The Beast

There's only so much you can do before the beast eats you alive; push it away, cover it with a blanket, and lock it in a dark cell. Its growling penetrates its prison, and you can hear it as if it were in the same room as you. You put headphones on and make your eardrums bleed. You shovel food into your mouth and drown everything out. You let sunlight in, and you move farther away from the noise, but the beast is scratching now. You press the music into your ears as everything collapses. The floor beneath your feet rumbles and you feel the biting cold of winter's wind in your bones. Your jaw aches from tension, and you say, “Everything is fine.” When the beast breaks free, time moves quickly. There is destruction in your path; bruised knuckles, bleeding wounds. You scramble to clean the blood from your arms and you think— you wonder— if it could have been avoided. How to better contain the beast? But the beast is restless. It prepares for when the storm finally comes. The rain signals its approach, but soon, there is thunder, and eventually, lightning. And the beast is hungry for pain. For utter ruin. It has no peace, and it searches for meaning. The beast licks its wounds before it goes into hibernation, and you are left to sit in the quiet as everything goes black. Nothing exists but time and you, and there, time isn't linear. It is long ago and yesterday and today all at once. If you close your eyes, you can feel the sun on your face. You can feel your body grow younger. You hug yourself and pull the wool over your eyes, and you think, “Life is good here.” “Here, I'll never have to leave.” “I was never meant to leave.”

©2022 Shane Blackheart