Beware: The Creature on the Corner

I’m the man in the trench coat in a dark alley selling you something a little naughty… pedaling interesting but otherwise worthless shit on a digital street corner that consists of fancy little boutique shops. I stand just out of sight near the front door because the people who are my customers walk through those very doors. I say something like “pssst, I have something over here that might interest you more…. No no, it’s ok, it is nothing dangerous in a way that you can refuse. Just take a look. Or maybe you are not really as street savvy as your feigned demeanor?”

And part of you really doesn’t want to, you know? You already know this is going to be some kind of grift and you suspect it will frighten and endanger you. But that is part of the thrill, no? 

You can’t help but to see me as the cool cat and you see yourself as one too. You have to believe you are, don’t you? You want to believe you can stand as an equal with all the other cool cats. You overvalue yourself.

But never mind that.

I can see you’re cautious, no problem. So are most cats. So I’ll just watch you awkwardly peaking around the corner and over your shoulder; double check your surroundings to make certain no one else is watching you. You also do this to pretend you will have an out.  But you and I know you are already snared. You have sniffed the catnip so to speak. It’s irresistible to you.

So- you amble on over to me. Willingly.

Curiosity stirred into a tonic of unrestrained ego gets the best of the cat every… single… time.

Later, when things sour, you will attempt to forsake me. Multiple times in fact. But you’re dim. You‘ll fail to understand that you are forever stuck in a paradox of your own making; One from which you cannot escape. You see only your perspective, but over time that perspective will have been commingled with mine to a degree; such that you will no longer be able to distinguish me from you. 

I confess, lest I appear unobservant, that your initial blindness to the perpetuity of the perspectives of others astounds. Their absence in your thoughts overwhelms the degree to which you confuse your own intellect (which is impossible to find) with ignorance (which abounds).

I’ll grant you your original perspective of your own self had something to it. It was unique only you. Your own signatory amongst the zillions that are otherwise exactly like you. But is being unique when every one is unique anything other than being entirely alone?

The irony?  That version of you became past tense once you saw me. But you don’t see it. Even later you won’t see it. You’ll never understand what happened. You will protest. You will insist you are without blame. You will demand everyone acknowledge you were victimized.

Poor chap, no one will believe you.

Why? Because you are forever a fool who opens the door to the likes of me as a contagion.  I am the master and you nothing but my little vessel. My ideas are viral and you are a willing host. You crave the newness even as they infect and subjugate you to my whims.

Yes, it was at the particular moment you gazed upon me in which you became infected. My subsequent suggestions became your Schrödinger’s cat when it came to your existential fate. Once you saw me I existed and yet my ideas also running rampant within you even when as you began to insist I did not observably exist. 

That nagging faux existence of what I suggest begat my perpetuity within you if in no other way but your own lack of self control that insures that I will forever reboot myself into your mind. I taint you again and again. Forever.

I mean, yes, you may come to wish to suggest that you could in fact dispose of me. But that is only the extinguishment of the physical element of me. If that even exists. Am I not more an idea than a physical reality to you? Am I not the perpetual toxic idea that will plague you individually until the end of your days? 

Yes. Yes I am. I will be an innate contagion unto your self. As such I will constantly infect everything you do. Because you are always going to wonder how much of what I suggested is actually influencing your actions. You will likely overcompensate actions to prove otherwise. Which will in turn prove that your actions are overtly influenced by my contagion. It matters not what the end result is. It only matters that I continue to persist and exert undue influence onto every action you undertake. 

And you’ll remember how I shut the door on you, forever trapping you inside a bound cycle of infinite farce where you are forever rendered a clown unto all of eternity. That- is why you will hate me so.

And the thing is, you know this now even as you now take that first step in my direction. You know this doesn’t end well. Regardless of all this pre-disclosure, you will still amble on over to see what I have to offer. That is the brilliance of my contagion.

I can tell you are the real thing, though. 

See? I WILL stroke your ego even as I set you up to succumb to my demands of you.  I know that is all that you require. Like water for a plant, you require it for your survival. Like a canary needs air, you will gasp desperately for the shallow attention of air that I trickle your way.  

I will stroke your fur to hear you purr little cat.

You and I, we, will laugh at those others who are unable to walk through that very door, even as it is to your own detriment.

Even when it comes to your own demise you will be complicit in your own undoing and will do anything as long as it complies with your own vanity.

You are great. You are magnificent. I adore you. You are mine.

Fear not, the cool cats left that old party you find yourself at. The only ones remaining are the plebeian dried up hanger on’ers that have no place to go. Pathetic shits. They were just like you once upon a time.

But you already knew that.

Not to hard 180 on this, but come… we have work to do. There are utterances I would like to share. My little fool. My little cool cat.  Come here kitty kitty.