Monster #3

Monster #3- A Message From Inside a Collapsing Mind

         "Someone has to be there to throw out a foot before the last door slams shut--it may never open again. There are no structures more imprisoning than those built out of the walls within our own minds."

Shaggy little monster, thick white fur, long black claws, big blue eyes. He sits on the corner by himself, a morose Muppet-reject. He tapped his dances and plucked his strings and plinked his keys with a grin and a sashay for passer-by. Some smiled, some scoffed. All forgot him as soon as their eyes slid past. No one is left out this evening. He sighs and smokes and counts the change. Not enough. Never even close. A cheap drink, another night under a piece of something solid. Nothing more.

Dizzy, awestruck mammal, turning circles, bathed in sunlight. Lost in a grove of aspens, pawing at the air, trying to test its verisimilitude. Dazzled by color and peace and silence and beauty, he stumbles every so often but can’t spare a glance to watch his feet. He tries to look everywhere at once and can’t remember to close his mouth. Yellow leaves part for golden grass waving like the peaceful oceans in narcotic dreams and children’s stories. Insects hum, the wind sighs, wildflowers blossom all around.

Giddy little hairball, he sees her. A little girl with copper braids and a sassy manner and a voice decorated with the tinkling silver gild of laughter. Lost like him, and equally unconcerned, she is dashing—delighted—through the fields. She tumbles down the hillside toward him, her entire being alighted in celebration, a brilliant comet of unthinking love and promised adventure hurtling forward to bury itself in the warm down of his furry arms. Seas could not swell to drown the friendship that holds hands and shares stupid secrets and goes exploring to mysterious and colorful worlds on a lopsided junk-machine time-sailing vessel of its own devising.

Clumsy awkward oaf, he mangles each flower he tries to pick up. Each time his claws crush another of the delicate blossoms, he jumps in surprise. She used to giggle when he did that, and then he’d manage a chuckle. Then they’d watch the sunset and he would take comfort that those radiant displays were beyond the ruin of all the minor disasters that trailed in his wake. But then it all disappeared in a belch of smoke, a screech of metal, and the hollow finality of a tiny, humming dial-tone.

Cowering, bewildered beast, twitching in panic, unable to know where to run next. The hum, the HUM! That BUZZING. Wires and motors and panels and screens. Networks, synergies, solutions sold in stock by manic, soulless smiles above neckties. Offers and deals and threats and schemes. Rhymes that go nowhere. Principles and beliefs that make no sense. Messages, messages, messages everywhere—clamoring for attention and calling out promises. A crowd, a mob, a gauntlet, a cacophony, a NIGHTMARE! They persist, they follow, they chase, they morph together into a thundering demonic voice, buzzing like a thousand flies on a thousand rotting hands, reaching out and falling short of salvation in a thousand terrible eternities. A mindless, electronic screech made up of a billion tiny relays blinking furiously to accomplish nothing but the howl: FEED, FEED—YOU WORTHLESS SHIT—FEEEEED!!!

Scattered, tortured mind, lies motionless, clamped down by certainty; there is no point going on. Only one tiny voice, at the last, flickering, warm little center of the bunker, speaks out: So the world isn’t what you thought, or what you hoped, or what you were led to believe. So what? Look around you at all these people, all these animals, all these laws and forces and phenomena—all of them just finding their function and filling it out as best they can. You were given every chance, every nudge, every boost, every advantage. You threw it all away for a buzz and then crawled back into your hole to feel sorry for yourself. Buck up. Shake it off. Fuckin’ grow a pair.

    

     Scrawny little creature, mangy, matted hair, wet, weepy eyes, he sits muttering to himself in disparate voices. He argues in hisses and cackles at jokes no one else hears… He lashes out and thrashes, moaning and screaming and beating his fists. He bellows at the walls and flails at the unfeeling stone, shouting at the mocking, empty circle of light high above. Tears soak his tangles as his throat scrapes dry, damning to hell the tunnels and the chains and the rust and the shit. He berates himself with pitiful hacking hatreds, cursing his blood and his bones and his busted heart and his clumsy, careless claws. Then he slumps against the wall, curls up and weeps quietly, with the softness of well-practiced mourning.

Sleep will come soon, laying a gentle hand on his fevered head. Perhaps he will be carried off to rest for a time in the gentle arms he got so lost seeking. Perhaps when he wakes the trap will look different—the smells not so damp, the light not so hopeless. Perhaps things will make a certain degree of sense again, another way forward to another dead end will entertain him for a while. Perhaps there is even a way out. No matter how gaunt and twisted he becomes, that little hope never quite seems to be choked off. Perhaps that is simply the final, genius stroke of the torture. Perhaps not.