The beast was on the side of town where you could smoke cigarettes in coffee shops. There was a jazz so miniscule that if the sound were a nat you wouldn’t even swat it from your food. 

She, long striped socks with cuffed capri jeans and a sweaty cold green drink in her hand with mixed match nail polish of pink blue green blue green pink red red blue black all chipped, preferred to be called the Seal. She always said she preferred that to *beep* because she was known for closing and being a spectacular swimmer. 

To me in that cigarette coffee shop of distant like non nuance bug jazz, she was just a girl reading an old book in a modern swing. All I wanted, with every fiber of my being, with every pulse that my memory had forgotten was the source of it’s color, with all the atmospheres that were and weren’t in the room was to be the book in her hand. No I wanted to be the less than that. I want to be the page she was reading. No even less. I wanted to be the ink of her word that her eyes mind sung in a voice that she didn’t even know was listening to. I wanted nothing more than to be the monster she read about. 

The beast was on the side of the country where the truth is as passive and underhanded as the lies. So much so that saying, “I love you.” or “I appreciate you.” was an exhaustion of the soul that the black baptist women could only describe with an unapologetic “OoooooOOoooOOoooWeeeee” and the produce aisle stepford wife gate keepers of success affirm with a “Bless their heart.”.

The beast was alone in a side of the country where the humidity sweat more than the ribs and the only thing slipped faster then the ambitious boy on a mossy stone down by the creek was your reputation if you didn’t get in line. A difficult thing for the beast who earned the name “The Beast” for never conforming. 

Like Frankenstein’s monster he had been ran out of town a few times. So it was not alarming that he had been pushed so far to the margins that he had no choice but to scram.

His physical appearance had changed quite a bit. He was fatter and happier before. He was now strong and filled with pent up testosterone and rage. Women and men, alike, were interested in mating with the beast. He wasn’t entirely uninterested....

but he was definitely in the drama that coexisted in a tight nit community that associated social value with unclear standards of piety. How confusing that statement is how confusing the issue at hand was. 

Such a concept was of never much interest. After a year in the holy unholy town of gossip passion scrutiny and beauty, the beast was less concerned about what behavior made someone pious and more about if people were inherently pious. He was finger painting once and wrote down, “Is all action holy action?”. 

For the most part such questions went over his head. In profound ability to doubt matched with a shortsighted ability to grasp the larger picture. His main concern was making sure he had food in his belly and a book to read. His preferences were either picture books, comic books, or Dostoyevsky. Nothing else made any sense to him.

On the eve that he decided it was best for him to move on from this town that poked and prodded at his temperance, he decided to go for a stroll in the park. Some began to think he was virtuous. Others that he was the devil. Either way, such an unbothered disposition could not be trusted. 

He walked and basked in the nostalgia of a solitude that once tormented him. As though, the next venture into an even more solitary state wouldn’t be the same as the alienation he felt in the malady of local southern politics. With all of it’s melodrama and underhandedly impactful consequences. 

On his walk, he found a tiny bird. Where he was from last, a town that wasn’t this town that had a part of town where you could smoke cigarettes in coffee shops, the birds would never let you get that close. He bent down and reached his hand out. The bird, as if it were what it was supposed to do, trotted gently into his hand. He held the bird with an open palm at eye level. It looked at him and then shut it’s eyes. 

Upon further inspection, the beast was able to discern that the bird had broken it’s foot. It was a young bird. Perhaps it had tried to jump from the nest too early. 

The beast had some bird feed for a birdhouse back at his home. He walked with the bird in his palm the way a priest in penance would. Clasped hands and a concentrated pace. 

He rested the bird upon the bird feed, to no avail. The beast was patient and confident that eventually, the bird would need to either eat or begin to fly. He closely inspected the subtle movement of the bird.

After some time the only option was to take the bird to the vet hospital. The bird was singing constantly, but didn’t seem alarmed. The beast, taking a liking to the little chick and it taking a liking to him, decided to prop the bird up on to his shoulder. To his surprise the bird didn’t flinch, but it did let out a tiny bird grunt and a droplet of shit. 

The same streets he had walked down in solitude a multitude of times had a distinct glow. A glow intrinsic to the sentiment that there was a fucking bird resting on his shoulder. 

When he did finally decide to approach her, he asked her about the mind-body problem. He thought the fact that he knew what it was and it’s relevance to Mary Shelly’s novel would give him the upper hand. For the beast had drawn few conclusions in his life, but one was that someone reading in a cigarette smoke light like nat jazz coffee shop was most likely a sapiosexual. She humbled him with her response.

The vets were on their lunch breaks and were alarmed by the bird’s tranquility on his shoulder. The bird did make an unsuccessful attempt to fly and when landing, the beast and the nurses agreed that his name ought to be Augustus. But the beast just called him Albert.

He picked up Albert and placed him back on his shoulder. He watched as one of the nurses ate a piece of bread with hummus. 

