i love you king kong
It was high up. Going up to my floor in the lift added a whole five minutes to my commute. And when I got there it was all hotshot lawyers and high heels and pencil skirts and New York on line one and a hundred words per minute, and I, the lowly filing clerk, would get carpet burns from being on my hands and knees, scrabbling in the lower regions of the metal alphabet jungle.
The building was supposed to be earthquake proof. Oh, that used to make me laugh. In the event of a quake, the building was designed to use its height, to sway like a reed in the wind. I could never get over that. I mean, how stupid can you get?
And then, when there was an earthquake, because that’s what we thought it was, although it wasn’t in the end – but anyway, when it happened, the building shook and splintered and broke up like a stick of dry, dead wood. Everyone screamed blue murder and scattered, or threw themselves to the floor, but not me. I was on the floor anyway, in the aisle between Zbigniew and Zoloft, between the great gunmetal grey cabinets, facing the windows.
And so I watched the enormous fist punch into the side of the building, and those fingers like great plump leather sofas uncurl into the office, and the tip of the index finger land right before me, almost touching.
You don’t think, in moments like that. You just act. I pulled myself up on the leathery pad of the finger, and slid down into the soft cushioning palm. And the hand closed up around me, firmly but gently, and carried me away. It was like the hand of God. I think I fainted.
It carried me out of the city in a few leaps, and strode towards the sea. Helicopters buzzed around its head, and with its free hand it swatted them away like flies, all the while tenderly holding on to me. Some of the helicopters flew into its fist, trying to liberate me. Men in bulky uniforms dangled from the underside of the copters, screaming at me hysterically. I waved them away. I wanted to scream: go away, get away from me! But I knew they wouldn’t listen. Men like that never do.
We shook off the helicopters after a while and by this time we were in the sea. It swam, holding me up out of the water. From my crow’s nest I saw dolphins and dugongs, and felt the salt spray on my face. After only a little while, we arrived in another country, a peaceful place.
It lay back against a hill, and opened its hand, and I stood up, shyly, on its palm. I loved its big gentle face. It had enormous watery eyes. It let me climb up its ear, across its forehead. When it laughed, its whole body shook. I thought I could sleep in the soft fur at the crook of its neck. I would live on fruit and berries, and at night I would climb up into its hand and tell of my adventures, and sleep in the warm nest of its fur.
But the men couldn’t leave us alone. That night they came, stealthy in fatigues, and snatched me away, dragging me into the belly of a plane, even though I fought them off, even though I told them I wanted to stay. They had tied the beast with steel cables and it roared and cried, but couldn’t break free. I knew it would have come for me, if it could. I knew it would save me again. It loved me. Why couldn’t they just leave us alone?
gingerbread
The whole world looks like sucked candy. Hard candy, pitted with holes, softening under a rough tongue. The sugar cathedral dissolves in the rain; icing spires, piped up to heaven, collapse into sludge that drifts to the gutter. The soft gutter. The sticky road.
Gretel breathes. In for a count of three, hold, let it out slowly. It isn’t working. Her feet sink into warm fudge. She panics, she always does, can’t help it. In her deepest unconscious she has never left the gingerbread house. She is still there, licking the walls.
Instinctively, she checks her pockets for crumbs. But she has left them behind, deliberately, on the instructions of her therapist. Trust in reality, he said. But how can she? Even he admits, the grim Herr Doktor, that reality is a confection, no a construction, no, confection is right; it’s all in their minds, in their mouths, did he say? Reality is a confection in the mouth.
Would it hurt to break off a little in her hand, a little to eat? The soft, chewy corner of a road sign, or the wing mirror of a shiny toffee car. You can’t eat this world, says Herr Doktor, leaning on his striped candy cane. But finally, Gretel thinks, she must. Even this world, dry and hard and sour, metal and concrete and dirt; in the end she will eat it all. Every last bite.
