We’re all just playing the game.

You look at me and see a simple artichoke. I look at you and I see right through you.

We waste our entire lives struggling in vain to convince ourselves we’re not gonna die. I see them struggle like ants on a hillside, their efforts just as futile. They collect things to convince themselves they matter: jobs, families, houses, cars. It’s all just material waste. Everyone has their own passions into which they throw themselves to turn away from the ceaseless gaze of the black abyss. They called Picasso a genius for his art.

Yet they call me a murderer for mine.

What truer experience can there be than death? To see, to know that your life is ending. I envy my victims, I do. For in that one instant, as their hearing fades to a hundred miles away and their vision collapses to pinpricks and their extremities start to tingle and buzz from the lack of blood flow, they know the universal truth. That life is the greatest gift we can be given, but you can never truly appreciate it until you’ve lost it.

And so I open their eyes to the horrible truth. I take life from them; they can only regret wasting the time they’ve wasted. After all, the universe is born of chaos. There can be no pattern, no rhyme or reason to the events that set our paths towards intersecting. And that’s the beautiful truth of it all. It’s random. I don’t select my victims, I don’t stalk them to learn their patterns or habits. I simply wait for the mood to strike me and the opportunity to arise.

And then, in some darkened alley or at some lonely bus stop, they’ll know me. And they’ll know the universal truth. And as I crush the very life from their throats, I’ll whisper into their ears, “I’m the Artichoker. And now you are free.”

Wear this shirt: In a brightly-lit, crowded place.

Don’t wear this shirt: If you’re actually stalking and murdering people. Not only is that bad, but a bright yellow shirt makes you conspicuous.

This shirt tells the world: “I would KILL for a good pun right now.”

We call this color: “Mister, please, you gotta lemon go!”

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