“Hey.” Sherry asked.
	“Hello, Sherry.” The husky dog replied, stirring himself awake. He was lazing atop the hood of a green car. Same as where Sherry met him before. In daylight he seemed a lot bigger, fluffier, more imposing.
	Sherry herself was just standing there staring at him. She was watching the wound on his face, a missing piece of flesh on the right side of his face that revealed his teeth.
	They were rotten and sharp.
	“Okay. I just wanted to make sure you were alive.”
	“Why?” He asked. “Why would it matter if I died?”
	“Shut the fuck up.” Sherry very plainly ordered. “I thought I already proved you wrong.”
	“No you haven’t. Nothing’s changed.”
	“You said I couldn’t beat the cow.”
	“You can’t.”
	“I did, you retard. You saw me bury it.”
	“I saw you bury your mother’s corpse, so all you’ve proven is that you’re a murderer, you haven’t beaten the cow.”
	Sherry sneered at him, said. “Moving the goalpost doesn’t detract points, you know.” She got up closer, looking down on him. “If you’re a fucking loser who thinks nothing matters, which you still very clearly are, and you get proven wrong, which you fucking did because you’re wrong. Then you should either accept that you’re a wrong loser, or keep your fucking mouth shut, okay?”
	“Oh, right.” The husky replied with his own mocking tinge, eyeing her wide with the unscarred side of his face. He cocked his head as he spoke. “Things have changed. Without the cow you have no source of income.” He grinned wide as best he could. “So I guess it’s time for you drop out of school and become a whore.”
	“Fuck you.” Sherry spat.
	“It’s what the cow did.”
	“I am nothing like my mother.”
	Sherry raised her voice, clenched her fists and stared down this fucking trash-dog. This worthless fucking hopeless loser of an animal. He’s a fucking animal.
	The dog said. “You’re a carbon copy.”
	Sherry struck him as hard as she could,
	right in the face,
	but it didn’t phase him – he didn’t even move.
	“I’m just saying,” The husky said willingly lying back down, somewhat curling himself up. “you’re a beautiful face,
	Sherry Blattan.”
	She could feel her upper lip shudder, feel her head shake uncontrollably. Her face and all she felt was scorn.
	The audacity of this useless, lazy animal, to tell her anything at all. To call her a whore and then lie and say she’s beautiful? What a stupid manipulative lunatic of an animal.
	Fuck ‘em.
	Sherry started marching away.
	“I’d like to be your first customer.” He added.
	She turned back and screamed, “Fuck you!”,
	turned back again and walked right into a side-view mirror. “Fucking dammit.” She yelled, grabbed the mirror, wrenched and ripped it off the car. She tossed it away and stormed off, fuming out of control.

	September 21st 2005 (Wednesday)
	2:00PM

	Outside the world was the same as it ever was, save that it all seemed a bit brighter than the day before. That’s how it started Sunday, “and maybe it’s just me,” Sherry stated. “but it’s like it’s a little bit more everyday. Like, every color’s just a bit more brighter. Every line’s a little bit sharper. I don’t think it can be a bad thing.”
	Sherry liked that simply walking cooled her down.
	A brisk pace to get her blood flowing.
	Only the softest wind.
	She felt okay.
	The supermarket wasn’t anything special, a block off the outskirt roundabout where everything else was. The day was chill, not too cold, but not quite enough to justify the hoodie addition. “I mean, really.” Sherry admitted. “It screws the whole look up. I should hit the mall on Friday, this time for real and get some good looking jackets for winter.”
	Sherry at present was wearing white-washed jeans, white ragged sneakers and a faded green T-shirt with the word:
	‘LOVE’ in flat white all capital letters.
	Beneath that she wore a plain white long-sleeve shirt.
	She had her gear: wallet, keys, watch plus the switchblade she took out of Steve’s backpack earlier today. Her watch was a white leather band silver, wallet black “but that’s okay.” Sherry added. “If it can’t be seen it’s fine.”
	The sun was barely visible in the sky, clouds filling up most of the space. It created a sort of dry bubbling look, like something apocalyptic. It was hard for Sherry to ignore,
	not even that she was trying to. It all just stood out strong. The quiet world shaded, whatever loomed over and ahead, for the while was simple and pleasant.
	She exhaled gently, rubbed her nose made her way past that gray car – the one with blacked out windows – which still hadn’t stopped doing donuts round the roundabout.

	Nothing’s changed.

