How To Handle A Nefarious One
The devil… cannot endure to be mocked.
—Thomas More
Sometimes, you must meet the darkness
where it dwells. Take a headlamp, a flashlight.
You will need to illuminate. Take torches
for light and fire. You may need to subdue
what lurks with burn. Better yet, be the light,
the flame. The darkness knows the space
it has made for itself, is safe there. Trouble it
with truth. Confound it with competence.
The darkness takes itself seriously. Ridicule it
until the world mocks it with you. Give it a nickname.
Not ribald like Skidmark or silly like Darth Fiction,
but something simple and reductive, as for a child:
Billy, Timmy, Ricky, Bobby. Watch Ricky scramble
to cover his ass when you shine the light on him.
Form a circle around Bobby. Point and laugh
and laugh until he cries. Billy and Timmy are mean.
Pit them against each other the way the darkness
tried to use others against you. What lacks brightness
won't surrender its comfort willingly. Grab it by the
horns, by the ears. Drag it out into the open. Cue daytime,
cue sear. Cue kick and bellow. It will curse your name,
your ancestors, your children, your tribe, your life.
Allow the albino cave-dwelling creature its freakout.
Cue sound and fury. It's all just noise. Cue scurrying
for the shadows. Cue crackle and smoke. Watch
its thin translucent skin vaporize in the glare.
Name it vanquish. Call it over. Call it gone.
Stand straight up, liberated from its weight
and stronger for having carried it. Now, erase it
from memory, from language itself. Unspeak it
into nonbeing. Rev your engine. Peel out.
Disappear it in the rearview. Move on.
