Ignoring my sinews and drugs for the time being I brush aside the haze and think hard about my deadline. It was weeks past I realize as I look at the cracked black screen of my phone. It lays, silent, at the base of the fireplace crushed by my rejection of its needy tendrils. These cell phones worm their way into our lives. They desperately seek and need our attention. They crave the warm caress of our hands, our fingers softly rubbing, poking, squeezing it’s dead face. It yearns for our gaze. “Just one more moment,” it whispers lovingly into our ear. There is no love. It is empty loveless lust. It desires our want but not us. It requires our attention but not our spirit.
From a distance and with great trepidation I reanimate this
monster. I hope it will remain
slumbering but the great electronic beast begins to reawaken. I will be caught back by this succubus of
time. Alerts and messages flash
angrily. This was a mistake. I walk away from the thing. Consider picking it up again to throw it at
the wall and try to hit the same spot as last time. Do a better job of slaying the dragon. For now I will settle for ignoring the
thing. I will share the space like a
divorced couple forced to quarantine together.
This is our foul year of the lord two thousand twenty. I think it is the year I claw myself to bits and let the very last remnants of my sanity leak out. Perhaps, I muse, it would be a pleasant conversion turning into one of ‘them’. I will wear ill fitting khaki pants and get a job doing nothing of societal importance sitting in a some god forsaken cubicle. I will decorate this cubicle with what passes for acceptable corporate humor. I will gorge myself on cheap coffee and pretend to like the things my department leader likes. I will be unaware as my soul lives my body and continue emailing the same five people. Nothing will get done but I will be paid enough to look down my nose at others. I will have seven pairs of the same awful shoes.
I pry myself from the fever dream and stop the shaking. I drop the glass of water I find in my hands. How did this get here? I expertly segment a cantaloupe with my bowie knife and ingest it greedily. There is a hamburger nearby so I devour this next and wipe the grease onto my pants. I claw at my throat. I need fresh air. I take my mask, the damnable thing, and place it on. Fiercely resisting the primal urge to throw it in the fireplace near the other thing I stand resolute in my ‘duty’. It glows again, the thing, it’s white hot anger summoned by my gaze. Stroke me. Look at me. “Damnable witchcraft,” I shout. The door slams. I am outside. It is quiet. The straps of the burn my ears but I ignore it. I can breathe for the moment.
The fuck am I doing?
I was told it was important to breathe through your mouth while wearing these masks. My glasses begin to fog up immediately. I spend the next several minutes trying to find the secret combination where I can rest my mask on my face without the strain inducing a migraine and where my glasses can rest low enough on my nose to hold the mask in place and still give adequate visual correction without danger of falling off. I think, perhaps, I will unlock the mysteries of the Mayans first. I find an unhappy median with the mask and resume my walk resigned, at this point, to fogged glasses. Periodically I remove them angrily and place them about my neck. I wander half blind. I think there is beauty in this. A wonderful ignorance. I think this must be what those venal pigs feel. Those savage knuckle draggers protesting their freedom. I feel the bile rising at the mention of freedom. Mention, did I say it loud? Am I talking or thinking? Freedom, the true kind, is a foreign concept. Freedom has been replaced. The corporate approved flag clutching freedom is myopic and exclusive. It belongs only to those of the ill fitting khakis and bad haircuts. I will never be among those people. I’ve tried but some intrinsic piece of me wriggles free and bites at the back of my brain. It claws at my eyes. I can never belong to that crowd. I do not hate in the same way they hate. My anger spreads virulently in every direction. Surging inward and outward. I feel disgust with myself openly and often this is a cardinal sin for them. One must never criticize themselves. One must never criticize the group. One must submit and make others fall in line.
The neighbors are staring at me. I speed up my walk and do not wave. A dog walks by and I look at the gentle beast. I feel like that thing laying half dormant besides my fireplace. Pay attention to me beast I implore him with my eyes. Give me your love. It saunters by led by a pair of black leggings and an ostentatious spring jacket. Her mask is pulled so low as to be useless. Words like wreath and manager must be common in her vocabulary. I place my glasses on and they fog immediately. I swear loudly. I do not look to see if I have offended the owner of the black legging. I definitely do not look to see if I have upset the beast with her. I could not handle its derision.
