would have thought you’d know better than to tell them about us. After all, it was you who called me into your world through lines and curves sketched with precision. Gradations of color thoughtfully added to the canvas. You were proud to create an image of me that was, as I believe you phrased it, true to life.
Well, here I am. Yet, my presence seems to threaten you. I’m beginning to think it was the power you felt over me that enthralled you, because, in your mind, you created me. I’m sorry to tell you, that was simply paint on primed muslin. I’ve traversed these realms many times over, long before you were born.
Oh, how you tremble! Yet your erection belies your fear. In fact, I’m rather certain it grows firmer in the face of your self-perpetuated terror.
Let me check. Oh, yes. The root of your need burrows deeper than your will to power. It’s not I who terrifies you. It’s the depth of your need. Your longing to surrender is precisely that which has brought you here.
The fantasy was safe, wasn’t it?
Yet, the way I possess you has never, for a moment, stripped you of your freedom. I may feed on your semen and take a good bit of your vitality as my own, but you have always had the opportunity to be free—in your mind. Your suffering is simply another thing you have created for yourself. It’s a choice you’ve made.
Yet, here you are, locked in a little room with bare walls and no shoelaces. You call this freedom? Why you’d prefer electroconvulsive therapy to the ecstasy of engaging in the regenerative act is beyond me. Did you think you could escape the torment of a creative life? If so, your professors at the Institute did you a disservice.
You may have come here for safety, yet no security door can keep me from entering your mind. It appears the tension between your desire and your fear is that which is most apt to shatter you, even under the constraints of a suicide watch.
You tell the doctors that I come night after night to steal your seed. But, it was your need to surrender that inspired that image of me. Whether you’re able to acknowledge it or not, it’s the freedom to be found in your little death that you crave more than anything else within this world.
Shhh, keep your voice down. What will they think if they hear your cries? That’s it. You’re almost there. I’ll just keep rocking, just like this. Grinding above you on the psych ward of a community hospital in a small southern town that doesn’t quite understand what makes an artist tick. The way I do.
