OK, I’ll tell you what I remember:

I started interning for Alex Jones’ InfoWars last fall. Don’t judge me—there aren’t a lot of options for media internships in Texas. I needed to get some experience in media but still be able to live with my parents to save money—they live in Bluff Springs, just outside Austin. I don’t believe in the majority of stuff InfoWars cranks out—95% of it is just a goof, you know? Alex Jones had been local color ever since I could remember, showing up at state fairs with his bullhorn, yelling about Project HAARP manipulating the weather or fluoride making people stupid or whatever. He never bothered me. To me, Alex Jones has always been like your off-the-wall uncle ranting about the government at Thanksgiving dinner, and then going outside afterwards to show the kids how to use his old hunting rifle to pick off soda cans on the fence. Wacky but harmless.

I have to admit I hadn’t been following his shows for a while at the point I applied for an internship—I was busy with college, and Bilderberg conspiracy theory didn’t exactly come up in my Journalism 101 class. So I was shocked when I landed the internship—the internship supervisor Chuck, who was wearing a RON PAUL SHITS FREEDOM T-shirt when he interviewed me, admitted the InfoWars staff was a “total sausage fest” but adding a “chick” might help even things out a bit.

I soon realized what I had gotten myself into. In addition to our regular work, we were expected to hang out at all hours at the studio, socializing. By socializing, I mean drinking, smoking weed in the woods outside, and showing off our gun collections. I didn’t own any guns and was afraid of getting too inebriated in front of my coworkers, so I mostly sipped a beer and smiled while Brian or Hank would show me their latest acquisition, bragging about how this particular rifle was going to come in handy when FEMA agents started rounding up citizens into camps “any day now.”

But you don’t want to hear about the minutiae of my internship, you want me to talk about Alex Jones. OK, on my first day on the job, Chuck introduced me to Alex just before our all-staff meeting. Alex had a firm, hammy handshake. He was happy I was on board, and in his infamous froggy drawl, said he hoped I could add a “feminine touch” to the workplace. I had no idea what that meant.

Alex insisted I sit next to him at the meeting so I could be “onboarded faster,” and told me to type up some notes of our meeting. Mostly the meeting was staffers yelling out different conspiracy theories that they found on Reddit, or had been sent in by fans with AOL email addresses. Alex listened, nodding encouragement, sometimes smacking the table and pointing at a staffer, “That’s a good one, perfect, let’s go with it.” Alex also spent about twenty minutes trash-talking Glenn Beck for being a CIA plant and bedwetter.

When the meeting was over, Alex got up and stood over me to look over my laptop notes. I cringed, because frankly they were a mess—people were talking so fast, I was only able to jot down the scantest bullet points. I had entries like “The Clintons + OJ Simpson + Kardashian murder connection” and “is quinoa a communist plot”? Alex Jones seemed pleased though, grunting, “This is great, great, good stuff.” Then gave my shoulders a long, hard squeeze, before walking out to prepare for his next broadcast.

I hadn’t known what to do. The shoulder squeeze seemed innocent enough—it wasn’t exactly sexual harassment, there had been other people around, and they didn’t act as if anything was out of the ordinary. I told myself that he was a red-blooded Texan who was just a little too handsy with women, but no harm meant.

Still, I tried to keep my head down. Even though we had a casual dress code, I usually wore pantsuits—I couldn’t think of an outfit less sexually enticing to Alex Jones or my coworkers. I chose the most tedious, thankless work whenever possible: logging video clips, editing typos on the website, updating the pill supplement sales reports. I avoided work that would give me a byline. I was pressured by Chuck to do more “on-camera” reporting, which I suspect was at Alex Jones’ urging. I told Chuck I was camera-shy and insisted on doing my behind-the-scenes-work, but really I didn’t want to be forever associated with InfoWars. I could always leave InfoWars off my resume, but I couldn’t remove my face from their YouTube clips.

My plan was to complete my internship with a minimum of fuss and then quickly pivot to a more legitimate media job. Plenty of former interns had been able to use their experience at InfoWars to get a job at one of the local papers or TV stations, who saw Alex Jones as a “local boy made good” rather than a dangerous asshole. I hoped to do the same.

That was before Sandy Hook.

Alex had cut his teeth on the 9/11 Truther conspiracy bullshit—it was primo content. But when he said the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, that none of those schoolchildren really died, when his fans started threatening and stalking these parents mourning the deaths of their children—well, as my grandpa used to say, Alex done fucked with the wrong one. The Sandy Hook parents sued Alex for defamation. His ratings dropped. In the middle of this, his messy divorce proceedings went public—his own attorney said Alex was a “performance artist,” which hemorrhaged him even more fans.

