Monster, Note, Chauvinist

A short story incorporating three random words, written in 20 minutes.

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

I don’t know the type of monster I became that night. Wandering the streets and alley ways looking for a fight. A wrong look, a look for too long or the wrong note played on a piano would be enough to begin growling and pawing at the dirt.

It happened that a male chauvinist made himself known to me. Saul, who was just a man for the evening, told me it was a creature of the worst kind. A rapist. That the chauvinist had at one time in his youth taken advantage of a woman.

After being confronted by a man with fight but no reason to do so, my adrenaline was pumping. So when I finally had a reason, the fight came with it. My hands became anvils, my arms pistons and my legs stanchions for the movement of my upper torso.

The creature in front of me was well groomed, the worst kind of monster, with manners. A hannibal lecter, harvey weinstein or jeffrey epstein. In front of me, yet another male adult too scared to face life like a man and so they became beasts wildly using the worst of their nature to feast.

By the time Saul had revealed the man’s nature, it was too late, but the fight was still with me. And so I became a monster, looking for someone to fight, winning or losing were not the point, it was simply about the fight.

There is a cliché that goes something like, you become the very thing you hate. I imagine that goes along with being vigilant of ones mind and guarding against it. I was not vigilant and so only the fight took over.

Excessive, Revolution, Pomegranate

by Marcus Jonathan Chapman

Seduced by the plump arils offered up in the hands of Hades. Those tempting seeds spilling through his fingers and falling over the edges of his hands, stained red. Twelve devils surrounded the king of the underworld each a different shape, size, color and vice. They whooped, coughed, choked, laughed, cried, screamed, roared, cut themselves, masturbated, penetrated their orifices with objects that stretched their cavities. They pointed their chipped fingernails at me with one hand and spread blood, oozing from their self-inflicted cuts, over their skin and hair. Macabre wrestlers making their bodies slick with blood instead of olive oil.

A scene designed by the lord of the underworld to make his outstretched hands appear the most enticing choice. To grab those seeds and feast in the face of excessive debauchery would be a triumph.

The revolution, however, is only won by turning to a demon, lathering myself with the blood from my own wounds and wrestling until each one in the circle is bested. I feel the gash in my stomach, poke two fingers inside and slowly wipe them over my face. I feel the cuts along my legs from the thorns they pushed aside and wipe them around my neck, shoulders and arms. I wipe the blood dripping from my forehead, and rub it all over my chest and legs. I take my pointer finger and push it into the deepest cut in my chest. I slather it over my waist and buttocks. I rub my hand over the open wound in my chest and put it to my lips.

I can taste the iron.