The enormity of my desire disgusts me; pollock

[rapt]

there is a dream in the space between the hammer and the nail ------ the dream of about-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream ------------ but the nail will take the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever It is dangerous. It is dangerous because he does not realize he is a mirror, that he – a pale gold boy (they even look alike) reflects a monster. Who knows what it is, exactly – the wide eyes, the tendency to stand alone and say I am never safe to strangers even as fear blooms in his stomach like flowers in springtime. But mirrors show the worst parts, sometimes, and they shatter all too easily. All this, and he should run. The basest part of his brain cries it out, whimpers it as his heartbeat stares up and he thinks about the gaze he can’t meet. He thinks about the smile he sees on the horned man’s lips, a smile like a wolf in a fairytale. (I’ll eat you up, I love you so.) He speaks of Rapt’s mother. Calls her irresponsible, which he supposes she is. (When he is older, he will know this for sure, will wonder why some hint of motherly instinct did not cry out inside her.) He calls her cruel, which she is not. She is the making of cruelty, if anything. The twisted scar of her face, the flightiness, all of it like a beacon of things she once knew. The man’s voice is almost kind. I decided to become mighty. Rapt is not mighty. He is small and strange and left alone. (A mirror.) But here is a choice. Here is the snake with the apple. Here are the pomegranate seeds spilling juice down the chin. Just take a bite, they all say, think of the possibilities. A smarter boy might have questioned such an offer. Might have fled from a cloven-hooved thing, thinking him for what he surely is: a devil. A smarter boy would know his mother is miles from wicked. Rapt is not a smart boy. Instead he steps closer like he wants to touch him. A false idol, and he, the hapless believer. “Yes,” he says. He bites into the apple, the pomegranates. “Show me,” he says. His heart pounds. “I’ll be so good,” he promises. rapt caius x else

this got weird