	“Yeah, okay.” Sherry started up in the produce section, animated like she had a small audience. “I guess this is the cow’s huge victory – shopping. Big deal. Even postmortem she’s still pathetic trash.” She shivered pushing her cart around, shanked by the idea that something so weak ever had a hold on her. But it’s fine now, she’d won. She’d claimed victory and it made her smile leaning over the cart-handle, staring at the spinach. Or at least what she thought was spinach. “it’s hard to tell in this sea of green garbage. . . .
	So what has changed?” She asked, wandering through the aisles. “Well, . . . first off I feel better. I’m not the same girl I was before, I’m better now. I have to do all this stuff too.” She hunched over rolled slightly, watching the tile floor through the cart’s metal pattern.
	“I have to do all this stuff too.” She said again, then. “Like, why am I even having this conversation. The trash-dog’s obviously wrong. I mean Jesus Christ, how the hell could things not’ve changed?”
	“Young lady.” An old black woman reacted.
	Sherry stopped still, startled by the realization of how loud she was being. She turned her head to look at the old woman, who engaged her with great degree of visible trepidation. A look of severe confusion and concern that Sherry honestly found fucking annoying.
	“What is it?” Sherry demanded.
	“Y-you can’t go takin’ the lawds name in vain,
	you know, that’s un-lady-like.”
	“Fuck you.” Sherry stressed,
	raising her voice indignant. “Who the hell are you anyways,” Her voice darkened, snarling kubrick gaze. “some fat old darkie in a trashy coat!” She shouted, gripped the old woman’s shoulder, squeezed.
	A moment’s hesitation.
	Sherry shoved the old hag into the shelves. Impact broke it apart and a dozen-plus two-liters dropped and rolled about. Several burst sprayed tonic across the floor.
	Poor old lady moaned in pain, laid there,
	sticky soda puddling beneath her.
	Sherry looked down on the old darkie trash,
	sneering and smug at the outcome.
	They locked eyes and the old lady began to tear up.
	Sherry laughed, stomped on the hag and ground her heel. Half bent over with a hand still on the cart she said “Jesus-fucking-Christ,” with a playful shake to her head. 	“doing that was effortless.”
	The old lady mouth agape shivered in fear, desperately grasping at a golden cross, bound by chain round her neck.
	Sherry maintained contact with her victim’s eyes,
	then dictated with her hands in her pockets:
	“Don’t ever tell me what to fucking do, ever,
	do you understand?”
	The fat old darkie nodded her head in reply, wide-eyed and muttering prayers, tears flowed freely down her face.
	“Good.” Sherry said stepping back to her cart. “And by the way – god-dammit.”

	She rolled on to the next aisle.

