Behemoth

In the courtroom of the universe, at the end of it all, we’ll be weighed against our sins, feathers to lead, giant super cosmic judges all agreeing we’ll have been wrong all along.

But down here, down now, right and wrong are written by whoever’s loudest in the room, and we carry our sins on shoulders and chests proudly, displaying them like weapons won in duels and armors recovered in conquered lands and jewels pilfered, to whomever’ll look, to whoever’ll listen to our songs of gleans and sparkles and prides misplaced: Saved for now, nothing for later.

The lights turn on, assistants run around. The armor they’re putting me in is larger than I would have liked. Metal plates, finely sculpted for the cameras, nothing heavy, nothing that’d withstand an actual blow from a sword or a gunshot, are lined with silk and tied together with pink and blue and green ribbons, soft on my skin, making me almost forget the scratchy, plasticky stuff they have us wear off cam. They're putting a lot of makeup on me, also, to hide the starvation and the bruises and the ugliness of the poor.

People used to have occupations that had nothing to do with entertainment. Some taught in schools, some cleaned floors in rooms, some collected bits of stories and put them in cartridges of papers for others to read. Some helped us bring up our children as others served us foods in places we’d go to eat, well lit, colorful places of leisure. I heard we were even able to pick our own. Occupation, I mean.

What a world that must have been.

About a hundred years ago - maybe a thousand, maybe three - political turmoil and all out wars destroyed most governments and shattered most economies. The world’s forests and other natural resources became a thing of the past. That’s also around when the gods woke up.

They’d apparently been hiding in plain sight, not that we’d been looking. The world in tatters, they were here to help, raised from their slumber to rid the world of all its evils.

Once the initial shock had passed, we obviously started attacking them, hunting them for food and resources and weapons, and, in the end, just for game; for once we realized they meant us no harm, and could actually not hurt us at all, we’d just gone apeshit. It was against their nature, killing others. Not ours.

Being an elegant species, we’d also decided, collectively, to film it all, to miss nothing of it: The End, televised for all to see, for all to cheer to, for all to sing songs of that’d go down in history. Not that we’d be around to actually witness any of it, would we.

So the Games were created.

The International Court of Justice had to redefine what “human rights” meant, legally, in order to justify what they were doing to us, making us hunt and kill and eat the remains of gods, most of us dying in the process for just enough money to keep us coming back, to keep us begging.

I learn the choreography diligently as they bring in a large container, large as a house.

Left, right, arm up, up, up,

arm up,

My daughter, she needs medication.

and down.

They open the container, all sides falling to the ground, resounding all around, reverberated, revealing a tank full of a dark, yellow liquid, aged formaldehyde.

Up.

Lower left up,

And food. She needs food.

A creature, large, folded upon itself, is inside the tank, unmoving.

front up, up.

Shit.

Up, down. Up.

She could do with some clothes.

Up.

Its eyes swivel to look at me.

Up. Fuck.

They got rid of the academic system first and foremost. The ones who rule. They didn’t want us to know enough about politics or history to be able to participate in society, to be able to aggregate and organize, but they did want us to be eloquent enough to discuss what was happening during the shows, to communicate precisely what was happening as our worlds died, with a knowledge of the arts and poetries strong enough to enunciate beautifully so that people would be awed, so that spectators would be entertained enough to come back for more, to buy more of whatever they were selling to keep their castles up and running.

And we did it, as monkeys dance, as old dogs learn tricks, new and borrowed.

My husband had decided he was over it, couldn’t take it anymore. It was beneath us, to do the shows. Beneath human dignity. But who deserved dignity, truly? The ones who paid for the laws to pass, always.

He was shot, of course, for “encouraging dissidence” - a guillotine, a judgement befallen. Our daughter hadn’t seen it, she’d only heard the sound. Dry, dryer than we’d expect, no drama whatsoever: a simple gunshot to a head. And now, once in a while, at the least opportune time, she’ll imitate the sounds of guns being shot at heads. Not even sadly, sort of like a reflex.

Pow.

Blam.

No feeling.

“Welllllcommeee to the BEHEMOTH!!!!!” the announcer announces, screams, yells and encourages. Popcorn and tangerines and other rejoicing foodstuffs can be felt and heard through his voice, like dirty, slimy silk, comfortable lies, good for the skin.

Beautiful feathers, green-blue, golden with coral hues, teeth, thousands, the colors of crystals, and eyes and arms so many, so many.

