You know, there were any number of people who were evidently traumatized by the revelation that their parents were lying to them about Santa, but nobody ever mentions the real evil - sanctioned, State-sponsored, family-friendly lying for no purpose.

You know who I'm talking about: Billy, Age 7.

Fucking Bil Keane. Not only has "The Family Circus" never been funny, but for some reason he has to shill his goddamned son, drawing under his name in some misguided attempt to be cute. Oh, I was thrilled when I first read it - there was a kid my age, with his drawing in a professional newspaper! What a cool dad he has, I thought. He lets him fill in when he's tired.

I asked my dad if I could fill in for a day at his job, but my dad gave me some bullshit about how programming in Pascal required training.

But then the years passed. Billy still filled in periodically as "Billy, Age 7", but you know, I gave Bil Keane the benefit of the doubt. "Maybe I didn't remember Billy's age right," I thought, but I was sure that Billy was my age, and now he was a year behind. Two years behind.

And then, when I hit ten, it hit me: Billy didn't exist. He was a complete corporate shill, designed by committee - as phony as Aunt Jemima or Mavis Beacon. Bil Keane probably had a real son named Billy who looked at the papers longingly each day, thinking, "If only I could draw!" Billy is middle-aged now, pudgy; he's never had a girlfriend, because he's always hoped that one day his father would give him a shot at drawing, and nobody listens to him when he tries to tell them how his dad doesn't actually let him draw.

Oh, Billy, age 37 tries to grab a pen once in awhile - but whenever he goes for it, his dad bashes him over the head with a fireplace poker, screaming, "It's my strip, you little whelp! You won't get your grimy mitts on it for as long as I live! You have no talent! Could you think up the ghosts? The clever puns I make? The adorable Mom and the boo-boo-kissing? This is my empire! My triumph! My striiiiiiipppppp!!!!"

And when, when the cops show up at the door and see the bloodied, beaten middle-aged son and Bil Keane standing there clutching a blood-smeared poker in his hands, Bil Keane just smiles a feral grin and says, "Who did it? NOT ME!"

The cops would leave him alone, of course. Who could arrest the creator of Family Circus?

Or maybe - just maybe - there is a Billy, Age 7. Bil Keane, that Gestapo-like bastard, had a single son. Every morning, he douses him a dunk tank of placenta, HGH, and amniotic fluid, desperately trying to regress him so that Billy, Age 7, will always be Billy, Age 7.

Billy's skin is translucent, like an embryo's. His eyes are too big for his head. His fingers have webs between them, and he tries real hard to think but every morning his dad injects a carefully-concocted bouilliabaise of drugs into his carotid artery that systematically shuts down his higher brain functions so that he has the mentality of a seven-year-old.

"You must be Billy, Age 7," Bil Keane croons, stroking his face. "You will always be... My precious."

"Amuh," Billy, Age 7 going on eternity mumbles, a toothless grin on his shining, sloppy face. "Buh." Billy, Age 7 drools on the chain that keeps him tethered to his tank as he eats another heaping spoonful of stem cells, knowing at the back of his brain that something is wrong, but he can't seem to get the words together.

"Draw for me, Billy," Bil Keane hisses. "Draw."

Whining, afraid of some unknowable fear that he cannot name, Billy, Age 7 - always Age 7 - picks up the pen.