, next week I want you to have as many carcasses as you like. I see a lot more in your future. You might even possess the world.”
IV
	The Candidate won by a large margin and I came away several thousand dollars and nearly a ton of meat wealthier. I rose before the sun on the morning after election night and found my feet on the icy city street. The magnificent chronology of life revealed itself in the rising sun that, for some reason, I was now sure would set and rise again. The stasis had lifted and optimism now hung in the air so thick it was almost tangible. As I walked along the East River I marveled at the beauty of the body’s power and ability to effect change. I became so engrossed that I did not even notice a fellow pedestrian until we collided.
	“I’m sor—”
	I met the smiling face of my double and though startled, this time I was unafraid. It beamed that sickening smile and extended its arm to offer me an envelope. As soon as I accepted it, my grotesque self resumed its pace in the opposite direction. With complete tranquility I pulled a note from the envelope and found the same message: Success. And then I knew the stasis would never be back.