Caution: self-harming behavior. Caution: depictions of war. Caution: depictions of self-harming behavior in a war-torn nation, probably Serbia (unless you are Serbian). Caution: severed head. Caution: self-severing of own head, depicted in slow motion. Caution: unrealistic situation of violence, such as is often depicted in manga. Caution: theatrical violence inflicted upon midgets. Caution: ghosts. Caution: flaming ghosts (as in ghosts on fire, not flamboyantly gay ghosts). Caution: gay ghosts. Caution: spiders. If you have a severe spider phobia (talking to you, Debbie—you need help!) you should stay the fuck away from this story. Caution: profanity. Caution: Mormons. Caution: realistic depictions of Mormons, as missionaries, coming to a door much like your own door. If you are afraid of Mormons, please ask for an alternate reading assignment! Caution: depictions of shell-shocked Mormon missionaries going door to door in a war-torn nation as bombs fall around them. Nobody opens the door for them. One of them—caution!—sees what he thinks is a ball on the ground, but it turns out to be a human head. Before his mind registers that this is actually a head and not a ball, he has kicked it. Later, he will be haunted by the head of a ghost, potentially gay, that once resided in the head that he kicked, and this ghost-head will summon spiders, thousands and thousands of spiders (stay away, Debbie!). Caution: amputees. Caution: if you are afraid of amputees, please avoid this story. Caution: if you are an amputee, please trust that I did not intend to insult you or your ilk (probably an unfortunate choice of words, since ilk sounds like a part of a word rather than a whole word), and please do not feel obligated to read this story. But, if you, an amputee, do read the story, please know I would gladly welcome any suggestions from you as per what the life of an amputee is really like. Like, how do you tie your shoes, for instance (or shoe, if you only have one leg)? Caution: psychiatrists. There are hundreds of psychiatrists in this story, and each of them has a catchphrase they repeat over and over. Reading this story will make you hate psychiatrists, even if you are a psychiatrist. Caution: flaming ghosts of Mormon amputee psychiatrists. Unless they are in fact psychotherapists. I forget which is the one with the medical degree. Maybe neither (caution: lack of verified medical knowledge). Their amputation is their head, each has had their head amputated, if that’s a word you can use to describe a head being separated from the body, and each carries their “amputated” head under their arm, though sometimes they set down their head and later pick up the wrong head. Caution: references to video games. Caution: excessive violence not unlike that found in the video game you were playing a few minutes before picking up this assigned story. Do yourself a favor: go back to the video game and remain untraumatized. Caution: men in trees. Caution: excessive use of exclamation marks! Caution!!!! Caution: colostomy bags vs. frat boys (hint: nobody wins). Caution: limber, self-fellating Smurfs. Caution: excessive and profane use of the color blue: IF YOU READ MY SMURF PORNOGRAPHY, BLUE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME FOR YOU AGAIN: ONLY READ THIS IF YOU ARE BLUE-CURIOUS AND PREPARED TO JOIN US! Caution: cute kittens. Caution: references to social media. Caution: if you are over forty-five, you will not understand that these references are to actual social media platforms and will judge this story, which is a realistic story, to be some sort of science fiction, thus revealing yourself to be too old. Caution: I am not an SF writer, and if I get any more of your namby-pamby workshop comments saying that I write “sci-fi” I will take you outside and cut your shit up. Caution: profanity. Caution: biologically improbable sexual situations. If you try to reenact these situations at home, you will at best sprain something and at worst wind up in the emergency room with an earnest ER resident explaining the surprising strength (sometimes against its own interest) of the muscle known as the sphincter while secretly taking pictures that he will later post on a social media platform that, mercifully, you have never heard of. Caution: unrealistic characters. Caution: white men from the Midwest. Unless you are Jonathan Franzen (and if so, my condolences), you will find the men in these stories reprehensible. Caution: God, but God’s a woman. Or rather—caution!!!—just became a woman: God in this story is trans, but hell, if you’ve watched pay cable in the last year you’ll probably be O.K. Caution: Colin Hanks depicted trying to act. Caution: midgets. Did I already do that one? No, it was Mormons. Same difference, really. Caution: cultural insensitivity. Caution: republicans. Caution: an army of republican Mexican-wrestling midgets led by Colin Hanks face off against flaming amputee Mormon ghost psychiatrists in my story “Hymn-Off,” with each army trying to sing hymns better than the other, as judged by trans-God. For those who feel they would be wounded by this story, I have included a version that has no Mormons and no republicans and instead takes place in a public high school in California with competing midget glee clubs. Trans-God is still the judge. Caution: eighties music. Caution: feathered hair. Caution: fiction.