Colossus - Thomas Hornigold
The night is young and crisp and cold. These hours belong to me: when darkness seeps, becoming impenetrable, amongst the shrubs and trees. I will pluck the earthworms from the ground and rend them, toying with my prey for a while, before snaffling them up with snaggled-teeth and claws. The new home I have found has the stench of the brown, silky slikers, but the sliker has departed, and the home is mine. A korooraloo emits a mournful cry in the trees overhead, and I am watchful, conscious of the theft of what is rightfully mine.
In the act of hunting, in the act of eating, I am lost. All higher thoughts, all other thoughts obliterated. I do not think about my purpose. I am hungry-or-not-hungry, eating-or-not-eating, I have a mate or I do not. I am running, or I am stumbling in forage, or I am still. There is a queer, unnatural brightness, or there is the gloopy, delicious, worm-ridden mud of the dark. The wits among you might accuse my thinking of being monochromatic. You are the ones who choose to clutter and pollute yourselves with things beyond the necessary. I am in tune, at one with the great undulations of the Universe, oscillating with them, and I am free. Can you lay claim to such serenity?
The irregular rumbling, the puzzled gait is like a struggling heartbeat. I do not speak, but I feel vibrations in the ground: this is my language, my tongue. There is no rhythm to the footfalls of the giant that approaches me. His scent is masked by a light breeze, and so I am nose-blind, I must rely on the sense of touch and the rustling of leaves alone to gauge the size of the creature, and the direction of its approach. He is a clumsy colossus, and this is not a world he understands.
Suddenly, a wailing sound emits from the creature, loud enough that I can hear it. I have no concept of music, which is probably a good thing, because it seems clear that the colossus doesn’t, either. This is not a sound that is serenely floating on the tides and currents of the Universe. This is a sound that rends apart the air and terrifies leaves out of trees. This is a most unnatural and unholy sound, and with this ill wind behind me, I take flight.
Author’s Note:
This passes for a light-hearted entry. I encountered and attempted to befriend a badger in the gardens of my college last year. (Lots of people were very sceptical as to whether the badger existed, or was just some kind of self-indulgent metaphor for exam stress or emotional instability. But it was real, and also just a badger. I’m not going to hallucinate a badger. Hallucinations should at least be interesting. Apparently they can live with foxes under duress, under the kind of principles of mutually assured destruction if they were ever to fight that probably cements all kinds of cohabitation arrangements. So maybe this one was living a sort of sitcom-like existence, trapped in a loveless odd-couple type marriage: listen, I don’t like you, and you don’t like me, but we have to learn to get along!)
The badger always seemed to be there at the most apposite of moments, but I imagine a degree of that was probably projection on my part. I think this type of confused, disdainful attitude is closer to what the badger might actually think about the lumbering oaf who tried to sing to it.
I think I need to be more careful before I start forming emotional attachments to unusual, earthworm-obsessed, nocturnal and skittish wildlife, but if everyone took that attitude, it’d probably be bad for me, too. Be nice to the next badger you see. If you stand downwind of them, you can get really close.
The night is young and crisp and cold. These hours belong to me: when darkness seeps, becoming impenetrable, amongst the shrubs and trees. I will pluck the earthworms from the ground and rend them, toying with my prey for a while, before snaffling them up with snaggled-teeth and claws. The new home I have found has the stench of the brown, silky slikers, but the sliker has departed, and the home is mine. A korooraloo emits a mournful cry in the trees overhead, and I am watchful, conscious of the theft of what is rightfully mine.
In the act of hunting, in the act of eating, I am lost. All higher thoughts, all other thoughts obliterated. I do not think about my purpose. I am hungry-or-not-hungry, eating-or-not-eating, I have a mate or I do not. I am running, or I am stumbling in forage, or I am still. There is a queer, unnatural brightness, or there is the gloopy, delicious, worm-ridden mud of the dark. The wits among you might accuse my thinking of being monochromatic. You are the ones who choose to clutter and pollute yourselves with things beyond the necessary. I am in tune, at one with the great undulations of the Universe, oscillating with them, and I am free. Can you lay claim to such serenity?
The irregular rumbling, the puzzled gait is like a struggling heartbeat. I do not speak, but I feel vibrations in the ground: this is my language, my tongue. There is no rhythm to the footfalls of the giant that approaches me. His scent is masked by a light breeze, and so I am nose-blind, I must rely on the sense of touch and the rustling of leaves alone to gauge the size of the creature, and the direction of its approach. He is a clumsy colossus, and this is not a world he understands.
Suddenly, a wailing sound emits from the creature, loud enough that I can hear it. I have no concept of music, which is probably a good thing, because it seems clear that the colossus doesn’t, either. This is not a sound that is serenely floating on the tides and currents of the Universe. This is a sound that rends apart the air and terrifies leaves out of trees. This is a most unnatural and unholy sound, and with this ill wind behind me, I take flight.
Author’s Note:
This passes for a light-hearted entry. I encountered and attempted to befriend a badger in the gardens of my college last year. (Lots of people were very sceptical as to whether the badger existed, or was just some kind of self-indulgent metaphor for exam stress or emotional instability. But it was real, and also just a badger. I’m not going to hallucinate a badger. Hallucinations should at least be interesting. Apparently they can live with foxes under duress, under the kind of principles of mutually assured destruction if they were ever to fight that probably cements all kinds of cohabitation arrangements. So maybe this one was living a sort of sitcom-like existence, trapped in a loveless odd-couple type marriage: listen, I don’t like you, and you don’t like me, but we have to learn to get along!)
The badger always seemed to be there at the most apposite of moments, but I imagine a degree of that was probably projection on my part. I think this type of confused, disdainful attitude is closer to what the badger might actually think about the lumbering oaf who tried to sing to it.
I think I need to be more careful before I start forming emotional attachments to unusual, earthworm-obsessed, nocturnal and skittish wildlife, but if everyone took that attitude, it’d probably be bad for me, too. Be nice to the next badger you see. If you stand downwind of them, you can get really close.