	“So yeah, the husky-dog is flat wrong.” Sherry said, leaned forward on the cart as she rolled it along. This aisle was empty, quiet as the rest of the place.
	Nobody came to see what had happened.
	“Hmm.”
	There was tea, boxes of herbal stuff and coffee. Strange foreign rice packages on the opposing side. Bloated plastic forms containing little white things. One had pilaf, so Sherry put it in the cart. She paused to stare, absentmindedly downward. Her face expressionless, posture sullen and lazy. Small silver bars made up the cart. Bright red handle, and the floors were all marbled white. The grind of her shoe against the floor felt louder than anything. “You know,” Sherry said.
	“at least the dog could take a punch. Old fat trash should just keep their fucking mouths shut.”
	The implication made Sherry furious, burning hot and constant, an inclination to run back and really kick her ass for possessing such unwarranted audacity.
	“Yeah,” She commented. “Audacity’s the right word.
	Audacious old hags.
	I mean after all – it’s not like she can stop me.”
	She tapped her foot standing there running through it in her head out loud. “You know what?” Sherry asked herself. “The dog’s tough enough to be wrong. That’s okay. He can be wrong all day long, because he’s obviously gonna be, but that’s okay as long as he’s strong.
	What’s important is that weak trash keep their undeserved opinions to themselves. If you can’t take a hit, you don’t get to take a turn to speak.”
	Another aisle over, and a degree of self-consciousness sunk in. She was being very fucking loud, and she was talking to herself like a crazy person, and there was even a guy in this aisle. Bread and rolls, dairy, capped off by the meats. The huge plus about solo-shopping was getting to peruse and choose the cuts herself. “No more shake and bake shit.” Sherry said,
	pushed the cart forward,
	and instantly hit the poor guy.
	“Woah, hey.” He reacted, put a hand on the cart.
	Sherry panicked, blurted out: “Are you okay!?”
	She ran around the cart to him , to do – something.
	It didn’t matter the moment there,
	he was clearly fine.
	“Yeah, but geez.” He said, chill as the cucumbers in his basket. “You need to pay more attention, Sherry Blattan.”
	“Are you sure?” She asked in earnest. She gulped awash with worry that she somehow might have hurt him.
	“Yes, Sherry, I’m sure you need to pay more attention.”
	“No I mean you’re not hurt or-”
	“I’m fiiine.” He replied. “Just be more careful next time, you don’t wanna run into some old lady or something.”
	Sherry about to say it paused, stared up at him.
	The guy was a whole head above her, a decade her senior and had long bleached hair and dirty blonde chinstrap. 	Pale skin and a harsh chin. Not wholly clean neither,
	dotted with a dozen odd-end piercings.
	Sherry asked instead: “How do you know my name?”
	“Huh? You come in all the time.”
	“What?”
	“I’m Franklin, Hot Subject?”
	“Oh, yeah.” Sherry realized, staring at his A-shirt laden hairy chest. He smelled like hot musk, half-covered in tats too.
	“Okay. I thought I recognized you from somewhere. I-. I’m sorry I hit you, it really was an accident.”
	“It’s fiiine.” He said again, checking out her cart as he walked on and past her. His stopped to stare at the rice.
	“What happened to your face?” He turned and asked.
	“Huh?”
	Franklin tapped his lips on the right side. “The scar.”
	“Oh, yeah, that. “ Sherry answered, running her fingers along it. “I slipped and fell in the kitchen last Sunday.”
	He clearly didn’t believe her.
	But it was true, of all the scars she earned last Sunday, the worst she got was just from cleaning up.
	There were three that stayed:
	One little one just above her left eye, a notable jilt in her eyebrow. The second and least noticeable was a simple line between her nose and cheek. Those the cow gave her.
	The worst split her lips on the right side, went from halfway to her nose down to her chin. It had an obvious crevasse to it the way it healed. She got it cause she slipped  cleaning her own blood up off the kitchen floor.
	“Alright, well, just tell Ellie I said ‘Hi’.”
	“Okay.”

	Sherry made a mental note of that.

	But it flustered her all up – accidentally hurting him with the cart. She clearly didn’t hurt him but she still hit him.
	It gave her a pang of guilt,
	“I should pay more attention.” She mumbled,
	discomforted by the thought.
	Also, she found it weird she knew her name. Sherry didn’t remember ever telling him and she didn’t even know his name was Franklin he was just ‘The Guy From Hot Subject’. They’ve never had a conversation or anything, and he was totally cool with what happened too.
	“If it were reversed I’d have torn him to shreds.”
	Sherry rolled along past the frozen foodstuffs, on her way to get some Greek yogurt and cheese.
	There was another old lady in one of those motor-chair-things. She was struggling with a freezer door, trying to grab a package of Leggo Waffles.
	Sherry as she passed by, lingered and looked at her for a second, watching the old woman struggle. She scooted around her half-leaning, opened the door with one hand and grabbed a package of waffles with the other.
	The old lady looked at her and said: “Oh, thank you!”
	“No problem.” Sherry said as she put the package in the old woman’s cart and kept rolling along.

	She got herself some full frozen pizzas,
	Blue Duke – real good stuff.

	Sherry at checkout, watching patiently the gangly gross cashier scanned each item sent down to him from a slow-whirring belt. He gave them over to a bagger Sherry’s age, acne-laden and obese. Sherry started to space out.
	The cashier scanned each item with a blip.
	The bagger loaded each into another shopping cart
	Blip.
	Her mother was a cow,
	Blip.
	but she wasn’t.
	She was human, just like everyone else at school.
	She had eyes.
	Blip.
	Sherry exhaled like short on breath.
	There was a car engine rumble outside.
	“That’ll be one-oh-eight-forty-eight cash money.”
	The cashier said, sounding so nasally and nerdy.
	Sherry handed over her mother’s debit card.
	The cashier sighed as he did it himself.
	“Please enter your PIN.”
	More blips as she entered the number.
	She looked up to the cashier, feeling this wordless terrible, looking like a deer caught in headlights. He just looked back at her, tired, then to the machine and said:
	“That’ll be eight dollars and forty-eight cents.”
	“Huh?”
	“You’re short eight-forty-eighty.”

	No source of income.

