Click click click
THUD. Click click click THUD. The monotonous beat beats on. Three taps of
the knuckle, one slam of the skull. Click click click THUD. The patriotic sound
of the insane asylum, the national anthem of the crazy box. Wallow knows this
song all too well. She knows it will continue long after the box has consumed
her, long after it has consumed everything. When every star has been devoured
by supermassive black holes, every quasar of light vacuumed from every galaxy,
all that shall be left is the void – and the everlasting click click click THUD; the national anthem of the crazy box.
Wallow still remembers the days before the box claimed her.
Before it’s surgically dressed minions stole her from the twilight of her father’s
farm, from the smell of pollen and rapeseed, revealing their dirtied souls in
the process which the clinical cloaks withheld. She remembered running through
the forest, feeling the tickle of branches, playing hide and seek with the
invisible forest creatures, inevitably losing (for who can beat an invisible
creature at hide and seek?) yet relishing in the chase nonetheless. She
remembers creating dens underneath the roots of great oaks, how the walls and
the dirt and the creatures made her feel so secure, so strong. It was the same
reason she hid underneath shelly, the victim of a misfired shot of her father,
when he came looking for her. It was the same reason the clinical minions had
to drag her from her mother’s cold arms before she would be taken to the box.
It was the same reason why she was a part of the box, and the box a part of
her.
The box understood her, it relished her company and she
relished its. When they forced her outside, to wander the grounds and watch the
squirrels, hoping nostalgia and oxygen might set her asphyxiated mind straight,
she would sob and screech and scratch herself until she was returned to the
box, its four strong walls. No mountings, no furnishings, nothing but the
confinement of space, the playground of her soul.
But one night they violated her sanctified temple. The
clinical men. One night they had the audacity to interrupt her anthem. Click Click Cli.. Nothing. They dragged
her out from her box. Against the scraping and snapping of nails, the biting,
carnivorous and wild, would not stop them either. Kicking and screaming, Wallow
was taken away, the red of her blood staining the whitewashed walls.
Before she had felt so strong, so secure, yet she knew that
the box giveth, so the box may taketh away. It minions were relentless and
colossal, pinning her into the chair. Screams, chants, curses – nothing
deterred them. Wallow did not stop howling until the needle was lodged between
her eye and into the recesses of her mind, allowing her the sweet release of
lobotomised dreaming.
She can no longer find her way back to the box. The
corridors get longer, the light source dims until she wanders putting faith
that this place would not place something in front of her, it would not hurt her.
Creeping through the endless labyrinth, she drags her nails all the way,
scratching the plaster from the walls, a twisted trail of breadcrumbs.
Wallow was wrong. The box was not her protector but her
captor, her puppet master. Long after the asylum was shut, long after the
streams of young nurses began to move into the box to study the profession of
the clinical minions, bringing with them the innocence of youth, the blessing
of a healthy mind, Wallow continued to wander. Forever searching again for the
safety of her confinement – her playground – leaving nail scratches, much to
the confusion of the nurses, all the way.
Click Click Click THUD.
Eternal and omnipresent, the beat beats on.
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