01: Mental Cases
"'Maybe there isn't a beast....maybe it's only us.'"
[Golding. Lord of the Flies.]

     The story is told through an aged woman whose wrists have never felt a day’s work, her large eyes are the only proof of a child that has never grown up, a psychoanalyst, she awaits her next assignment, a good school girl that she is. To this unnamed woman this is just another game to her, she’ll get through like the ubermich she believes herself to be. In representation of society naivete to war she is killed by the brutality when met face to face.
     The antagonist is the man who description is one that the imagination can conjure better than the language. His purpose is to represent war, specifically the Great War, the First World War.
     Briefly mentioned that he was to have a cheerful personality, of what the public see him as, another romantic adventure to send your sons off to! Rapidly evolves into the constant terror of war.
     And so we'll start the meeting in the lady's perspective.
     This is what you’ve been waiting for. To see the cheerful man completely shattered, to watch his only purpose light up inside him and in the flame, his spinning flames, destroy you. Once filled with harmony straightens up stance is rigid, a true tree, his feet seeded into the ground, fists clenching, back still turned towards you. You, the psychiatrist are too mystified to move. Your whole life, all sixty five years you’ve diagnosed whiners, suicidal, the money-crunchers; but you’ve never met a monster this pure before. A real monster, not the ones that grow out of fear or anticipation, but a real one. A beast one you could hunt and kill, and in turn find the man out of madness! A beast so savage he’ll kill. And he’ll kill. And he’ll kill. This was the man bearing towards red sunglasses covering his eyes even at night–for your protection or his? Anticipated, soaking in excitement, you can’t help but smile maybe even giggle - you’re going to break him! The man who’s never cracked, a promotion tempts in the air, maybe, you’ll even win a prize for this! Still this is the one pulling you out, out of your chair, this is the assignment bearing his teeth for you – how thoughtful one would never think they were so yellow, sharp; the grin frames it all quite handsomely. Grinning, he’s always grinned, grinned in the hallway, grinned when y’all conversed, and grinned he’s helped your workload – grinned.
     Grinned, grinned at the taste of it all, involuntarily you lick chapped lips.
     Why? Why can’t you hear? Hearings never been the problem - he’s picked you up by the throat this monster, this beast, he hasn’t made a sound. You’re listening for a connection that he really isn’t weightless. Your old bone can’t take more of this pressure, the squeezing, “ the stroke on stroke of pain-- -but what slow panic, gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?”
     He’s grinning, and grinning, the charming smile of “set-smiling corpses” swallowing you up, concave windows letting you on the real truth the real evil. You have to be dead, this hell, this hollow man can’t exist?! Who would let this happen, you’ve got to go. Got to run. Run. Run. Run!
Immobile – you understand the joke. It’s only under a perversion, your own red glasses, that you can glimpse at the sanity boiling mudded under the, “carnage incomparable.” Choking, you’ve waited for the final promotion. You don’t hear the final applause of a windpipe snapping, you’ve already bowed out on stage.