The Cooperation of Terror
The transmission has completely died. I am not talking about some barely audible voice that tries to assert itself above a blizzard of static. There is nothing on the others side. Whatever fragment of affability you felt from me was a rouse. I was purchasing the necessary time it takes to be rescued from off this game board. It was a small burden to suffer the stories of your budding romances, cursed sports franchises, and workplace grudges. There is a lightness of being that occurs when you can imagine the touch of a cherished endpoint for so long it becomes an energy syphon. Drudgery apologies to your joints and placates your disquieted mood with pleasant coincidence. The future loans generously without interest. One can even pinpoint mild delight in shifting sands that give way to your anticipated paradise. This was all before the voice of the narrator vanished. Whatever trace remained of the speaker was substituted by a chill of hurtful certainty. Now I have to step over these half slumbering lions thank you very much. They are going to eat me. I know it. Their eyes are not fully closed, and I can see the deceit through their murderous slits. If this predicament were not bad enough, the admonition of my dead mother rings in my head as one part dire and another part absurd. She tells me to communicate with the water in dream no less. And just like that the loins are no where to be seen. Yet I can feel them tracking me from a distance that is purely voyeuristic . Something is preventing their claws from blood. I am no boy scout, but I have to undo these knots before gracious slack turns into merciless amputation. My left wrist is bound to a stead of accumulating expense. The right is fastened to a filly of meaningless labor. My left ankle is drawn by a mare of spiritual recompense. The right is pulled by a colt of unforgiving time that reverses for none. For the moment all four gallop in locked step behind me content to acknowledge my lead. However, they will child against against each other soon enough and I will be quartered so that the lions do not have to work as hard. When did my existence become a morbid spectacle for onlookers to place advertisement space? Is the theater of my ruin so anemic that it must be monetized to redeem the value of it? Should my horses flee opposite each other, or my lions shake off whatever jitters that keep them from taring into my flesh, tell my story. Do not dare make me a cautionary tale. I would rather become a myth to comfort wandering pilgrims that have sacrificed destiny to escape the jaws of lions. None of this is real and yet none of it can be denied.
