Trigger Warning: The content may not be suitable for children or those with a fragile psyche
Your Existence Disturbs The Peace
Pablo, stop yawning.
Yes, General.
Let's get started.
What's your question?
I ask the questions.
That's what I said.
Have you been reading?
Not anymore, General.
You used to.
I did.
That's a crime.
There's not much I can do about that.
Forget what you've read.
My mind doesn't work like that.
We can make your mind work like that.
I'm sure, General.
You've been charged with disturbing the peace.
I don't talk to anyone. I don't go outside. I order my food by mail.
Your existence disturbs the peace.
I understand, General.
You've been thinking, Pablo?
Yes, General.
Are your thoughts in a straight line?
No, they’re circles, all floating in the air, suspended by strings.
You know that's a crime.
Yes, General.
What have you been thinking, Pablo?
I know about the monkeys you made to fix the labor shortage.
What?
The labor shortage: farmers, factory workers, they've stopped working. They're starving to death. They’re evolving towards extinction.
No, I mean the monkeys.
I misunderstood, General.
Tell me about them.
You made the monkeys very smart, but it didn’t work out. They read Plato. They talked about the inherent good of the human soul. They would not drink water with fluoride in it. They refused to work. You had to get rid of them. You sent trains of them to die in gas chambers.
We would never do that.
Of course not, General. It is a stupid thing to do.
Don't say that it’s stupid, Pablo.
My mistake, General.
Now, I will give you a test.
Yes, General.
Will you pass?
No, General.
Why not?
All answers are incorrect.
Very good, Pablo.
Thank you. General.
When I show you this image, what do you see?
A senseless battle between good and evil.
And this image?
A man being crushed by a boulder.
Those are incorrect.
What are the images of, General?
That’s unimportant.
Of course, General.
We’re putting you on trial, Pablo.
Yes, General.
What's your defense?
None. I am guilty.
Of what?
My being necessitates guilt.
Very good, Pablo.
Thank you, General.
You’re not walking the straight line, Pablo.
No General, I tend to stumble. I've never gotten my glasses fixed.
Why don’t you walk the straight line?
The line is so thin, General. It's invisible to the naked eye. Some say it doesn’t even exist.
Who says this?
Some.
It exists, Pablo.
Yes, General.
END
The Beetle
It is night. It is always night. It is a basement with no windows. It is a large wooden door with a lock made of iron. The wood won't budge in winter. It is swollen with the moisture and it has grown into the concrete and it is a wall. There is a small slot that the food comes through. The food comes through once a day. It comes in on foil trays that are made for sitting in front of televisions, whose boxes have pictures of smiling cartoon animals with human hands written into the cardboard. The food is not real. Each item is a mirage. The peas are not peas. The meat is not meat. It is a shadow.
The floor is cold and damp. It is like one great slab of rock cut out of the side of a mountain. It is wet. I worry that my feet will fall off. I worry about this while I lay down to sleep on the floor. There is a blanket. It is frayed at the edges. It is made of many smaller broken blankets and stitched together. I lay down and think about my feet falling off. I could be thinking about many other things, many worse things. It is good that the floor is damp.
The days are made of chalk. They mark the wall like limbless stick figures. The wall is carved with shallow snaking indents, as if worms burrowed their way across it. There should be a light in the center of the room with a small chain attached to it that is made to be pulled. The bulb should be coated in dust. There should be a few stray moths, circling the dim light, dying of thirst searching for the sun.
The only light comes from the slight cracks between the door and the wall, the tiny dots where the two have not fully merged, like two bickering conjoined twins, desperate for solitude. Sometimes I stick my eye really close to one of those cracks, straining to see what exists beyond the door. The cracks are too small. I see nothing but light. Other times I sit on top of the steps and look at the tiny beams of light as they play across my palm. The steps are very smooth. I imagine that the steps are made from the cut-up corpses of statues: the ones I saw in a museum as a child, headless, arms outstretched, reaching towards the sky, made from marble. It is a very sad thing, to be sitting on the corpses of statues, looking at the tiny dot of light on my hand, like a hole from the world's smallest gun.
There is a beetle in the basement. There is no way in, even for a bug. There are no holes in the wall. The floor is thick. It is a spiritual beetle. It walked straight through the wall like a phantom. I hold the beetle in my hands. I lift it up towards the dot of light. Its two long feelers, strands of thick black hair, are in constant motion, searching. I set aside small bits of food, slivers of makeshift pepperoni so the beetle won’t starve.
When the beetle talks, I have to hold him up to my ear. He speaks in a whisper so quiet my heartbeat threatens to drown it out. This is what he says:
It is I The Beetle
I have seen the sun eat itself into nothing.
I have seen a woman run into a
burning car trying to save her child
Who is already nothing but ashes
And the ashes of the baby
And the ashes of the car
Are mixed together and placed in a
Container
With blue flowers painted or its sides
And placed on a shelf
Next to a book on how to live
A fulfilling life
And the ashes of the baby
And the ashes of the car
Are the same
It is not so bad
Here
There is yourself
And there is
I
The Beetle
Your only friend
And the days mix themselves together. The floor, the walls, the door, the light, the moths, the beetle, me, the statues, and it is all the same.
65 million years after a giant rock left all the rats alone.
END