He made his way back down the road, but decided to stop at another park on the way home. He grabbed Albert and through him up in the sky a number of times. 

The beast thought as he approached thirty and the increasing prospect that he was only meant for he, that this tiny bird might be the closest thing he ever gets to having a companion. That birth certificate Augustus, goes by Albert, is the closest thing to a child the beast may ever have. 

He launches Albert the way King James does the ashes of his enemies. Repeatedly, in the hopes that those tiny wings will take flight. When finally…

“Is this how you normally pick up girls?”

“If you mean, normally, like something habitually then the only thing I do habitually is not die.”

“Oh, sooooo, you’re one of those particular ones.”

“I prefer the term intentional.”

“Yah, you’re particular as shit.”

“I’ve been told I am an acquired taste. I’ll grant you that.”

“Ugh, what was your question? I am approaching the last few pages.”

“Will you approach me when you are done?”

“If you ask me the same question?”

“I’ll be smoking in that corner delegated for the dead.”, the beast pointed to the corner of the coffee shop in the part of town where you could smoke cigarettes inside where people were to drink bourbon in styrofoam cups. “I’ll be reading this book.”, he pointed to the cover of the book he was holding. It was The Valley Below by Ruben Encontrado. 

“Fascinating cover. What is it about?”

“It’s like Anna Karenina, but they ride the trains instead.”, this was a lie from the beast, but he got the Frankenstein reading striped tube socked girl to smile. 

“What should I call you?”

“People just call me, The Beast.”

“The Beast?”

“Don’t even remember what my name sounds like in my mother’s voice anymore.”

“Well Beast, my name is *Beep*, but everyone calls me Seal.”

“Seal?”

“Because I close and am a great swimmer.”

On the fifth launch, Albert looked like he was about to take off. The momentum from the thrown and slowed down. His little wings fluttered and he momentarily traveled up. Only for his wings to serve as a fast moving parachute. Slowing down his crash course until impact. The Beast wasn’t alarmed by the fall. He had watched the little bird crash land a handful of times now. But this time Albert had landed in some tall grass surrounded by brush.

What did the vets say?, the Beast asked himself. He found himself trying to repeat the instructions of their conversations, but for some reason all he could recall was the distinct shade of beige that was the hummus upon lunch break bread. Ultimately, he decided that the little bird was in nature where natural things belong. 

But for the sake of peace of mind he decided to quickly search the are he was in. The Beast was fairly young, but could not help the habit of speaking the words he was searching.

“Are. There. Snakes. In. This….”

The search was an unequivocal yes. The Beast felt a tremendous pang of guilt. It was just garden snakes what could garden snakes even eat. 

“What. Do. Garden. Snakes. Eat….”

Grasshoppers. Earthworms.

“Small eggs and small birds. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”

The Beast knew what it was like to be abandoned. He would not give up on Augustus the way so many had given up on him. He cleared as much of the brush as he could in search of the silent bird that while on his shoulder would not shut up. 

“Mhmmm.”

“So, what’s the verdict?”

“I obviously knew the story. Movies and pop culture.”

“Yah, but what about the book.”, she tucked her hair behind her ear and scrunched her brow.

A black woman walked in with a fedora, purple suit, and hands ornamented with rings. She snapped her fingers and viking looking security guard placed a cigarillo in her mouth. A Mexican woman with a tattoo on each forearm of katanas lit it for her. She took off her jacket and the viking took it. He was wearing a tool belt. In one pocket he had a walkie talkie, another a pocket sized copy of Robert Frost poems, and in the hammer loop he had a hatchet with a tactical grip. 

“You want me to be honest?”

“Why would I want someone to lie?”

“It made me hate the day I was born.”

The Beast and The Seal just looked at each other. She sat in a bar stool next to him. He pulled her chair closer to him. 

“So, do you feel that the mind and body are separate things?”

“I don’t think that is what Frankenstein is about?”

“What else would it be about?”

When clearing the brush wasn’t working, The Beast remembered something Steve Irwin had said on a forgotten living room floor. Begotten, beaten, and born in chains the beast thought it best to let things that wanted to break him; break him. The clear conclusion was to clear his calendar and accept the calamity of his circumstance. Destruction had become his disposition, but in the disillusionment of a dead writer’s demon he could not be defeated. Elation and exhaustions were seemingly equal enterprises as was the experience of this enterprise others deemed to be existence. Fully fatigued and flustered by the fratenous nature of this futile Friday; he deemed it a fulfilling failure to have fumbled a friend and moved forward in the fight to find Albert. God-willing, with gusto and grit he would not give up on his little garson. 

The Beast decided to sit by the shore of a current of tall southern grass. Half pressed by his inquiry, the other half trapped in the ebb and flow of a valley wind. 

Trying to sync his breathing with that of the movement of glass, he perched his ear upon the stoop of a potential bird cry. It was unclear how long he listened to the silence until finally, Augustus called out for his mother. The Beast sprung to his feet.

