The last few nights I tore my skin to pieces. Last night I wrote and danced as I have done on other nights knowing it would give me more ease. I’ve known I don’t have to scratch myself. No doubt at all that I could’ve been doing less if I desired.
I cut myself to pieces. Because I didn’t want to be flawless.
I wasn’t ready for a world without excuses yet. So I never did what I really knew was effective.
The entire world has always been open to me and no one had ever convinced me otherwise. I enjoyed mediocrity and revelled in denying greatness to give my parents a silent burn, a quiet cut to keep them from their own joy. All this was in the quite of my mind. I knew it was true but refused to acknowledge it.
My mother would cut my joy of TV and my father burn my sense of security by saying I had to be a doctor and randomly shouting at me.
I spend years constructing bullshit tales of dating women who truly mean nothing to me. To stay away from greatness, not in an arrogant sense, in a natural sense. The greatness everybody could access if they didn’t have ulterior motives. The greatness of the trees, clouds and oceans. Not every tree, but the subtle and occasionally forefront greatness which we all know to be true. The loud greatness in my head isn’t true. It too is just another cry to hurt those I love.
My religious babblings are just practised techniques to hurt the intellectual pride of my family and occasional dinner party guest. And they don’t even work. It is the ones which come up in the moment which always last. But to actually live like that would mean to be truly happy. Which would make my parents feel happy. This isn’t new, I’ve known for a long time, known even when I was ready.
The means of seeing them lose hope felt so sweet. And as ‘I have time to be great later’ (another lie too sweet to let go of) I did not stop. But this was my greatness, my evil. I’m sorry.
As I type, my mind is silently constructing a way to use this ‘honesty’ to further hurt in other silent ways. This is the whispering I refuse to ignore. And behind it a well of virtue I’ve always known to be true, put in place as a birth right. To drink from this would mean never feeling the joy of praise again, never getting the rush of feeling important/significant. To never feel the joy of wasting away and disappointing others again. I lie to myself and say it’s too much pressure.
As I type I wish for my friends to see this. The same friends who played a role in breaking my mother’s heart. The same friends I used to break those who hurt me.
As I type I tell myself ‘even this typing will not help’ FALSE. The well has given to me today, just a little. But still, this too is filled with so much grandiose sleight of hand that the deep cutting truth which I bitterly desire but refuse to take does not reach me. For doing so would make me happy which would make my parents happy. It would mean no longer feeling the sweet power derived from acting on my bitter desire to inflict quiet insignificant misery on them, just enough to make sure no one is happy or hopeless, erratically and perfectly randomly in between. This is my design.
Will it stop? will it go on? Find out next time onnnn ‘Mo really trying to sound important’.
And then in charged a giant T-Rex. Mo looked up in shock. He was sat still. “RUN” the whispers shouted and his body ran. No time to think if it was real, no time to worry about others.
He ran to his garden and heard the destruction from the other side. “Others? Grace?” he thought. Here an opportunity came to be a hero, look at the monster’s mouth from up close and be a hero. “But I can’t do anyth….” before this thought came to close a familiar feeling came over him. This feeling comes hand in hand with that feeling of when you have a really important exam and have no idea if you’ve done enough work, no idea why you’re working so hard but still keep going and you start crossing the road without really looking both ways as much as normal. This is just the other side of that feeling. Mo couldn’t stop imagining seeing the T-Rex roar. Before any of this fully settled in he was already back by the stairs ready to start running up.
Grace was already running down, “GO GO GO” Andrew was running down too. “GO GO GO”. Anna’s room was right above his, he didn’t know if she would have fallen through or still upstairs. He ran up, room empty. Scream. He ran back down. Anne collapsed on the floor on top of the rubble, the T-Rex ready to grab her by the foot. Mo threw his laundry hamper into the T-Rex’s mouth. It bounces out. Now the T-Rex is desperately trying to tare down the home to reach both Anne and Mo. The path to the door is almost blocked now. A hopeless dread came over Mo. But again before anything could really settle into his mind, a rock was thrown aiming for T-Rex’s eye. Nothing, he just blinks it away. Now there’s nothing Mo could do.
He sat down at the back of his room. He and the T-Rex looking at each other in eyes. The T-Rex goes to open his mouth to get Anne, Mo cannot stop, another rock is thrown aiming for the teeth and the back of his throat. Tears streaming down Mo’s face. He’s honestly never seen anything ever so incredible. No sunset no sunrise even his mother’s or father’s face couldn’t compare to the eyes and eye lids of this monster. The scales, the teeth, the roar. The T-Rex was hungry, Mo wants to live. He doesn’t want anyone to die and he has shit he still wants to do. But Mo has to eat and so must this monster.
***There’s no reason why anyone should live on from here, this isn’t an epic tale to keep you on the edge of your feet. This isn’t an exploration of morality. People die, animals get eaten this is the way it goes. But I still feel bad about writing a death, a tragic death in between a story’s arc. A life unfulfilled. My whole life I’ve been desperate for the satisfactory ending. For closure so that I could move on. ***
So Mo wrapped himself up in his duvet hoping all the extra feathers and weird material would make him taste bad. He ran into the mouth of the Trex. The left side of teeth rip through Mo. The feathers and duvet sticking to the rotten saliva in the animal. This made him an uncomfortable meal. The Trex pulls out of 53 Seedley to get a better go at Mo.
He lifts his head up, Mo starts to slide down the gullet. T-Rex opens his throat and Mo slides right in. The duvet is stuck in the teeth of the T-Rex and Mo holds on to the corner for his dear life. The gullet of the beast closes in on him but Mo won’t go down. IT’S DISGUSTING.
The T-Rex rocks his head forward, mouth closed and rocks back again. Mo fell forward and hit the teeth, fell back again but this only tighten his grip. The gullet closes in again. The T-Rex now throws his head to the side, mouth open. Mo and the duvet fling out, Mo holding on only out of panic is flicked out. He’s whipped and the duvet leaves his hand. He’s flung behind to beast and across the road landing and rolling face up.
He’s bleeding out, there’s no way he can survive this. He isn’t the Hero of this tale there’s no way, he’s just a tragic victim. Then the T-Rex, stood up in all his wonder, duvet hanging out of his mouth, let out his epic roar. Mo heard it and couldn’t help but smile. From this point on all Mo did was focus his breathing, he was in ecstasy, he felt no pain and he just saw the T-Rex roar with his white with china blue prints hanging out of its mouth. There honestly couldn’t have been anything better or more particular.
The police came and shot at the T-Rex, the T-Rex ran away, this made Mo feel bad. People came round to check on Mo but he didn’t care. He was looking at the sky, still kinda bummed that the image of the T-Rex had fled but what you gonna do man. The difference between how he took this and how his mother will take this struck him. ‘I wish she had seen some more of who I really am’ was his final regret …
Then Mo woke up and yes. He’s now half man and half T-Rex. There’s no better way this could have gone.