A god, previously hunted by others who may be long gone and who’ll remain anonymous, lies on a simple, vulgar TV set, propped up just so, propped up for the spectators to see, for the people who’ll probably realize too late it’ll all have been a bit much, it’ll all have slid a tad too far, how could we have let everything go this far, they’ll ask, once they inevitably find themselves in my position, in my predicament, about to eat a god, about to probably die for a reason that’ll, at some point, at some moment, escape us all, ideally, hopefully, blissfully.

I have to eat its flesh, of course, and describe its varying tastes and try to recognize what type of god it is so I can then describe it to the hungry crowd; A dinner and a show, for the people, to shut them up, to keep them from thinking, to keep them from moving and revolting.

I can see that it’s rotting even though it’s still alive, bed sores and hurts and pains and skin sheared, suffering silently yet diligently, almost enthusiastically, covered in linens and down and feathers and hair, the god of beasts and fowl - how beautiful it must have been, how it must have galivandered and thought and hoped and dreamed and jumped around in meadows of absolute beauty like nothing ever witnessed, nothing we could have ever understood or withheld, not in one lifetime.

It tries to move, understanding, in some way, that this will be its end, certainly wishing it might be.

“Careful now, of how you look,” the showrunners say. I know this, of course, the televisions now so crisp that people watching “actually can feel they're there.”

“Smile.” - an injunction, an image of my daughter - pow, blam.

No feeling.

Perhaps a few.

The cameras’ red lights turn on, we’re live. Like always, and like a lot of us do from time to time, I yell out, gargle out a call to arms: “We’re MORE than them! We don't HAVE to live like this!”, half believing, choked, snot chaotically coming out of my nose.

The audience laughs and cheers. This is what they came for. My daughter dies and they scream in laughter, our plight entertainment. I know that, I play to it.

But there is a part of me that hopes, every time - what if the wind changes, carries a new scent; No more tears or blood, or unsoaped skin, or courage destroyed.

The lights, the sounds, the hunger: “HEeeeEEEERRrree he COMES!”

A thousand eyes turn to me, a hundred of which are the god’s, in what I imagine to be pleading. A rumble, felt more than heard, yet clearly coming from it, from what was once a mountain and forests and suns and perhaps, just perhaps, if only, if perhaps, whole galaxies, trying to say something, eyes sad yet devastatingly understanding as I lean in, as I wonder: Will it move, as I end it?

“I don’t understand…” I whisper, whimper and falter, a crown on its head, never on mine, feast for the poor - at least I eat, at least I satiate and adorn the jewels it discards like bones, its golden meat and crystal fruit, laid on a table large with cutleries sharp and fine, on tablecloths colorful and fine, ever so sorry, so so sorry I’ll never actually be able to fully let it know how much I would have rather done anything else at all, run with it and frolicked in the worlds it’s seen and created, for example, if only.

If only.

A tear falls, expertly lingering on my left cheek, then on both of them, too long, so long, long enough for the world to see. Working the crowd, they call it. Despair, to me.

I take a bite.

Then another.

My daughter screams, from wherever she is. Smile, darling, it’ll be you soon. Practice, put your teeth together, just so. Lips just so, cheeks and eyes just so.

Will I myself become a god, to save this world? Or am I just to be game, for everyone to feast upon, in turn?

“HHEEEEEEERRRREEE HEEEEEE IIIISSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!” screams they, yet again, yet always.

The god cries out so loudly my ears bleed.

I now see what it was, a beauty beyond comprehension, a violent omnipotence, benevolent, multi-armed, multi-limbed and -eyed and feathered and haired and eyed, legged and armed, a luscious creature reflecting all the stars that ever were and ever would be, its voice as loud as a soft whisper and a spring’s awakening, a world’s bloom.

Another bite.

I sadly, derangedly think: Perhaps with ketchup? Perhaps with mayonnaise or some sort of sauce, something that goes with tears and regret, with pickles and onions and vinegars and dissonances and utter, utter sadness?

The crowd cheers.

It tastes eerily good, the god.

Sweet, sour.

Not too salty.

Calm.

I manage a smirk, as I implode for the cameras, for my daughter, so she’ll know what to do when she has to do the same, one day, to get food or clothes or shelter, or worse.

“Smile, darling, as the world engulfs us, as we eat our saviors for entertainment.”

Smile, darling. It’s all we’ve got.