The Cold Water
By Chris Deraleau
Part Two
The Great American Arachnid~ AS A MAN, i have been witness to many things.... quite often do i wander out and onto the midnight lawns of my mind, a quiet, brilliant beautiful place.... the only place where i am absolutely who i am, my own, where my name is just as precious as it was the day i was born. the scene is colourful, illuminated by the silver glaze of moonlight, as it touches eveything softly like velvet. i do roam, and sometimes i settle in soft familiar patches of soft grass to, roll onto my back as i breath in the full night air, and gaze up and into the cosmos.. it is the only place i am free. looking out, up into the infinite vast expansion, my breath leaves me.... in slow then out... slow. at times i feel i am some loyal sheep-dog, gaurding the perimeters of my mind, roaming the long fence lines, looking to find that one spot, so i can lay down and scour the ridges of accumulated memory deep into the distance. i can hear the crickets as they string miniature orchestral hopes into the night, to beckon a lover.. sparkling coats of smooth onyx, the beautiful creatures, they play all the night long.. the cicadas, dense in the tree-line, purr a shrill chirp, and all together, they sound like the powerful waves of the ocean, making the tall trees and dense leaves, come alive like some giant animal we've yet to uncover in this lifetime. and the coyotes.... they laugh and howl all the night long as well. a tribal sound, a savage type of announcement, one of reckless abandon, a wild frenzy deep amongst the plains, true and roaming these ceatures, no one to tell them how to be, where to call home, where to lay their head, or what or whom to love... outlaw vagabonds, blazing a primal trail. i have, as a man and as a boy, drifted in thought to what it must be like out there under that full moon, deep in the heart of texas, howling my life away, chasing my lover through the feilds and prairies, never having to answer to an unjust country full of systems and methods written and designed to reel you into a pristine position for skinning off the very flesh they swore to protect, just to trade it in for monetary gain.. I am a coyote in my own rite, if a coyote is in fact a thing unbound. and though i am in ways physically bound by way of tyranny, and monetary inadequacy, which is what will ultimately compromise one such as myself, and being less monetarily fortunate in America, will lead you to dying of disease in a hospital, or leaving you with more time in penal institution then you could ever imagine. so, though in ways i am bound, the howl in my throat is untamed, the moon in my sky hangs higher then the beast can reach, and the heat i generate, is always a hot texas heat. my lover has pranced into the clearing, and she howls for me, and the chase for love, life, liberty, freedom, and happiness is underway... and oh, is it a pursuit.. in this dreamscape there is another sense it seems i have at times, this sense is something more.. this nameless sense, is like an automobile, trudging through a frozen, snow piled midnight town, trying like hell to configure a maze. it reminds me of an older horror classic i love very well.. 'The Shining', where jack torrance has gone mad completely, and the lights of the snow truck are the only thing seeking out the destination of chaos to restore order. the truck is what brings them out, and the shine is ultimately protected from a dark tyrannical evil. the shine being young danny and his brilliant gift, a gift unexplained, and rare amoungst the face of this world. And in this story of mine, my own personal jack torrances ever-diminishing mind, is the decaying american dream, which today as we speak, is a bloated grey-skinned corpse, full of counterfeit small-town morality, eaten from the inside out by small-time badges and uniforms, with big-time egos. mount vernon ohio and its inner-workings, one being the police deparment amoungst many other entities, will be more then sufficient in repesenting the 'small-time minds' in this address. and i, after the weight and pain of a lifetime realize with an intense clairity, that i am the shine. and even though ive spent years in the jowls of the noxious american beast, i will represent the juxtaposition. the fire in all small-minded creeds and plots the world over, turning small-town money and power hungry secrets meant to crawl in the undercurrent, into my own gold. i am the blood red gallon of paint across the clean-cut ridiculous falsities the bureaucrats try to drown the public in. i am the paul revere, and the british are coming. and since we are talking about my favorite subject, horror, ill bring this full circle in a sort of spoiler. real horror... is not ying in a coffin with sharp teeth... but this country does have vampires. it is not ghosts in closets.... but constitutinal promises of hope, turned ghost, through the death imposed onto these powerful pages by the bureaucratic legions of tyrants, hounding us out of liberties each day, for money and power. it is the devil himself if there ever was a spirit of evil. americans.... are targets. objectified and used for the pleasure of money, traded for flesh. and the devil and his demons, dont have horns and long split tongues.. they wear tax-funded uniforms, and drive around in white and blue ford explorers with light bars mounted to the tops..