I turn the corner and begin trudging up the hill. I have, in times of delusion, run up this monstrous stretch of land. In weak moments where I have foolishly attempted to harness the power within my own body I would bid my legs to shuffle quickly, to ignore the quickened pace of breath and the agony that would inevitably develop in my side. I am hopeful that madness will not take hold again. It is unpleasant enough to breathe through the cloth mask in clear days with little exertion. Breathing through my mask while sweating and cursing and dealing with an insubordinate mass of flailing limbs seems outright insanity. But, this is a time of great mental instability. It is fruitful and profitable to be overcome with this malady. Perhaps, I can cast aside such gentle conditions as empathy and critical thought and embrace the warmth of true capitalism. I can crush my enemies and make wage slaves of the masses. I can cultivate an image of goodness and charity while flouting the rule of law and the trust of man that keeps the fabric of society intact. The threads are pulling but most of us simply close our eyes, ignoring the gaping holes. Yes, I would be a kind overlord. I would grant a true lunchbreak and not extend the workday to cover that time. Yes, I would provide a matching 401k but not too generous of one. I would be a member of decent society at this point as a job creator so it would not do to give away too much lest I be thought of as a communist, or worse, weak. Yes, I would bust unions and promote executives who have a needless thirst for power and money. How they would strive for KPI’s over the development of their direct reports. Men and woman in smart attire who casually needle each other looking for weakness readying themselves to devour the competition. They would be my people. I would rule over this empire of misery and go yachting during the summer. The groan of a package delivery truck awakens me from that seduction reverie. I am relieved to be away from that momentary depravity. I fell dirty beneath my skin in ways I cannot express adequately.
I find myself back to the house and its modicum of safety. It is a prison of sorts but it is my prison. I ignore the thing near the fireplace. I turn on the television and leave it on an input connected to an unpowered device. The screen is alive but nothing resonates. It is not noise but it is not the maniacal bursts of depravity from television antics. It is not the abject of terror watching the news. News is just poorly written horror. The monster will inevitably appear like some jump scare were are used to but never used to. Our insatiable curiosity summoned this aberration. It is the fault of all of us. We had the power to look away but we chose to give it power by watching. We knew it was pure ugliness but we didn’t care. Either the talking heads who above the trawling chyron will mention the monster and the inference will be unpleasant or, worse still, his awful visage will appear in all its flesh like aberrance. This pitiless rough and slouching beast who threatens to swallow Bethlehem with his rambling incoherent words dribbling out like hate vomit cannot be allowed take residence among my mind. It is crowded enough as it is and I need no more anger. Perhaps once again I am juxtaposing. Rearranging the features of terror into something more and something else. Like a name too terrible to say so letters are misarranged intentionally. So the meaning is known but the true name is not spoke so the thing will not be summoned. This monster is simply a man. It is the grade school project scrapbook of all our worst traits. Sewn together and made real.
I blink away those thoughts and I stare at the computer. Perhaps I will write for a moment. Capture the demons that haunt me and pin them to the page. Slay them for the moment. When they are unwritten and not yet real they have power over me. They cannot be banished. Bringing them to life, to the light, they can be seen. Demons, like monsters, distrust the light. They seek comfort in the liminal space and those who cannot hide in the comfort of darkness sow discord. They speak from both sides of their mouth at the same time. If we cannot trust reality who is to say what is real. They are clever is a feral way. So I will write the truth. This writhing mass of emotion that I call my body and mind and spirit will shine some light on this moment of desperation.
Then I find the bottle of Jack Daniels I did not know I still had. Perhaps the monster can wait a bit longer. I turn the phone over so its glow faces downwards. I want no further illumination in these moments of shame. The medicinal comfort is needed first. Then perhaps I can contemplate my deadline.
I drink deeply. Like lost lovers reunited there is no hint of seduction or tenderness just unabated lust and lechery. I stare at the screen of my laptop before my vision begins to wobble. I begin to type: This is no time for sobriety.
~ Duke
