BEAST

I found myself in a corner. Turning to look see what had me pinned, I could smell the odor that gets on your hands when you hold a handful of change in a sweaty palm. I knew exactly what the beast was.

It’s flesh made of green paper that wasn’t really paper, but more sort of a thin denim with men’s’ faces and numbers of all sorts printed on it. It’s eyes, which glowed like mosquitoes that someone had set aflame, were each a golden coin that I immediately recognized as the new line of presidential dollars. The foot that had me pinned as well as its other three feet were made of burlap, with big cartoonish dollar signs printed on them. I could only assume that the burlap be filled with gold bricks.

When it snarled, which it did on a non-stop basis, I could see it’s bank-teller-pen-with-the-ball-chain-still-attached teeth and its cashier’s-check tongue. With every snarl pennies came forth from the mouth, some casually dripping from the sides and down it’s chin while others came at me like rockets.

I knew it didn’t want to kill me. These types of beasts rarely do. More often than most, they just like to play with your life for a while, like it’s their little toy mouse.

I’m starting to learn that playing dead isn’t the solution. Fight your way out, I tell me. And so I listen.