saintadatha

I've been feeling a twinge.

I think I recognise it, though it's been a while. Normally it twists and turns somewhat more, as it gets a hold in my gut and digs itself deep, deep within. It cuts like a pro, usually: in and up.

This is no amateurish assailant I bewail. This is no sometime hoodlum, no part-time gangsta; This is the real deal. This is the honest-to-gods, true-as-I-stand-here-before-you, real fucking deal.

Like a pro, usually: in and up. No pussy-footing around. No kindness to its prey; no hand to gag my mouth; no whispered apologies in my ear; no soft look in my eyes: to convey, to understand, to guide me sweetly, softly, softly...

This is the cold, hard, heartless professional. This is the bloodless hand tight around my throat. Not the warm touch of flesh firmly wrapped around my neck, its pressure applied as tightly and consistently as the muscles drawn across my skeletal frame, as a lover draped across my flesh, half-clinging, on a cold night. No. Not so loving.

There is a distinction between consistent and mundane; between the constant and the unshakable. It is a fine line, I agree, but a line nonetheless. It is that gap between man and machine. It is rooted in that fine fissure that separates the lioness's merciless slaughtering of a gazelle and an alleyway stabbing in the depths of downtown. One we can understand - it involves the touch that only a human can give, the recognition within the species, the admition of shared existence - whilst the other is something with which we cannot empathise. I do not understand this ball that chokes me.

I do not understand this knot, this fist, this inhuman grasp on my breath and my heart. It is not consistent, but machine-like and mundane in its unshaking accuracy. It is not determined, like an athlete to the finish line, but nor is it strictly free of emotion, like a mechanic construct. I was too harsh when I called it a machine. Machines lack vision; machines lack cruelty; machines lack single-minded maliciousness.

This is no machine. Some say its eyes are green, but the metaphor is tired and, needless to say, incorrect. It has no eyes. As it stands behind me, one hand in my throat, one in my chest, staring its hollow, gaping sockets emptily past my contorted face, its hooded robe reeks of dust, its ageless, fleshless corpse of atrophy, decay, blight.

Why is this beast upon my back. No crushes, I said. No petty, retarded, impotent crushes. Move along. Get away. But sometimes away is further than you think. When you think you're out of reach, then you realise... you need a couple more steps. Just a couple more, and then you'll be far enough.

Psychologists are quick to pounce on the transference to the second person when we narrate such personal observations and experiences.

When I thought I was out of reach, then I realised; now I realise. A couple more steps. Just a couple more.

In fact... Keep walking.

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