STEP ONE

Everyone has a little murder tourist in their head. I’m stuck behind some grotesque human at the deli, chewing like a cow with a broken jaw, and for half a second my brain calmly suggests smashing his face into the counter. I don’t do it. I smile. I wait. I pretend I’m not mentally timing the swing. Or I pass a pet store and lock eyes with those sad, blinking hostages sealed inside their glass coffins. In seconds I’m ripping cages open, alarms screaming, a full jailbreak in progress. Suddenly I’m leading a Disney parade of liberated animals down the street. Jazz hands. Show tunes. I play the whole scene in my head, feel the adrenaline spike. I exhale. The fantasy fizzles. I keep walking like a normal fucking human. Harmless. Just brain static. Everybody does it. If they say they don’t, they’re either lying or heavily medicated. Those fantasies got louder when life got smaller. Back in Beverly Hills, everything looked perfect. My private house with an elevator, marble bathrooms, a jacuzzi. I had money until I didn’t. I wasn’t qualified for much, but I knew fish from taking care of a 300-gallon aquarium at home, so I ended up managing the fish department at Petco. Minimum wage. Pulling up in a BMW convertible felt like performance art. I still choke laughing about it. The housekeeper back home made more in a week than I did in a month. Everything then slid. I landed in a small town in Guatemala. Locals saw the bodyguards, the apartment, and assumed cartel money or trust-fund royalty. The truth was the opposite. A steep drop. Harder living. Thinner air. I never whined about what I lost. I wore the quiet, tough-guy mask. Like a movie character who never mentions his backstory. My past buried under six feet of “don’t ask.” Inside, though, the daydreams were oxygen. They were the place I still had control when the world felt like it was laughing with a knife at my throat. This artwork captures the imagined aftermath of one of those bigger, darker fantasies: the perfect heist. On the TV, the bank burns in breaking news. Outside the window, past-due bills smolder in careless flames. No worry if the whole place catches. Who cares? It’s a daydream. Cash scatters across the bed like blood money confetti, whiskey close at hand, glass sweating in the dim glow. Torch the problems. Sit untouchable in the glow for one delusional, glorious second before reality kicks the door back in. Look, this shit’s normal. I have to believe it is, or I’m the psycho. Imagination’s the only free therapy we get. It lets me process the rage, rehearse flipping the script, or just steal a goddamn breath when life’s got its boot on my neck. Splashing these feral thoughts onto the digital canvas? It’s release without felonies. No real blood. No real cops. Just the sweet relief of letting the monster stretch its legs for a minute before I lock it back up.