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and not be swayed by the media. But the week after “MASS MURDERER’S IMAGINARY MENAGERIE” made the front page of the Star-Telegram the prosecution compares my every word to quotes from various silver screen killers.
    Standing trial sucks. It’s long and pointless and entirely unfair. I didn’t get to go home and rest between court hearings. Which would make sense since I’m allegedly innocent until proven guilty. At Mike’s suggestion, I explain everything to the jury except for Eat’em. They look at me as if I suggest I should be allowed into their houses at night to exterminate their children. My throat tightens and I stammer on, “The Grotesque Infection isn’t caused by trees or plants or funguses or whatever. It’s a bacteria or virus perhaps um… a little help?”
    Eat’em paces on the desk in front of me, the lawyer I wish I had. He points at the jury with his tail and declares, “Grotesques belong to a phylum of the animalia kingdom known as Platyhelminthes. Some of the parasites in this…”
    “Parasites!” I shout, cutting Eat’em off. “They’re more like parasites.”
    “Parasites,” District Attorney Dale Gomes leans back against the partition that separates the stand from an inappropriately sized audience of people with whacked ideas for entertainment. Some of them are students of law, or journalists. There are a few witnesses and some mourning family members I can’t bear to watch. Lt. Hershel Thibodeaux Bellecroix holds his head in his hands at the back of the auditorium. He’s sitting with a few other cops I don’t recognize. Gomes looks at a clipboard and reads from it as if he’s quoting me. He isn’t. “Fungus, bacteria, viruses. You’re so certain that this sickness needs to be eradicated; yet you’re absolutely uncertain as to what it is. What makes you an expert on disease control?”
    It can’t be much more than sixty-five degrees in the courtroom and my shirt is all but soaked through with sweat. I want to scratch my face, but if I remember correctly, that’s an admission of guilt. Maybe I saw that on a cop show, I don’t recall. Still, I resist the urge.
    “Doctors,” the DA continues, “don’t seem to share your opinion on the existence of Grotesques. None of your victims tested positive for anything. The only thing that seems to coincide with your story is other stories. Fiction, Mr. Brook. Movies. Video games.”
    “Objection!” Eat’em jumps onto the pulpit. “Objection, yes! I call mistrial. Leading the witness. This jury bores me! Jacob, come on, let’s go… just plead guilty already!”
    My little red lawyer doesn’t quite understand what is at stake. Mike looks more interested in my answers than he does in defending me. I take a deep breath. “My life is at stake here. You want people to assume I’m a liar because of comparisons you’ve made to some bad zombie movie? Like They Live or World War Z or Last of Us ? Well, clearly you stole your life from To Kill a Mockingbird and we can all assume you’re full of shit too then, right?”
    Judge Brentt, a string bean looking guy who ducks under doorways and walks with a giraffe’s gait, likes to remind me I can be held in contempt of court. My outburst brings the courtroom to chatter, which the Honorable Brentt breaks up with a gavel. It plays out like a scene from Law and Order with the exception of the little demon humping the air and pumping his arm with an exuberant, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
    The commotion dies down and I gather my thoughts. These eyes of ridicule, looming over me like hungry vultures. I’ve been through too much to die without them knowing. I search my soul for the perfect words to help them understand, but I come up empty.
    Eat’em grows restless. He paces up and down the aisle going through purses and testing the gum stuck to the bottom of chairs for freshness.
    What makes me an expert on disease control… My mind returns to the question that was asked.
    “I don’t claim to