the animal

i see it every day. it stares back fearless, relentless. the animal is balanced, cunning, reckless yet enduring. nothing i do can really change the animal. i resist to no avail-it's eyes penetrate even total darkness. i wonder; does the animal speak, think, feel on it's own? does it desire more than i can give it? does it search itself for recognition, or lie awake and wonder if it is alone? the animal is not unkind, it is unyielding. i know the animal feels hunger. i suppose that is my only weapon against it. i think if it did not have this hunger it might escape me-i believe that it wants to escape me. it is not in the hands, not in the body mostly but in the face, in the wretched eyes of the animal. i have seen the animal alone and unalone, the same wretched eyes stare back. in sadness, in joy, in lust or anger there is little change. pain, to the animal, means nothing. death, to the animal, is nothing. where it came from i cannot say, only that i will end and it will not. the animal learns. i cannot say how the animal learns, but it does. it understands, i believe, the debt of hunger. for scraps it toils unendingly. i believe that it is biding it's time, following my trivial struggles with the immaculate precision of it's perfect eyes. herein lies my downfall. for the longest time i believed that i was it's master, slowly i am realizing that i am it's slave. regardless of what i think, the animal continues. it floods me with pleasure and pain, it teaches me to feed the hunger. feed the animal. feed. feed. ... .i am not a willing slave. i have tried to fight the animal, but the animal has a power and will of it's own, against which i have nothing. nothing but thought, thought without physicality and this is powerless. others, i know, have fought the animal, all in hopeless futility. some of them have even starved the animal, only to have it escape. this is the worst possible outcome. once the animal is free, it can never again be captured. without the animal, only death is certain. is there something beyond the animal? no one knows for sure. i have heard guesses at what lies beyond the animal, but once you have known the animal and it's hunger, nothing else can be real. in dreams the animal rests and temporarily i am free, but never am i without the animal. it holds me like an insect in a jar, flying blindly into it's walls. i am aware dully of other servants to other animals. the animal is clever and it is often difficult to know master from slave. there is hope, i think, in knowing my fellows. perhaps someone has found a way of subduing the animal. it keeps it's secrets well hidden. underneath it's opaque flesh the animal burns like an hundred suns. it moves and stretches an hundred miles. it turns an hundred times in perfect balance and falls an hundred feet unharmed. perhaps it was meant to be like this, but by who's design i cannot tell. there is a beauty in it's form, it's masterful architecture. but it survives on destruction. something must die for the animal to live. there is no release from it's hunger. eventually even i will die for the animal, i am not spared it's need. when i can no longer sate the animal, it will devour me. i can feel it's teeth inside of me even now. with time i will grow weary. the animal, i think, knows this. slowly i will give in to the animal, requiring less of it, overfeeding it, letting it overcome me. when the time comes the animal will break free, leaving me to die. until then the animal waits, waits. waits. ... .

Fin

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