It was winter with that sweet smoke from the wood burning stove he stoked. He worked the iron with his small arm, and turned the coals, nesting a spot for the next log inside. And he watched the fire like a sparkle of fuse as pockets of sap went off until the fracture of coals with a pop and puff of ash. It was a false danger, and he chuckled the fear away as if understanding the trick, but when he inhaled, he detected beyond the terpene sweetness an acrid burn of an ester smoke coming from behind; it rose like a white ribbon curling from the floor as the hot coal sank, welding the fibers, until all that was left was a black button to match the others.
His first reaction was to check for his father, to ensure he was alone before flicking the coal from the burn-polished floor. Still, the button sheened; the crater a flat scab in the crisp piling. He picked at the edges, then ground his heal to rough the mark indistinguishable from the others. And he looked at his work: the scab split with tufts worn down and frayed. It stood out, but was only conspicuous to himself. Then relief as he was convinced the details of difference weren’t at all that stark until turning to see his father filling the room.
There was no escape. So he faced his old man square with body lax as he prepared.
First, an open hand that turned his head on end and body off balance as he rolled into the floor. It was the shock of a thousand bee stings into his cheek that hurt at first, then the pointed kick to his leg that knotted the muscle. But beyond was merely sensation as his balled up body rocked like a buoy against the wailing fists pounding his back; a preferable spot girded with rib-bones and muscle. And he held his breath to keep solid as a shield against each punch a release until the old man wore himself out.
But he didn’t stop.
Those wild arms bashed as he contorted himself smaller with each strike met by rigid flexion. Fore-arms up and over his head, and shoulders clenched to the ears, and elbows shut tight and tighter with knees to his chest and shell-side up. Then it happened, as it does, when there is no other retreat — when pressed to the keyhole and through, and somehow safe on the other side as the pummel continued.
He was the audience: a spectator divided and observing the first of five acts. Though he knew what to expect from the playbill outside: the poster stuck like a leach to a brick wall graffitied with paint and piss. Then the abstract print: a haunting visage like a patient virus. And he paid his money and sat with chattery patrons in the full house save an empty box-seat on the mezzanine until the front curtain opened like a grand gesture to silence the crowd. But it wasn’t the curtain that stole the sound; it was the image on stage that choked out the air.
Some laughed — a quick burst from the throat — to ease the constriction and move the scene to end while others froze with jaws hung to the hollowing of their eyes. Others winced deep into their cheeks or averted themselves to filter the stage through the vague periphery. Still others viewed through their fingers like clamp traps over their faces after shrinking into their seats.
Some hungered for air through opened throats or pursed lips to stomach what overly filled them, while others held their breath as if submerged and not wanting to drown in the playwright’s awfulness. And still others where atrocity implores rationale to invent meaning, to add purpose and reason — to confine the abyss — only to discover merely being is defiled beyond redemption that such a thing exists. And the devil wants no part of it.
I am me 