I have been pacing the ground nervously, continuously back and forth, back and forth as I survey my domain.
Time is passing very slowly—tick, tick, tick in the 100 block of East Hastings, ground zero of the war zone where the battle rages on. All around me, there is rubble. Bodies litter the field in ghastly poses. Others are still moving, crawling back to the line, dragging mangled limbs, blood still dripping.
I am in my last stronghold behind enclosed glass. I'm in the third-floor observation deck, “Onsite” rehabilitation and feeling a little troubled, to say the least.
My face has developed this tick and my cheek now flutters uncontrollably. But this is nothing for a man of my stature and bearing.
As I stare up at the night sky and contemplate the land I must reconquer. I realized that a feeling is getting in the way. Only one because that is all I can muster on such short notice with matters so pressing as they are.
But, it poses a small glitch when hammering out the final details of a master plan from my position of importance and gravity.
The light has long since left the horizon. The beast is out there! It’s time to mobilize!
Yet again feeling pervades my senses like a soft, subtle perfume in the night air.
“What is it? Let me think for a moment!”
“Ah yes, of course.”
It is now that I am remembering the one I will be leaving behind to suffer in my tragic fate. The sensitive way of her brush stroke as she painted her sensual images on the wall of the second-floor regal dining room where I was detoxifying, shaking and shuttering, grovelling before her.
But that was then. This is now and I am stuck with my one feeling. “Is she finished yet? Is she down there now? Can she help me to understand? I have not seen her in weeks and no new images.”
She shone so bright like this beacon of light leading the way out of the private hell I now find myself in, and her name was Wendy? Wendy.
“Where are you Wendy? Dear God, have you finished?”
Your feeling is getting off and already manifesting in a fixation with fondness for men, women, ungrateful children, and especially your wall.
This is something that has thus far been alien to me and it’s on a collision course with my normal brutal self. In fact they are lobbing artillery at each other.
This is madness! I’m pacing with a dazed look now. A strange grin is creeping over my face, and I can’t break away from staring at my reflection in the glass.
The supple moonlight is cascading down upon my countenance, reflecting off the window pane and softly caressing your images. I can hear them beckoning.
“I hear noises down there. Little scuffling noises. I’m coming down.”
My hand is gently pressing my lips to suppress a fiendish laugh and I’m beaming at an alternate strategy. I swing my heavy cannon around and hasten forward to this new line of advance.
Slowly, evenly at first: past the officer’s club, flashing myself down the hallway of the enlisted men’s quarters; pushing and pulling my cannon; my breathing becoming laboured until I reach a guard sentry post.
The door is open and I see him sitting in his chair apparently preoccupied with mundane matters so I disband my cannon and slither past, ever so quietly.
I open the top door leading to the stairway and check my cannon again. I begin pushing and pulling it forward, lugging it awkwardly down the stairs until I come to another door. I peep nervously through the little window, breathing heavily once more.
Check cannon. Crouch down. Open door silently.
There is another sentry straight ahead behind glass staring intently at a computer. I see that he has a full smile on his face. Maybe he is checking images down there too. Although my cannon is scraping over the ground, I manage to stay low enough that he can’t see or hear me and I slither past. I enter the dining area and there they are looking all sheepish. I try to talk to them at first but talk is cheap and they don’t tell me the things I want to hear.
I line them up and say, “Oh no, don’t be this way."
I start to tickle and try to cuddle them into my way of thinking but it’s of little use. They must be flogged. So, I take out my flogging stick and begin to flog them repeatedly.
And when they are crying out, writhing on the floor, begging forgiveness, I know I have won.
They humbly concede defeat and begin to dance about me slowly at first, then faster and faster.
Then they turn, taking my flogging stick and begin to flog me until I’m flailing on the floor.
It is in this moment that I rise.
Sheldon participates in Megaphone's creative writing workshop at Onsite.
Sign in with