As you know, social media companies began shutting down InfoWars accounts. Credit card processing companies stopped working with him. While he had no advertisers to be threatened because Alex exclusively hawked his own line of survivalist merch and big dick energy pills, his empire was crumbling. Staffers were quitting left and right. Even my internship supervisor Chuck left to manage his older brother’s vape shop “We Have the Vapors” (“My bro thinks we got major franchising opportunities, if you want in,” Chuck told me as he was stealing Post-Its out of the supply closet.)

Earlier this week, I decided I needed to end my internship. I had more than a month left to go, but I had convinced Chuck to sign off on my paperwork if I promised not to tell Alex about the time Chuck threw up Jack Daniels and tacos directly into Alex’s desk drawer and didn’t clean it up.

So this morning I sent an email that I wanted to talk and the matter was time-sensitive—no reply. I called his phone—no answer. I knocked on Alex’s office door every hour or so—no response. I knew he was in the office (I had seen him come in, disheveled and stone-faced), but his refusal to see me was starting to piss me off. I considered emailing him my resignation letter, but some of what I needed to say I did not want captured forever in an email.

At about 6:30 PM, I banged on his door. I heard shuffling inside, then the door cracked open. Alex Jones regarded me, his eyes bloodshot, his hand death-gripping the doorknob as he swayed a little unsteadily in the doorframe. In his other hand he held a beer bottle.

“Come in, come in,” he growled at me, stepping aside enough to let me though.

I hurried over to the spare chair in the room and threw myself down—I was desperate to get this over with.

“So, tell me what’s going on, what do you want to talk about,” Alex slurred as he shuffled back to his desk.

“I—it’s time for me to wrap up my internship,” I told him.

“So you’re leaving me, huh? Everybody is leaving poor old Alex Jones,” he sighed, leaning on his desk for support. He let go of his beer bottle, letting it shatter on the floor.

“Well, I’m moving soon, so I thought it was best to let you know,” I said.

This was a lie, but I didn’t have a job lined up in Austin yet, so I figured it might become a not-lie in time.

Alex put both his palms on the desk, let his head fall to his chest, and let out a low groan. Then he lurched to the nearest wall and punched it twice (BAM, BAM) and shook the flecks of drywall off his hand.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Alex mumbled, and staggered over to me.

“You’re a good kid, ‘ya know that?” Alex said, as he grabbed hold of the arm of my chair.

He slumped over me, his sweaty chest digging into my shoulder. He stank of sour ale and wet pennies—l think metallic smell was his energy pills. I couldn’t tell if he was coming onto me or had just lost his balance. He started stroking the sleeve of my shirt.

“It’s so soft—so soft…” he whispered, apparently in some kind of trance over my Gap T-shirt.

I elbowed my way out of the chair and let Alex faceplant into the seat. I turned to face him, my hands on my hips, and gave him my best disappointed schoolmarm face.

“How dare you, Alex Jones? How dare you act this unprofessionally! You are a drunk, sloppy mess! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

Alex slid to the floor, his face twisted in sad, clownish grimace. He nodded, looking on the verge of tears.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? What happened to you? You used to be the fun kooky conspiracy theorist, trust no one, yada yada—now you’re the GOP’s bitch! You never believed that puppet master George Soros crap, now you’re screaming about it all day! And child sex rituals in pizza joints run by the Democrats, are you shitting me? You’re a sellout, a hack! And the worst is you are hurting people, setting off your crazy fans to kill people! And for what—for fame, for money, to curry favor with the scum of the Earth? So you can get gilded invitations to Bohemian Grove instead of storming the gates? You have become everything you despised. I hope you’re happy.”

“I—just—wanted—people—to—respect—me!” Alex sobbed, pounding his fists against his skull.

I grabbed his wrists and held them away from his face. I stared at him until he finally looked me in the eye.

“Tell me—what happened,” I said.

He broke away from me and rolled to the floor, wheezing and crying. He was so red-faced, for a moment I wondered if he was about to have a heart attack.

“I had to do it, I had to do it. You don’t understand, this life is like the mob—I had to choose a side, I needed the protection. But I fucked up, they won’t protect me anymore, I’m finished,” he choked out the words like they were rocks in his throat.

“What are you talking about Alex? Who was protecting you, from what?” I shouted in his face, shaking him by his shirt collar.

“It’s… too late. I’m sorry, honey,” he coughed out.

Just then, the office door shattered open. I saw the cheap door splintered and hanging off its hinges, and a gang of men in full riot gear and machine guns stood inside the office.

Without uttering a word, two of the men stepped forward, holding huge black bags. Alex let out one long howl until one of the men clocked him with the butt of his rifle. The men shoved the bags over our heads. I have terrible claustrophobia, so I hyperventilated and passed out within moments. I have vague recollections of being carried into and transported in a vehicle, but my memories are spotty until I arrived here.

There, I’ve told you everything I know. So I ask you, please—am I free to go?