Lil Dean and his Hope

Lil Dean had a hope. But recently, he is under the impression that he has lost it. To be perfectly honest, he has not lost it. He let go of it and it was torn from him. Not taken, mind you but torn. You may ask how can anything tear away from us something which one gives up? It can be done and has been done. The answer is simple: something that matters a lot but has no way of becoming reality. Dean was a curious bystander as the action was committed with force but with a good and generous demeanor. It was for the best, the puzzle master said. It was for the best.

How so? What is the good to be born out of this? Lil Dean does not know. Perhaps he will never know. The mechanics of this yarn of crushing tale is not open to him because the puzzle master has yanked the truth and held a stubborn prisoner along with it, his hope. The puzzle master, she is love yet she is the enemy. Lil Dean knows all this but of the truth, he knows nowt.

So he lies in bed, day and night. But it is at night that he hears things. It sounds like a plastic bag rustling. Like something is moving. He turns and illuminates his room with the strobe light that he keeps by his side. Nothing. He observes, peering into the dark like a stealthy jackal prowling. Still nothing. And so he lies. Still, again. And he slips into slumber. But there, it goes again. The rustling sounds again. This time, it is tentative and shy as if it senses his stirring. He awakes. His memory tells him: yes, you did hear something, you swine! And so he repeats the routine. Illuminate, nothing. Lay ambush, nothing.

The next night, he does not even sleep. He just lies there and listens. It rustles fervently. More and more. It must think him a fool and asleep. Lil Dean imagines some kind of infectious rat. But how could a rat have made it into his room? From where and what does it feed on? As his mind wrestles with the possibilities and improbabilities, the perverse rustling continues. It even purrs. Or rumbles. The sound that it makes sickens Dean to his core. And that, it hits him. In all its grotesque truth, it is his hope.

He imagines his hope in the form of a putrid rat with disease-ridden cantankerous teeth. It probably has bristling fur made yellow and stringy by neglect. It is hungry and mean. It is scared and it is this fear which makes it strong. It is no longer of him but has mutated and persisted in form and purpose in a rabies driven mad biological creature. It is vile and it sickens him to his core. To think that with every breath, he is drawing on a part of its expelled air. On its life.