a fable

Stabbing another cigarette out in an ashtray already overflowing with them and it’s cold outside, cold in here too because of the external or in spite of the internal (the heater is on, powerful) just like I was when I was in school, being something because it was what everyone else was, or doing it to destroy what I had inside me, on any given day I was never really sure which.

Fiction is the world in which what is true and what is constructed can co-exist.

I let out a small cry, barely enough to make it audible to myself, certainly not enough to elicit any form of response from whoever or whatever it is, out there, in the shadows.

Perhaps I should have turned on a light. That would have been the logical thing to do. But I didn’t, couldn’t, because then I would expose whatever was lurking, and I did not want to see it. Enough to know it was there, to imagine it, the intermittent growls, the sound of something shifting against a wall, a creak, a crack, a dripping tap behind it which I wanted to turn of but couldn’t, didn’t dare to, because that would mean passing it. No way. That bad taste you have in your mouth in the morning, when you first wake up? (a pause) That’s it.

Another cigarette, another choking expanse of smoke in the air in this room, eyes watering and I wanted to move, to get out of this room, but I could not, deep down probably didn’t want to, preferring the terror in here to the horror out there. Art? The other day I stepped in some of it. The headline? ‘BUNCH OF PEOPLE GET NAKED AND DANCE AROUND WHILE ANOTHER NAKED GUY CLIMBS A TREE AND SPLASHES BLOOD ON THEM’. Not what it said exactly but that was the basics. Meanwhile a student in a class paints a perfect portrait and is told it is too ordinary. “Why don’t you move his eyes around, so they’re not in line with each other? Why can’t he have a cock growing out of his ear, and his tongue could be hanging out of his mouth, and it could be a road, and cars could be going up and down it. Yeah baby yeah.”

Again that growl, followed by a series of clicks, like mandibles moving against one another, and then a sound like locusts in the air, heavy and buzzing. A filter of light spiraling down into pretty much nothing.

Outside, it began to rain. Why not? It seemed apt in a way I didn’t really know, and I wanted to wanted to wanted to reach over and open the window, let some of that scent in, perhaps push out some of the stifling odour, but of course I couldn’t, I was incapable of that. If it were as simple as opening a window I would have done it a long time ago. Strange how some of the biggest problems have some of the most simplistic solutions. Perhaps something will inspire me? Certainly not the beast in the corner, hideous creature. Yes, I was sure by now that it was a beast and not a man, although man-made, perhaps, but not a man. It was there when I was born and it will remain there long after I am gone, perhaps assuming a different form, but it’s essence remaining constant. It growled again, actually more of a moan, and I felt it’s hot breath pushing it’s way across the room to me, how I loathed it, hated it, despised it, but still feared it and even more peculiar, still nurtured it, which was the advantage that it had. It wasn’t so much the creature that I feared, more it’s nature, how it lurched from theme to theme, unpredictable, tone to tone. At first I lived with that, simply accepted it, but now I saw that that was the power it had, lulling me into an unknowing, uncaring state, desensitising me. I came inside, locked myself up to escape from the real world, but there it was, every night, realler than real, so real it was true, indisputable, unmistakable. Was that what I feared most, that there was no escaping reality? A report I read, somewhere, some article, I forget most of it, but the gist, the core was about virtual reality, a reality that could be conformed to your needs, your whims, and how it could be addictive, dangerous, the Great New Threat, but there is no such thing. A computer is not dangerous, nor is a book, a record, but every one of them has at one stage been the devil, Satan himself in a handy pocket-sized bundle of convenience. Reality?

I gave the beast the chance, and I could not handle it, could not accept it. My fear was my own fault and not the fault of the beast, not the fault of what the beast showed me, what it told to me. It was only the messenger, not the message. In that regard it was braver than I, that it had the fortitude to show these images, to project these truths, to display the reality we tried to escape by watching it. Yet I remain here, cowering in this corner, afraid, terrified of looking at that reality, ashamed of belonging to this world, disgusted at it’s horrors and yet participating in and, in a small way, encouraging them.

The remote was wrapped in my hand. The beast, in it’s bottom right-hand corner, grinned at me, a tangled glowing red mesh of teeth that said “Stand By”.

I stood by, hoping things would change.