Oh, beast of burden, carry me
My eyes drift open, drift slowly to the left, drift into the grey sky. My body feels just as leaden, yet I am sucked in by the showers. Such a welcome sight. Oh, I wish I could. How I truly wish I could.
Back centre. There’s a beast of burden denting the smooth covers at the end of my bed, watching me. Warning me. I can’t kick it off, though I try and I try. It gives me its knowing stare, the one that instils fear. Rigid fear about the smallest, most inconsequential sounds, visions and sensations. When did I start dreading the opening of a plain, unremarkable door to step into daylight?
The beast of burden offers me its back, an easy way out for the coward I can so easily be. I launch myself at its neck to strangle, but it’s all over bar the dust and particles before I even have the chance to push my thumbs tightly together. For which, in truth, I’m grateful.
This early morning visitation over, I soak up a few precious minutes. I pull the covers up and into a neat, precise line below my lashes, blinking a single salty raindrop trail into cheap and tawdry cotton, and curse the fact that mere physicality has made me hate this weather. I can’t even see the wet trails on the window, yet I know what’s there, outside. I close my eyes, too scared to shiver as I am sprayed by the sound of the water slipping damp and puddled under the car tyres taking the bleary and the blank due north to their jobs in the City.
I conjure up the beast of burden once more. Its knowing stare returns, more disparaging than before now that the creature has me where it wants me. I give in, and whisper to it to help me rise, beseech it to guide me over the soaked stones. Pave my way, please. It agrees. It can’t do anything else but agree, because for these moments I am not my own person, just a bundle to be transported. The animal will do its duty without complaint, content merely to inhale the sickening scent of victory in its nostrils.