I am a leper. Many call me monster, others call me beast. The lore of the town is that I have killed ten boars in a Fortnite. The truth is that I am lonely and scared; huddled behind my sea of books in the darkness. I love to hate, and hate to love. Through my extermination I will be significantly happier. I am big, but the voices in my head say I am small. I spend my nights carving a piece of sunlight as the dystopian mist blankets me. Through my hope I find uncertainty; merging where Marx and Rousseau reside. Through my hell on earth I have developed the instincts of a lone bear; in the crux of a dark night. Through this fear I find dystopia; a soldier of peace in the throes of battle.
One night, as a shaft of moon clinches the lesions on my skin, I am taken aback my a young teenage girl. I lure her on, calling her to dip into the opening where I reside. She gathers her bearings and exits, her fear waning like a moon. Through this night I learn the crux of my existence; tainted only by the speckled sunlight of the valley. Through this I learn the night is where I reside; the day is too small for me. I lurch forward as she leaves, finding hope where there is none. I submerge myself in a delicate stream, laying face first. Her freckled skin was beautiful, her sallow scars resplendent. She is everything I wish to be; the lean night triumphant as I gain my bearings. Through her I find hope- the night seeming to take a part of my hidden beast. I leave my camp, heading south of a trail to town. Children are asleep, the monster inside of me wanting to carve into them. I am tall, just under six and a half feet. The truth is that I have forgotten love so far behind me and have hidden away for so long that I am a beast in the night. My books are my weapons; I learn the silky smooth words of battle through various texts. I long to hurt others but will never bring my self to do it; I am truly soft at heart.
Through my avoidance of foray upon the small town I learn more about my ability to resist my profound temptations. I have learned that I am ugly and I am dangerous; the amalgamation a bleak tide following my every footstep. As I near the center of town I see a neighborhood liquor store owner waning in to the night. The moon fills up the voice of fear and regret that comes to my senses; the brilliant pitcher of platinum light filling up the burrow of where my fear of love and my regret of never loving exist.
There I reside; in the cusp of where life seems to open its bosom and proliferate throughout the sky and where a sun skirts the horizon line— fear and regret. The misunderstood entities that have found their way into my heart. I fear to be loved, and love to be feared— a consequential elixir that dawns on me as I continue down the quiet sidewalks of the quaint town. Life seems to be reverberating a different frequency here, bridges between the scars of capitalism and the rich blood of communism coming forth in the skeleton of the town; it was meant to be empty—the ghosts of the proletariat are hard at work and the decaying store owners of the day lead out their miserable lives. I reside in this town now at night—among the specters that dawn their hues agains a suffusing moonlit night. They are beautiful in my mind’s eye, as I am beautiful in their’s.