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The Internal Combustion Engine |
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The intruder is to be defined as one situated on his stomach, his wrists tied together behind his back, his chin wedged in a chock of wood or metal. All his body below the neck shall be housed, as by a carapace, in a close-built shelter, whether of wood or metal it makes little difference. At either side of his head enormous paper cones shall be situated, the better to amplify the cries of gulls who, queued at the far end of the cones, form a line sufficiently straight to inspire wonder among any who happen by, whether man or gull. Thus the intruder, in front of whom and slightly to his left a boy shall be posited who, with the intention of making it his target, shall place on the level stump of a tree a small medicinal bottle. In short order the boy's father shall emerge from out of a cottage to the intruder's right, yelling, above the din of the gulls, for the boy to come over to him. Neither boy nor gulls shall take notice, but rather continue, the boy his attempts to hit the bottle with stones, the gulls one after another mysteriously to air their grievances against the intruder. "Get over here, you little shit!" the father will, perforce, scream. At this, the boy shall approach the bottle, take it in hand, and, with little preparatory fanfare, commence to insert it down into his throat. Some too among the gulls shall take beak and head of their own into their craws for a moment and then expel them, while yet others gather in a chorus formation near the boy and scream, but with no flapping of wings -- this in a mild gesture of support. The father shall, having viewed this spectacle with a mixture of disgust and sorrowful acknowledgement, after a moment turn and rush into the cottage. Upon reappearing he will have strapped to his head an elaborate apparatus of six caliper-like arms in the process of ratcheting open his mouth while a mechanism at its center begins -- slowly at first and then at brief stages more swiftly -- to insert an ancient bullet into his throat and then retract it, quickly and repeatedly. He shall, thus adorned, approach the choking boy and stand menacingly over him, who by this time should be in dire panic for lack of air. Nothing, however, in the way of acknowledgement shall pass between father and intruder, for what could more offend the intellect than such a rash commingling of categories? To continue, the bullet shall be passing in and out of the father's throat with ever greater speed and depth, while gulls are compelled to light on his shoulders and fan their wings in such manner as to behood the father with a living headdress. No sooner shall it be discovered by any who stand witness to these events than the absence of a mother shall be corrected by her Andromache-wild emergence from within the cottage. In an attitude of the Egyptian Nut she shall kneel in a benevolent arch over the choking boy, her face directly across and mere inches away from the chock and cones, while her haunches rise toward the father, as if her dorsum were utterly indifferent to the original tenor of her intercessions. A small fissure will then begin to open in the earth at the concealed feet of the intruder and the ground take hold of his ankles and at ever larger increments of his body take him down and push him back, removing him from the chock and returning him to it, until he at turns disappears entirely under the shelter and is again returned whence he had been only a moment before. So it is that the father shall undress and kneel behind his wife and the earth suck down the intruder. In a strict train of thrusts, first of earth, then of father, the intruder's eyes shall meet the mother's but for a moment, and the gulls' deafening cry tear at his fleeting pleasure, and at turns, as our intruder is pulled again into his covert, there shall follow an opposing and, as it were, equilibratory incursion from the opposite direction, this one straight into the steadfast mother, who shall be likened in her soft-bodied mantling of the innocent to a gentle sky, and shall be made whole by her husband's ancient justice, suffering the harsh stroke of her domestic fate to force its way into her tenderness as she watches what could be hers withdraw, though she soon enjoy a momentary respite from cruel necessity as her hopes advance out of the darkness, and in so doing, lure -- with the help of her husband, who himself is, it must be said, forced to swallow his own harsh fate, only to find he must swallow it again, and the intruder, let us not forgot the intruder -- lure the tired, hesitant stars out of the refuge they are owed for all the turmoil created in their name. |
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