Abused By Illusions

The Beast

The beast was every bit of 14 feet tall from foot to crown. It was bad humored with a penchant at times for the most abominable of sentimentality. It could at one moment be as hot as the volcanic geyser at Yellowstone and at other times be as cold as the largest glacier North West of Gnome, Alaska. It claimed to have descended into the very depths of the Yellowstone geyser. It blasted me with boast of its very ascent to the pinnacle of the previously mentioned glacier. Sometimes I was fond of scolding it due in no small part to the beast apparent grandiose idolization of itself. It would respond to my gentle rebukes by rattling the iron bars of its’ cage to the point of almost shattering them. My greatest fear in life was that one-day it would escape and when it did I knew that with its sharp fangs and jagged claws that it would tear me limb from limb and devour me. In these moments I could feel its acrid hot breath and the accompanying rancid smell almost choked me. It had the largest dark and shiny eyes that I had ever seen. Once I saw my reflection in the onyx pools it claimed as eyes. The sparkles emanating from its eyes corresponded exactly to my racing heartbeat. Then for an instant I could have sworn that I was transmuted into a rabid dervish chasing the Prophet Muhammad from the narrow streets of Mecca to the even narrower streets of Jerusalem. In what seemed like an instant and at the same time seemed a thousand years the three of us stood at the entrance to a tomb. Muhammad stood holding the Qur’an, I stood holding my breath, and the beast held us both in an iron gaze. At this point a longhaired man clothed in the whitest linen and clinging to both the Torah and the Christian Testament exited the tomb and joined the three of us. The beast demanded that our new arrival and Muhammad share a shot of absinthe and a ham sandwich. The beast then roared with approval before shouting something about ecumenicalism.
Don’t get me wrong. There were times when the beast could be a most gentle creature. He could sneak in reverent silence and often this was the time that in the hush of the moment he most frightened me. Once he bid me to follow him with the motion of a finger and shushing me with the other. He led me into the very heart of a silent cemetery. Here the beast and I became spellbound at the sight of a soundless group clad in scarlet shawls that encircled an anomalous monolith with a strange inscription upon it. The muffled chant that was the almost imperceptible din of the group was obviously some strange homage being paid to the entity honored by the monolith. As I bent over to read the inscription I noticed that you too were now beside me. I beckoned for you to bend with me and read the scrawling inscription. Taking the only light possessed by the group the beast coerced the group of scarlet clad worshippers to remove themselves from us. Then he gestured so that we might understand that the inscription on the monolith was also the name in which he was accustomed to being addressed. Holding our breath we in that instant were overcome with a most magical sense of awe. Slowly we deciphered the archaic script into our native tongue and it read as follows:
I-M-A-G-I-N-A-T-I-O-N!


© 2004, by C.I. Abramson

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