The Audience Is Listening

Seconds to go. I am locked away, set aside. Throat opens, body twists. Face distorts, voice roughens. The tangle man wakes up. He is twelve, seventy, eighty. Sick and lame. Trembling and tight. Blank eyes peruse him. There will be tears, mania and lacerations. There will be trauma, suffering and death. Shall we begin? Spit and panic catapult malignant declarations over open hearts and minds. The targets are welcoming, knowing, bored. Stinging verbal percussion slaps bloody daydreams into existence, leaving mental brandings smoking like cigarette burns. Temples of his stories assemble and collapse from tongue to word as Gods and puppets arise through pages, letters and memory. With a heaving gag he births a scene onto the stage and watches as it bites through its umbilicus and begins to suckle at the congregation’s teat. The milk is thick and spoiled but the narrative reflection is a ragged lesion that will weep for days, maybe even weeks. Their number is too small for hushed, safe exits so they remain trapped and immobilized as putrid projectiles shower them in the malady of his tale. They are beginning to see what isn’t there and to hear what wasn’t said while he screams, giggles and grunts through his stained euphoria. I don’t want it, I don’t like it, I can’t take it, it’s too much, it’s not enough, it makes me sick, it’s too dark, It’s too wordy, it’s not funny. Are you all right? Are you all right? What’s wrong with you? At last he is tightly swathed in the translucent skin of their propriety. He can now anchor his tale and draw nutrients from their discomfort. His parasitic imaginings have found a host and his triumph is now germinating in his own humiliation. It’s not fair; all we wanted was a nice night out. What’s so wrong with that?