Monster-God in Cruise-Control

Excerpt from a Novel

I am only now learning to transform these forces. To exchange pain for pleasure, thoughts for paper and isolation for sex. And already, I feel I am short on time. I feel out of touch again. The mood is only average now. Only normal now. But look! How I write! My body is beginning to resemble a formless coil of dead rodents, but my hands are typing away. For this is no longer the true speech of transcendence rendered possible through extreme physical exhaustion and limit-experiences. Now this is only human and all too human.

Now, I write standing on my own two feet and it flows like a peaceful river in temperate weather. Again, I gave up one form of discipline and acquired a new source of freedom. There is more of a person in this writing and less of the monster-god who could not bear its human reflection in the mirror. On the bright side, the human is no longer impotent nor drifting at the outer shores of society. This one, perhaps, can engage with the world in a meaningful way. Perhaps I misspoke, the monster-god cannot stop looking in the mirror, for what it sees is far beyond the creature who’s body it inhabits. The monster-god looks at itself, bypassing the human vessel altogether.

Abandoning the sadistic drive for mastery and the masochistic satisfaction of self-mutilation, I can enter ‘cruise control’. In cruise control, I need not write with blood any more. I can sit back, and write a nice little story. So here I am. And here’s my story…

I have been pretty clueless my whole life, quite detached from everything. If it was not for my mother’s endless toils, I would have walked into a pitiful demise sooner than I could spell ‘puberty’. For you see, I like to think. But before you hatch out another generic diagnosis, let me confess in advance. Yes, I am just lazy, and self-centered, alienated from my friends, relatives and my surroundings. Yes, I grew up in a damaged household and swam to the shores of adulthood clutching to fake memories, substitute fantasies and perversions. And yes, my introversion is a trauma-response. Are we done?

This is not about who I am; this is about what happened to me. And something awfully strange. Somewhere in-between my high-school years and just about right now, the current moment marking a type of threshold: My beginning-to-write. The event in question, will be no simple task to decipher, traumatic no doubt, as evidenced by my inability to bring it all to memory in one piece and articulate it. But also, being unable to lend it to complete forgetting either. The event, it keeps coming back, in its persistent incoherence and refuses to leave. In many ways, this will be my purpose; to rid myself of the unwanted guest. The madman in the room.

Yes, I know. Perhaps it is not going to be such a “nice” story after all. But these are the rules I am afraid. I only write, I have no idea what will happen. I do have some intuition and I will reveal the signs to you. My language may become odd at times, but that’s just workplace-hazard in our line of work. Maybe I misspoke again. You see we are writing this, not I. I only provide the words. And words decide so little as to content, it is enough to drive anyone mad. You feel that presence in the room now? Troubling.

This is (probably) a story about the monster-god in cruise-control.