OKAY I'M SORRY! I'm sorry there haven't been comics lately! I've been busy with the play. The play is like a little girl, you see? This little girl follows me around everywhere, and when I consider doing a comic, she yells and screams and throws a fit. This is not a mature little girl.

Tonight, me and this little girl have to get up on a stage and do a show for a bunch of people, including some people that I like. I have to pretend I'm much nerdier and more insecure than I really am. I have to ACT. While I act, the little girl just sings dances around and does whatever she wants. I attempt to make this little girl behave, all the time trying to stay in character, but it is in vain. She is uncontrollable!

I must dance with this little girl tonight, and tomorrow night, and Saturday afternoon, and Saturday night. After Saturday night, the little girl and I will go to a party for all the cast members to get together and drink pop and eat pizza. The little girl will follow me around even then, interrupting conversations I will try to have with cool people. I will glare warningly at the little girl, but everyone else will smile and say that she is a sweet little girl, that she and I were great up there on that black womb of a stage, that I should be proud of her, and that she looks just like me. I will scream inwardly.

Then, at midnight, I will walk outside to admire the stars. The little girl will follow me, of course, but I will not mind. As my gaze moves down from those perfect shining spheres, that dang little girl will look up at me.

And now she is growing! Her hair falls out of its pigtails! Her freckles disappear; the gleam of innocence in her eyes is replaced by the germ of cynicism. The true meaning of our charade dawns on her, and her mouth opens in sudden understanding. Puberty gives way to adolescence; standing before me is a beautiful young woman. I smile at her. She smiles back, but she has misunderstood: her aging has not ceased.

Now she is really a woman. She looks down on me and smiles again, knowing that she has gained the upper hand. But I smile broader! Wrinkles begin to spread like the branches of an old, dead tree. A gray hair falls in front of her eyes; she waves it impatiently out of the way. Now she is shrinking. Her face is small and helpless. Her eyes are empty even of malice. Her mouth opens, but only dust escapes her lips. Dust! Now she is dust. The atoms blow away into the light of the streetlamps. I am free.

Wish me luck, guys! New comics next week, I think!