Footsteps echo through the tunnels. They bounce off the walls, the water, coming back to you hundreds of times, wet and dripping. The man in front of you wears a dark cape, and it billows out behind him as he runs. You can catch glimpses of his blouse, like something a 1920s bellhop might wear, in his reflection on the water; he wears baggy Tripp-style pants in an obnoxiously bright neon yellow.

"Here should be good."

He stops, and you stop behind him. You're at an intersection. A rusted sign above, barely visible in the dim light of burnt-out bulbs, shows that this is some sort of intake. Water rushes beyond a grate, pouring out from who-knows-where. You're past the treatment plant.

The man pulls some vials from the pockets of his pants--that's one advantage of rave pants, they have a shitton of pockets. He never explained to you what, exactly, is in them. He's given you contradicting stories: the processed blood plasma of his transsexual friends; adrenochrome obtained from a dark cabal he attended with the other fags from Jewish summer camp; whatever it is they put in the vaccines to cause all the autism. You think some of these must be jokes, but it's hard to tell. He says everything with such sincerity, even the bullshit, that you're convinced that he somehow thinks it's all true. Even the parts he made up.

He hands you a few vials. "Can you take care of these ones, please?"

It's a bit hard to understand him. He is, after all, wearing a mask: a beaked leather thing that you've seen in various video games and history lessons. What you can make out about his voice is something androgynous, and overly-articulated--as if to compensate for the lack of clarity the mask, and even his words, provides. You think about "gay voice," and the voice of characters like Spock or Sheldon Cooper, and personalities like Bernie Sanders or Larry King. He sounds simultaneously like all of those and none of those.

You both begin pouring the contents of the vials into the water supply. It's a thick serum, dripping slowly. Lethargically. Painfully. You can hear your masked companion humming as he pours his. You don't know what the song is--he's never on-key.

Once all the vials are emptied into the water, he lets out a high-pitched noise. At first you think it's a sewer rat, but no, it's him squeaking. You turn and see him shifting his weight between his feet and flapping his arms, bent at the elbows, going in and out in front of him like windshield wipers. He notices you staring, squeaks again, and then approaches you.

He grabs your arm. For someone so effeminate and small, his grip is surprisingly strong.

"Let's celebrate."

He lifts his mask slightly and you're kissing. His face is somewhat prickly against yours, scraggly beard and mustache brushing against you. You touch his face, acne-ridden and round. He flinches slightly.

He strips down. His body is like none you'd find in porn--large hips, curvy and round, sit opposite broad, muscular shoulders. He's hairy, but it's a thin sort of hair, almost like a layer of down. His belly portrudes, chubby from years of binge-eating due to the ravenous appetite that comes along with atypical antipsychotics. His breasts are fuzzy, and look out of place offest against his hairy, muscular core. Faint scars, glimmering old and pale in the light, line his wrists and upper thighs. He is marked by acne, stretch marks, rough welts where he injects his T, self-harm scars, new patches of hair growth, hickeys, and scars from the various surgeries he performed on himself--he has always been fascinated by his own body, opening it up and tying it back closed.

He is masculine in a feminine way. A genius in only the way a retard can be. Brimming with confidence and yet painfully afraid. A self-loathing megalomaniac. He looks like he's 40, or maybe 14. He is pathetic, yet terrifying.

And soon, everyone will be like him.