THE ALONE MAN

Hello …

After a long absence I am again going to write to you all. Even though I am feline I watch your history as humans with interest – and sometimes amazement!

On my nightly travels I often see men and women sloping around the streets. They seem to be like me, hunting. What I cannot understand is what they can be hunting for! So I have watched and thought. I even tried to make friends – winding my body around their legs, hoping for them to bend down and stroke me – to make contact with another living creature. But they seem unable or unwilling. Their eyes are blank until something, or someone, strikes their interest. Then, I am afraid.

So I talk with my human friends. And they do not want to talk with me. Perhaps because this is something they fear as much as they are attracted to. This is the Darkness. This is Seduction. Those who walk on this path are feared & in fear, genderless, powerless, separate, the Enforcer, ordinary, standing in the dark, alienated, sexless - but wielding the harsh reality of potential violence. They are the Beast within us, beyond us and in Mind. Frozen time in a moment - extra-normality. Fear in a glance - a bitter pill with a sweet taste. Glancing back I see his job is done and she is gone with the others - and his job is done. He is where he wants - alone.

He walks. The darkness is around him as he passes through the street of life. He feels feared and yet he is in fear of something nameless. He, or is it she, sees himself as without gender and without sex. He is ordinary, small with a balding head and a slight growth of hair shadowing his chin. He stops, stands in the dark, smelling the air. He feels a presence that alienates him. Someone looks out of a window and seeing him shivers as they shut the drapes. But he does not notice them.

He feels powerless in the experience of this presence, this feeling that threatens to overcome him - to enter him, freezing his soul. He feels arousal at its might even while he struggles to preserve his integrity.

The Beast is within and time is frozen in a moment of extra-normality. He becomes aware of his skin, sleek and soft against his clothing. Fear inhabits a small corner of his mind but on his tongue - the Beast's tongue - it tastes like blood. A bitter cordial with a sweet taste.

In a moment his job is done and she is gone with the others. Glancing back, the Beast senses me and turns slowly to examine the space where I might be. As it turns, the flesh slips away into the smoke of the cold air reaching the warmth. There is a strange sweetness filling the air.

I am invisible, but yet it is aware of me as I watch, repulsed by the shiny pearl of bone and the straw-red muscle. For moments we are joined in an unholy marriage of Watcher and Watched.

But as he starts to move I see that he is only a man with a balding head and stubble on his chin. And I am alone.....

moggi, 2000