	“Fucking dammit.” Sherry swore,
	very quickly checked her wallet: empty.
	She had no other money. “That damn dog wasn’t completely wrong” She said, and that just pissed her off.
	“What dog?” The cashier asked,
	but Sherry though annoyed and flustered. She had no expression on her face. Sherry looked to the cashier, not knowing what to do. But he just looked right back at her,
	eyes glazed over lifeless.
	He had glossy human eyes.
	“I-I, uh,” Sherry stammered, gulped, said. “I only live, like, two blocks from here. I can come right back.”
	She did figure she could find some cash somewhere in the apartment. But she didn’t know fort certain.
	The cashier frowned slow, sweat beaded down his face. 	He groaned guttural and looked down the aisle.
 	Both Franklin and the darkie hag were right in line with her, looking at her. One with fear, the other with a sense of humor. The cashier said:
	“I can’t allow you to do that, Sherry.”
	“Why not?”
	“How do I know you’re even gonna come back.”
	“It’s only eight dollars, I already paid a hundred.”
	“I still can’t let you do that.”
	“It’s fine – I’ll cover it.” Franklin interjected,
	he leaned over handed him a ten.
	The cashier garbled and accepted it.
	Sherry stunned, shuffled along and watched her groceries fill up that other cart. The bagger looked like she was melting. Sherry felt like she was too, suddenly hot-headed stressed but not angry. She walked her cart outside and held up a moment alone. Both hands grasping the cart handle lightly. Her thumbs rubbing against the plastic. Sherry asked:
	“Why did he do that?”
	She turned and leered looking behind her.
	Her head was too hot to actually wrack out that question, overcome with a hazy of frustration. She was sure she could’ve paid for it, worked out something with the cashier or something.
	But then he just went and paid for it for her.
	She grumbled mulling it over just standing there for the two minutes it took for Franklin to walk his own way out. He had two bags with him, the bare minimum he might need. 	“Ay, you need a ride?” He asked before she had a chance to react to him.
	Sherry gulped tense. “Why did you do that?” She asked in an accusing tone. He just shrugged:
	“Eh, I’ve been there too. Besides, you and the guy would’ve been there thirty minutes arguing if I hadn’t.
	I do got places to be, Sherry Blattan.”
	He seemed so cheery and cool with it,
	like it was no big deal at all.
	But there was thing pang, Sherry feeling like she now owed him. Annoyed she stated:
	“Well, don’t expect me to pay you back.”
	“I don’t.” He just chuckled walking past her, turned and asked again with a smirk:
	“You sure you don’t need a ride?”
	“What are you getting out of this?” Sherry suddenly demanded, grip wrenching the handles, sneering at him.
	“Fuck all apparently.”
	Sherry watched him walk to his own car. It was busted up, brown and well over a decade old.
	She watched him with a furrowed brow, watched him take his time taking off.
	Whatever game he was playing Sherry wasn’t falling for it. Nobody just does that. Nobody just nicely pays for someone else, and offers them a ride, and expects nothing in return. “As if I’m that stupid.” Sherry said, started nodding to herself. “Yeah, Ellie told me about this. Boys will randomly do nice things for you and then give you bullshit fake reasons for doing it when they really just want to have sex with you.
	But the joke’s on him. I’m never having sex, ever. GG Franklin from Hot Subject. Congratulations on losing before you even started. Fucking fag.”
	Sherry felt stretched thin all of a sudden.
	On one hand she had a hard time rationalizing that any guy would ever even be interested in her ever, and on her other she porbably isn’t even human at all.
	“Which makes it bestiality.” Sherry figured with a look of disgust warping her face. “Degenerate freak.”
	But maybe she was too.
	“Moo.” Sherry very flatly said.
	She sighed inhaled slow,
	then exhaled softly, said:
	“That doesn’t sound right at all.”
	Then that darkie hag rolled out. She clearly tried her hardest not to look at Sherry, minding her own, all the way to her old little car. Sherry watched her go,
	saw all the bags in the cart she was pushing around. “I mean,” She said. “after all, I did just run out of cash, and I’m eventually gonna go through what I have.”
	The old hag had a purse too.
	Sherry grinned.
	She ran her cart across the lot,
	whirring wheels over fifty feet,
	the lady startled way too late.
	Hard crash knocking her to the ground.
	A sudden rush on energy, sheer thrill pimping into Sherry’s heart. She went a step further, ran around the carts and kicked the darkie a dozen times to make sure she stayed down. She reduced the old woman to a pathetic wreck of tears, which begged to know:
	“Why’re you doin’ this to me? What’d I do!?”
	Sherry reached down to take her purse,
	but the old lady smacked her hands away,
	shouted: “Get away! Go!”
	The smacks were so pathetic and weak, Sherry barely felt it. She started laughing, looking right into the eyes of the old, fat, useless, pathetic and weak darkie garbage possessed with such ill-advised audacity.
	Sherry slugged her once.
	The darkie hag screamed and held her face in pain.
	Sherry took her purse, started loading up her victim’s groceries into her own cart, which’d nearly doubled in size.
	“Gonna have to be careful not to drop anything on the way home.” Sherry commented and started to walk away,
	when a hand grabbed her ankle.
	“Why?” The old woman cried. “Why’re you doin’ this!
	Please! I gots to feed my grand-kids!”
	Sherry looked down at her sneering smug,
	explained: “If you can’t resist me,
	then you deserve what happens next.”
	Sherry stomped on her, ground sneaker into her face,
	head into the asphalt as she screamed for mercy.
	But there was nobody around to hear her,
	nobody willing to help.
	“And even if they could!” Sherry insisted, shouted aloud laughing. “They couldn’t stop me!”

