They sent me back to work.
They sent me back to the gray box of shame and degradation, then re-connected me to a
machine. I sat in a meeting with my
brother, James, who worked in another department across the hall. We met with my boss, who had been his boss
until he moved his way up the ant pile.
I sat in her office, stared into a space
between her and me and
pretended to listen to whatever they were babbling on about. It sounded like the adult characters in a
Charlie Brown cartoon. Indistinct words
belched out into the already verbally polluted atmosphere -blahblahblahblah- and it meant something to them, but it was utter
nonsense to me. I just sat there
pretending I was a normal person -pretending- like I had learned to do decades
ago when I realized that I didn’t fit in.
I pretended. The big stupid smile
lit my dark circular face like a star atop a hideous black Christmas tree. I wore my glasses as part of my disguise. Like a coffee colored Kal El pretending to be
Superman, pretending to be Clark Kent. I
pretended that I wanted to be back at the place that terrified me, the place
that had stressed me out and tried to kill me. I thought, when it found out that I had
survived the unimaginable murder attempt, that I somehow trudged onward after the
death of my art and my dreams, it would try to kill me again. Instead, it welcomed me back with opened
arms, embraced me at the door and smiled whispering to me “Welcome Back, zombie”. I tripped grinning and foolish back into its
trap. I knew it would take a second shot
at the dreamer. It sent its invisible
assassins -mediocrity and necessity- back to their posts upon the high towers, commanded
them to get the metaphasic cannons loaded and cocked for another shot.
