Meep Meep

I lie in wait.

I hear it.

In the distance.

By the semi-circle horizon.

It calls--

Meep Meep.

The contraption is in place.

As it always is.

Nothing like the catapult this time.

Nothing that foolhardy.

This one is the newest model of the top-of-the-line series of foul entrapment from the good folks at Acme. A good company. An American company. Oh sure, most of their products are made in Taiwan, but the ideas are constructed right here in the U. S. of A. That’s how you know you can trust them.

Have they made mistakes?

Of course they have.

We all have.

But not every hole-in-a-box can work the first time you use it. It’s similar to how the first impulse to kill gets set aside as you rest in the desert, wondering when death will come for you. You see, I’ve always been a bit morbid. A bit cynical. A little too interested in what a human kidney would look like roasting in the hot sun.

But all that fascination had no vessel. What is there to rage against under the burning hot sun? The cacti? The dust? The corpse of a prairie dog?

None could capture my fury.

It had been lingering in me since my childhood. When I was a mere coyote pup, my mother dropped me off the side of a cliff, presumably because she only had enough milk in her udders to feed four pups and I was the fifth. In many ways, what she did could be considered a mercy killing, because starving to death over a few days versus imploding at the end of a long fall into hard rock is no real choice at all. My mother did what seemed best. How could she know that I would not only survive the fall, but that a mother vulture would adopt me as her own, and feed me until I was old enough to eat her and all my siblings.

Every moment after that feast was filled with ennui. What was my purpose? Why was I allowed to live when nature and my own mother had decided my future should be no future at all? Why are cacti so hard to fight with? All I had were questions. My life was an endless road leading into a painted mural and, much like the day of my birth, smash smash smash I would go right into what looked like a gorgeous landscape.

These days walls and skies all look the same to me. Reality is an illusion the same way ambition is a passion and passion will break your heart the same way your mother will when you smile up at her for the first time only to feel yourself free-falling through the already-scorching Arizona air.

I wait for the sound of the impending rush.

Speed when it manifests itself is a mockery. You have no sense of how slow you’ve meandered until evolution shows you the one it’s chosen to achieve swiftness. Then you see all your inadequacies. And what are your strengths? Slyness? Perseverance? Dedication to a cause that will never know its denouement?

The first time I heard the “Meep Meep” it was like a bell being rung to signal a funeral. Something had died that was never going to be revived. My tail hardened and my snout shivered. The ears on my head grew in size, and as the blue feathers raced by me, I had already begun drafting my first letter to the Acme company.

“Dear Maestros of Innovation and Ingenuity…”

Box after box arrives. Such a treat for me. An animal who has no concept of the postal system or online retail. I was buying before Amazon. Before unboxing videos. Before 3D printing. My desire for bloodlust launched me into capitalist futures even JP Morgan dared not dream of, and expanded my tenacity to godlike extremes. Nothing can harm me and everything hurts. I am battered. I am struck. I am thrown about a cartoon world and left with nothing but the scar of memory. I hear laughter. Who laughs at my folly? Who wishes I would stop?

And if I did, then what?

What awaits the one who recovers? Who shakes himself awake from the nightmare? Is the morning so comforting? It reaches temperatures of a hundred degrees here before most people consume their breakfast.

As I am now, I need no sleep. No rest. No comfort. The chase keeps me warm during the cold desert nights. It propels me through life’s great repetition. Could I find love if I searched? Perhaps. But what love could match the undeniable physics of the catch?

It’s imminent, because after my seven hundredth concussion, I saw all possibilities regarding my life and its many avenues. Down one, narrow road--I catch the roadrunner. Truthfully, I take no joy in tearing him to shreds. He’s gamy and his flesh tastes bitter. When I am done, most of him is still lying in the middle of the road, so that the carrion lovers have something to satisfy their hunger.

I’m satisfied simply to no longer hear the “Meep Meep,” but that, in and of itself, is no satisfaction. Not really. Not when you’ve known the moment before--

Before you pull the string.

And watch.

As nothing occurs.

Something is wrong.

An error.

An error when you’ve left no room for it.

Because when it’s you against the definition of brevity, you can never be anything less than perfect in your execution, and that hunt for perfection (not for the bird, but for perfection) is the nectar. It’s the quencher of thirst. It’s the iron in your blood.

I lie in wait.

The contraption will not work.

I know before I know.

I know, because I lie.

In wait and to myself.

That I’ll only try once more and then I’ll paint myself into the mural.

I’ll be a lone wolf, figuratively speaking, under a sun that blinds but does not burn. Near vegetation and orange sand and mirages that are real, because they’re part of something that is, itself, surreal.

The bird will peck against the mural as the pursuit shifts. It is he who wants to get to me now, but he won’t.

He can’t.

I’ve become a painting inside a doodle.

But it doesn’t mean I’m at peace.

It simply means I failed so many times, the failure was my perfection.

I was the perfect failure.

And so I had to be memorialized.

Somebody might want to remember me like this.

A creature who could not grow in a place where nothing grows.

Nothing but the cacti.

And nobody likes them anyway.