“C’mon Albert! Give me another cry! I won’t leave you for the snakes. I’ve got you buddy.”

He slowly moved through the glass. Circling in on the sound of a buried bird cry. The Beast wished so badly that he was born a bat. With the inherent instinct to be guided by his ears instead of his eyes which were of no use to him at the moment. 

“I think, it’s just about being an outsider.That’s almost like a Marxist critique. The nature of class, alienation, and placement in a society that operates upon a different set of standards to that of the monster. The monster representing what in that instance?”

“Kafka’s cockroach?”, the Beast smiled at his intrusive thought outburst. She continued, “I don’t know if I have had enough time to digest it in such a critical way.”

“But you liked it?”

“It’s a classic. Hard not to like something that changes as much as it changes the nature of change.”, she took a long drag of her cigarette and he took a swig of straight hypnotic out of a stirfoam cup. What a strange part of town.

“He is just brought to life from a bunch of dead parts.”

“So?”, she twirled her hair and eyes the woman in the fedora. The Mexican with katana forearms locked eyes with The Beast. The smoke was jazz music before. It was trouble now. 

“I feel like she is definitely saying something about mortality and even what it means to be human. Is a person just a person because they were born or was something else required?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I don’t know. I had to read it in high school and I remember feeling like Frankenstein’s monster was more human than the villagers ever could have been.”.

The woman in the fedora whispered something to the viking. He took the opened the copy of Robert Frost poems and tore a page out. He folded it into an origami swan, with such speed it looked as though he was trying to solve a rubic’s cube in record time. He then handed the swan to the barista bar tender. She brought it over The Beast and the Swan, accompanied with a negroni in a styrofoam cup and a blueberry muffin. 

The Beast was circling in on Augustus. Every time he felt as though he was getting closer the next chirp would send him in a different direction. He decided to get back up on the the bank of the tall grass and wait patiently for the mud to settle. 

Albert began to chirp, again. He waited and lined his body in a straight line with the sound. It had been forty five minutes since he had seen his little friend. The sky was big and didn’t have a cloud in sight. You couldn’t help, but wear the humidity like a coat. 

“Do you wan’t me to take point?”

“There is no talking our way out of this.”

“You know how they operate. It’s either service or servitude for safety. I’d rather fight for my freedom then be in chains.”

“I can take him, but he is armed.”

“I saw.”

“What’s the play?”

“Kiss me.”

 

“ALBERT!”

The Beast cleared the last bit of brush and saw his little friend resting at the root of some grass. He reached his hand out and Augustus walked into his palm as if it were his royal chariot. The Beast danced, cheered, and made an utter fool of himself. Once, he had gotten his little friend back he remembered what the vets had said. Try to return him around where you found him. He began to make his way back in that direction. 

He decided to prop him back on to his shoulder. The terror and fear of having lost his little buddy had subsided. His life had a glossy eyed sitcom beauty to it. As he made his way down the sidewalk a bunch of school girls passed by him. One of them said, “I like your bird.”.

The Beast realized this was the first time someone had initiated a conversation with him in over a year. He turned towards the school girls and asked if they would like to say hi. They did and he removed Albert from his shoulder. 

“He is still a baby so be gentle. His name is Augustus, but you can just call him Albert.”

“Um, mister. This bird is a girl.”. When they were done petting Albert they parted ways. The Beast continued down the sidewalk entertaining various perspectives in which Augustus or Albert could be a gender neutral name. 

He leaned in and kissed The Seal. She pooled saliva on her tongue and passed it to him like an egg yolk. He then shoved his tongue under hers. He scooped a small SD card from her mouth and swallowed it. When they pulled away there was a string of spit connecting their lips. She then smacked him hard with an open palm. 

When the beast had gotten back to the sidewalk he had found Alberta at he could not find a bush to place her under. There were a variety of trees that he didn’t think to check when he first found the bird. He put Augusta on the floor and began climbing the trees. In one of them, he found a nest with broken shells in it. When he hoped down, a group of local soccer players walked by laughing. 

“There is that fucking freak. Doing some freak shit, again.”. 

The beast picked up Alberta. Placed her on his shoulder and climbed the tree again. He placed her in the nest. As he watched her settle in he thought, I am gonna move to the outskirts of town. 

When he hoped back down, he was reminded of his solitude and that he was on the side of the country where the truth is as passive and underhanded as the lies. 

“Beast….?”, he heard a familiar voice say to him. When he turned he saw The Seal. She was wearing a pink eye patch that had a drawing of a vagina with teeth on it. She covered her mouth with a hand that wore a leather glove and was missing an index finger. Strapped to her back was a battle axe. Behind her stood a woman in a fedora, The Viking, and the Mexican woman with katana arms. The Seal approached him and handed him an origami swan made from an Emerson poem. 

Alberta jumped from the nest and a hawk swooped in. It clasped her in it’s talons and flew away. 

Fin.