	Sherry took to riding her cart, kicking off with one leg and hopping on the bottom bars. She rolled down the sidewalk and nearly into the street when tried to round a corner with it.
	Into the parking lot of the WDAC, past rows of cars, she noticed the husky-dog was still laying there.
	Sherry skid to a stop,
	stared at him wondering if he was alive again.
	After the dying cat she felt a constant need to know,
	even though he himself didn’t really care.
	“Fuck ‘em.” Sherry said. “I do.” She pushed the cart to the entrance and walked back to talk to him.
	“Hey.” Sherry asked.
	The husky-dog sighed. “Hello, Sherry.” He didn’t move, too lazy to even look at her. She could be standing there with an ax and he couldn’t give less of a fuck.
	“I just wanted to make sure you weren’t dead.”
	“What do you want.” He asked.
	Sherry paused to think about it.
	Light breeze, chill and gray day rolling over afternoon.
	Cloudy sky and silence (Waiting on her).
	“I wanted to say sorry for hitting you.”
	“Why.”
	“I dunno.” She sighed. “I mean, you can take a hit.”
	“I can take a lot more than that, Sherry.
	I am also (Invincible).”
	“Uh huh, so was the cow.” Sherry said smirking.
	“And it still is, isn’t it?”
	Sherry just stared at the dog, wishing it would make some kind of motion, give her something to react to instead of just standing there. Maybe he might as well be dead.
	She felt discomfort at the thought,
	also this husky’s insistence on a thing that just didn’t make any sense to her. How can the cow be (Invincible) if she beat it? She killed it, stabbed it to death and buried the body just over there.
	Sherry looked back at it. The treeline rise, ten feet of dirt hill that had so very obviously been recently dug up and re-filled. She turned back and asked:
	“Why was my mom a cow?”
	“Because she was a cow.”
	“What do you mean?”
	“I mean your mom was a cow because she was a cow, just like how I’m a dog because I am a dog.”
	“That doesn’t make any sense.” Sherry insisted,
	frustrated she said. “If my mom’s a cow then why the fuck am I a human being?”
	“What makes you think you’re a human being?”
	“What?”
	“You look like cattle to me.”
	“Fuck you.”
	“Hey, how many bulls do you think had their way with the cow? Better yet, which one do you think fathered you?”
	Sherry’s lips quivered, her fists balled up shaking,
	face contorted into a disgusted sneer.
	The husky-dog continued:
	“How is at all possible that you born from a cow fifteen years ago?, and if you’re human then what? Did your father lay with a cow? It’s unlikely, Sherry Blattan.”
	Sherry turned and stomped away, cooled out over the next thirty minutes of getting all those bags inside. Whether or not the husky-dog was right or wrong, he asked a very good question. She almost hated that fact more.
	“But how can I not be human?” Sherry asked,
	setting two-handfuls of bags on the main room table.
	She stopped and stared at Dreamer, sucked into the TV same as he always was. “Am I a mutant?” She asked him from across the place.
	But he didn’t reply,
	and then she did. Words coupled by strange memories.
	Long car rides and high-rise buildings.
	“No, I’m a normal person.” Sherry said.
	A mirrored elevator and a man holding her hand.
	“Just like you and me.”