The corner of the counter stared at him like a knight pointing his sword amidst the glimmering armor stained with the blood of his enemies, and glaring through the narrow slit, revealing cold, shining eyes behind the protective mask. He was filled with constant worry that some day, somehow, he or someone he loved would trip and fall and puncture their forehead on it, leaving them bleeding on the floor and dying a slow, miserable death. As he looked around the house in twitches and fits, his flitting eyes unable to keep up with the swiveling head, he rattled off numerous other hazards and points of danger: the electric sockets whose blank looks peered at him with mouths of open horror, the pictures on the wall resting on thin, rusting nails in weak dry wall as feeble as balsa wood, and waiting to fall in splinters of pointed, exploding glass, the scalding hot iron skillet waiting to be grasped by a curious child, blistering the flesh of the hand and smothering in hot lava, the boiling food meant only to grow and nurture, but now serving as disfigurement and macabre, the gas lines, where connected may have leaks and lend themselves to explosions beyond the capacity of war, and the knives laying harmlessly on the surface of the counter...
At this, he leapt out of his chair and ran outside, hoping for the green solace of the trees and grass and flowers and blue sky. But there was no escape from mortal danger: for outside were spiders and their waiting, watching attacks, ticks with their madness-inducing disease, power lines ready to fall and burn to singing ash, and planes overhead from which anything could fall, yea, even themselves.
He stood, motionless, like Siddhartha, waiting for the earth to crumble beneath him and swallow him whole. In his mind, the dogs raced around the track, chasing the hare, leaving flashes of a thousand colors and non sequiturs, memories and faces, grim and staring, looking down the nose, and some with wry, evil smiles, but only noticeable to him in his heightened, moment of punctuated frenzy. The fear gripped him, heaving him up to the skies, casting his anchor to the abyss of self-abandonment. In his head there were fizzy lights, flickering on and off like the bugs that crack and pop in those old electric chambers hung on the corner of the house in mid summer.
At this, he leapt out of his chair and ran outside, hoping for the green solace of the trees and grass and flowers and blue sky. But there was no escape from mortal danger: for outside were spiders and their waiting, watching attacks, ticks with their madness-inducing disease, power lines ready to fall and burn to singing ash, and planes overhead from which anything could fall, yea, even themselves.
He stood, motionless, like Siddhartha, waiting for the earth to crumble beneath him and swallow him whole. In his mind, the dogs raced around the track, chasing the hare, leaving flashes of a thousand colors and non sequiturs, memories and faces, grim and staring, looking down the nose, and some with wry, evil smiles, but only noticeable to him in his heightened, moment of punctuated frenzy. The fear gripped him, heaving him up to the skies, casting his anchor to the abyss of self-abandonment. In his head there were fizzy lights, flickering on and off like the bugs that crack and pop in those old electric chambers hung on the corner of the house in mid summer.
And then he ran.
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