Wake up one morning and realize that you’ve changed. It’s not just the ravages of time and age: your cranium is now a literal beef patty, encased in a pillow of bun, slathered with onion, ketchup, special sauce. You’re not sure how or why you’ve gotten into this predicament (you almost said pickle) but you know this is something that’s not supposed to happen in life. It happens, or something similar, in literature, but literature is not life. (Or is it? In the throes of a great book you sometimes forget the world, or so fully enmesh yourself in a more interesting reality that the real is recalibrated.) Anyway, resolve to make the best of it. Give your wife time to get accustomed to your metamorphosis: she’s been a vegan for years, and your head presents an obstacle, though she will understand your condition is no fault of your own. Your kids will have questions: will this happen to me, they’ll ask, and if it does, can I eat my own face? Consider your next move. Abandon your dreams of becoming a tech founder when it becomes apparent that your head is scaring off potential investors, or at least making them distractedly hungry. When the timing is right, enter the mayoral fray. It’s already a crowded field. The locals are barely paying attention to the race, they can hardly tell the existing candidates apart. They’ve lost faith in the power of democracy to exact positive change. They see politicians as fundamentally corrupt, and by and large they’re not wrong to do so. Your ground beef visage, for better or worse, gives you an edge, a crack in the door. But it won’t matter unless you can pry that door wide open. In your stump speech, doff your disproportionately-tiny top hat to the people, and tell them you’re the only candidate capable of rescuing this town. You’ll make sure the streets are cleaned, the garbage hauled off, potholes repaired. You’ve devised a unique solution to homelessness that involves neither sweeping the problem under the rug nor performative cruelty: you’re the humane option in the race, despite being approximately 22% factory-farmed meat. After your victory, keep your sirloin skull down and do the work. If you drip Thousand Island dressing all over your position papers, at least your aides will know you’ve done the reading. Understand that you’re here to make a difference, not merely to be a gimmick. Turn down the free gifts, the meals, the illicit offers from donors—golfing junkets, strip clubs, etc. This is where most mayors fail: the office is a den of temptation, and even if you manage to stave off one enticement to corruption, another is likely to land (often literally) in your lap. Consider a run for higher office: there’s a carton of sentient French fries in the Governor’s race saying bonkers things about immigrants, and you don’t like it one bit. But then quickly discard this idea. Decide that right here is the place where you can do the most good. Your mayoral sash is not merely a convenient signifier of your identity—it’s destiny. Tell yourself, even if it ends up sounding a bit cheesy when you verbalize it with your well-charred mouth: this is exactly where I belong.

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Matt Leibel is an omnivorous land mammal most commonly found in the San Francisco Bay Area. He does not have any claws, but his stories sometimes do. You can spot many of these in the wild at places like Electric Literature, The Florida Review, Passages North, Portland Review, Socrates on the Beach, matchbook and DIAGRAM. Find out more at mattleibel.com.