The Great Grand Stand

Cedar and old dog piss wraps around our scene. A dropped feather could fill the space with sound. A round table covered in a white cloth and a ring of candles sits in the middle of several individuals. In the flickering glow, Robert DeMois could see their shapes, some being small, tall, and in various widths. Yet there faces had lost their features. All the curves of the flesh were there, but gone were the blemishes and crevices that life paints with. Shadows pooled in the hollows of their cheeks and eyes. If not for the occasional twitch, Robert almost thought he was staring at masks!

But he was not uncomfortable by this featurelessness. Robert knew it was the time for the Breaking...

"Is the Locked awake?"

...the Unbounding...

"Yes, Grand Stand."

...the Flight. There wasn't a need for emotion anymore. Robert looked around the at his congregation, one by one, seeing if any definings were left. Yet, each and everyone looked as bare as nothing. Not even their bodies could be made out in the candle-light. Robert chuckled, maybe he was amongst floating masks.

"Retrieve the Locked."

"Yes, Grand Stand."

A mask to Robert's right swayed for a moment. A whimpering meowing began, high-pitched and in short-bursts. A shadow passed above the candled-altar. In the mirk, white paws dangled. One ink-black hand suspended it.

"Release it."

"Yes, Grand Stand."

The black hand dropped the pawed creature. It landed with a thump, then a protestful meow.

The kitten's small frame was hard to discern from the rest of the room. Save for its white paws, the kitten was completely black. It meowed once again in distaste, then softly in confusion. It looked about the members, giving one more timid word as it settled on Robert.

"Folks, yolks, and wondering blokes." Robert raised his hands up to his shoulders. The masks brightened forward from the beckoning. The Kitten laid on its paws, watching.

"I have thought of a event like this my whole life. As a boy, I hated the world. I hated the way the days got hot and the snow in winter never stayed. I hated the routine of school and the inevitable end to the weekend. Summer camps, sports, games and fun. It vexed and rotted my early days. I hated so much of what kid's life encompasses that I wished I would grow up in my sleep. Only to realize when I was older, that what hated so much back then was the best that it would be. I wrapped myself in that hatred for everything from my young age and glue it shut by the time I was out of college. I wished that the world would burn and I with it. Nothing could bring me to see the good in things. I was well shrouded in my hate."

"I had Locked myself away."

"It wasn't till I brought myself to the depravity of the poorest hermit that I saw what I had done. Or, what I thought I had done. Because it was soon after my realization that I came to another. It wasn't me that had Locked myself away, but the other Locked around me. The teachers, the parents, the friends, the mailman, and the bugs crawling in your yard. They each take their woes and thoughts and meld them onto you, binding you in their misery, trapping you in their predicament. The Locked take your freeness and bind you in their calamity."

The mask to Robert's right sways again and a long object is placed next to the Grand Stand.

"Holding you away from your own way."

Robert reaches down to his side.

"But now we set ourselves free, break ourselves from them, unchain our frames, and fly out to where we want to be!"

With both hands, Robert lifted the object high above his head, leaning back with its weight. Robert burned in his stomach as his heart pumped. Like an angry man about to explode, Robert felt himself move with ease and urgency. He looked down at the Kitten. An average form to those outside of his congregation, but a Locked within. The binder of his state. The cementer of his enslavement. The wing-clipper to his life. The masks watched, Robert glared.

The Kitten hunched into itself.

The Sledgehammer came down.

A wet crunch filled the space and stuck. Like an echo that never ended, Robert could feel a light pressure all over himself that wouldn't subside. He shivered then reeled. Tossing aside the object so as to rub and pat himself all over. A personification of his life was gone, but now a maddening sensation remained.

He looked about his congregation in, in, in panic! What was this feeling? he looked to his left and to his right. To his right was his lieutenant, his first member. Surely they would see his need for aid.

But there was no recognition from his friend. Yet the wide eyes, agape mouth, pulled back body was recognized by Robert.

"Wh-What's the matter?"

Robert looked around the congregation for an answer but was faced with more puzzlement. What were once masks, were now faces, aghast and terrified faces. Accusing, shrieking, crying faces that lacked the focus of before. The faith of before. The magic!

They were everywhere.

Nurses, doctors, teachers, coaches, mailmen, garbage men, wives, and fathers. No where insight was unseeming masks but- but- people! People of all walks of life and station. They came for something more and thought they had. Now they looked about in horror from their hopes.

Robert felt nauseous. At one moment he was the leader of a new mind, surrounded by those willing to rise above all preconceived notions. Now he was the center of a calamity, not a revolution.

"But it was supposed to be the end to what was wrong in my life." Robert stated to no one. He looked to his right. "It was meant to be-"

"Holy shit, oh God, oh GOD, we killed a cat!"