Peepshow

I’ve been in this cage for close to a year now, placed in the primate section.

I can hear the sound of the chimps fucking, making me nauseous.

Part of a typical day, actually.

I usually have nothing to do but to jerk off 3 times a day, shit in a bucket, get fed by the keepers, and ruminate at the festering rage and sense of loneliness inside me.

The cement floor of this cage is as cold as the dead soul inside.

A sound stirs me from my zombie meditation, and I look up to a fat man in an Armani suit whose hand is linked to the hand of a little boy whose fingers were digging deep into his nose, and was mimicking the cry of a monkey.

Charming snot-nosed shit.

As more and more people gather, I know what time it is.

Twice a week my sadistic overlords invite the public to gawk at every zit, pimple, and wart on my face.

With each new face in the crowd, the knots of my blood vessels tighten up, trying to hang whatever heart I have left.

One of the keepers steps in front of the cage, force-feeding me shots of whiskey and quickly closes the cage.

The whiskey is supposed to numb my thoughts, but instead puts them in focus as the crowd shouts at me and orders me to dance like a side show.

I comply, foolishly hoping it would appease them so they will go away.

At this point, every voice imaginable is rushing through my head: mine, the crowds’, the world’s, as if my consciousness melded with every other on the planet, overloading the synapses in my brain, and giving me a headache that resembles the lion’s roar in the distance fifty yards from my cage.

As my dance gets increasingly feverish, I hear the hyenas cackling in the distance.

The beautiful women in front of me have gaping smiles that turn into razor sharp teeth that start to snap at me.

The fat cat in the Armani suit starts cracking open his son’s head and dines on it with a spoon, looking deep into my eyes and filling my shattered soul with despair that would freeze the lakes of Tartarus.

Three weeks ago an elephant that was brought in from Africa stampeded and trampled five zoo hands who were transferring him to his new prison.

At this moment I how how that elephant feels.

My jester’s dance becomes more frenzied and I sing with the hyenas, my cadences bellowing out, overpowering the lion’s roar.

The crowds stops yelling; even the hyenas are quiet now.

The sound of the chimps fucking finally stops.

The faces in the crowd go back to the way they were before and the devils disperse.

I keel over and let the hangman’s knots release my heart.

Once feverish, I now feel as cold as the cement floor my face is now lying on.