Trade

Baxter is the notorious villain unfolding the deck of cards for a deadly gamble. The best and worst of me is clamped into a metal table alongside my sore appendages; he asks simple humane questions for an inhumane world, the damned inquire more.

"You think we are mice?"

"If psychologically possible we may all be mice in a peculiar way. Of Mice and Men...."

"Yes of men who beget mice as the same so be it the man is the mouse."

Our blind eyes open; he pulls a disgusting greasy lever similar to a roller coaster pedal emitting an indigestion burp, the table converges into one.

"So I won't get to punch him in the stomach again?"

Baxter humors for another's sentimentality as his own, an admirable quality.

"Okay just this once before they catch me...."

"To put you back in your cage...."

"Exactly......"

"Then I guess we are in the same cage together."

His jolly muscular fingers switch a trigger unsealing ye olde into depeche mode.

"I need to make sure it's him that lays next to me for the burial before we go to whence we came...."

I suppose Baxter's humor is decent.

"Make sure for me too!"

Before I prepare my abdomen shared with reptilian belly crawlers, he winds his elbowed fist straight into my empty guts; I spew a sturdy stutter of cocoa butter.

"It's him!!"

He lays upon the table; I stumble to the same. Baxter pretends a cough; I make the face of a caveman beaten by his bat. Baxter lowers his chin performing a robotic thing without contemplating detrimental pain.

"Whatever happens to him do it to me too."

"Yes we will go down the same gutter as rats together searching for a home."

"I shan't bite a rat."

"I shan't either...."

An answer gurgles from a teary throat; this is out of control.

"Every mental disposition will be similar. The difference will be appearance."

Heavy loafer sliding foot steps unevenly walk; Cole Haan accompanies Kenneth Cole to a funeral march.

"Hey......."

"Yes...."

"We will trade places...."

"You want to switch for reasonable doubt..."

"Then we will find each other again to switch back."

"After we switch back it will never be the same again."

"Precisely......the world they create will never be ours so let us take it apart as they undo ourselves."

We listen carefully for his entrance; a motorized three wheeled figurine bares indifference. Familiar voices of exaggerated young women beckons our unwanted attention; the mental masquerade shall begin.

"Now we sleep..."

"We will awaken soon...."

"I will run."

"I will run as well."

"When will we meet again?"

"Where we left of I suppose."

"I can't wait to punch you to make sure."

"I can't wait to hear you whine....."

He laughs a barrel stumbling satire.

"What in bloody hell would I whine about?"

"Not being able to see your wife again until I make sure you are her man."

As the cattle herds over a hill we sense one is growing animosity for the farmer; horns spill a river of blood.