Animal Static

Windowless. Mah shack is windowless. Once there was a window—three, in fact—but ah sealed them up with planks. Ah cemented the ledges in broken bottles, just in case. With the trapdoor in

the ceiling shut and the front door closed and the padlocks, bolts and chains checked, ah could render the panting interior almost void of light, penetrated only by the steaming needles and fast

fins, the guillotines and steak knives of leaked light—sun-silver lances, like ah was the bikini-clad assistant in some magician's trick gone horribly wrong. Yes! Sometimes ah would watch steely

sunlight, ragged, serrated, saw me in half. Ah spent an afternoon plugging the major leaks with plaster but the minor clefts, pocks and crannies, the sly seeps and trickles, the countless chinks in

mah castellated armour, ah left unhindered. Perforations. Air holes hammered in the lid of mah coop. Of mah coffin.

If the beasts were up to it we would talk. In this hushed, sepulchral stillness, with the air putrid, septic, heady and receptive, a lot of thought waves got moved around. Rat chat, crackling cat shriek, snake hissance and lizard fizz, chipping rabbit blather, hare air, bug thrum—beast din, muzzled, telepathic. O but the drooling dog thoughts— dull, belligerent, doped, full of mean transmission—blood, meat, sex and so on. Lame, cockeyed hill-bitches, agitated into a perpetual state of oestrus, turning mean, nasty, astheyfrot and butt and rut and hump in the ordure and straw, gnash and grabble in their squatting capsules on the floor.

When their murgeoning got out of hand, ah would give them a goofball. A calmative. OK—a comative. 1 part water. 1 part White Jesus. 1/ 2 to 1 powdered sedative. Never failed. A bowl or two of that—they lapped it up—and they’d be goo-gooing like sucklings, all pooped out. All the mad air slaked. The feral static, the hate waves abated. Ah would sit and nod and nanny these lumpen

fadges of incumbent dung. There were no in-between moods. No slippers brought to the bedside. No hobble around the block. Either those brutes were in a state of high coma or they were coming at your face. But that's the way they had to be. That's the way ah wanted it. It’s the way God had it organized. That pack of riggish bitches and low bloods—O they will get their chance to make good. Like me. They will have their moment of Glory too. And very soon, ah think, and very soon. Let the sleeping dogs lie. But don't believe a word they say. Ah am the Truth. Ah am the

Light. Every dog has it's day. Ah am having mine now. Mah time is nigh. You're too late, Mister Hay Rake, Mister Spade. Ah said, hey boss, take up that cross and put on your walking shoes. Yes, you lose, Mister Noose. Today belongs to me! Not thee! Me! Me! This day is mine! Into the ranks of the elite ah climb, saying, 'This is the last day! This is the last day! The last day is mine!" There are plenny others, brothers. Take your pick. Take your hoe. Take your goddamn gallow. Leave this day alone. Sift through all your yesterdays. Don't count on your tomorrows. Ah can see them coming and it's not a pretty sight. The fear is here. The fright. Here is the night.