THE TORMENT OF DEMETRIO

--TSARINA

The pen balances, poised and erect, a ballerina’s leg.  Demetrio is in work.  Not in the work building--well, he was--but in the work itself.

A children’s cartoon, they said, draw a children’s cartoon.  They demand a bunny and a gopher, draw the bunny, draw the gopher.  Demetrio doesn’t want to draw rodents--he usually shoots gophers and leaves them to scare bunnies--but he tries.  But the bunny and gopher refuse, and that’s their fault.  

A man comes though.  Bowler hat, hooked nose, knobby fingers, pointy knees--the man struts in the right side of the paper.  Hello, man.  Demetrio expects the man to reply.  But the man struts away without a word, leaving Demetrio a new mystery to solve, a new puzzle to grapple with.  He grasps his pen, buggy eyes ricocheting around their sockets, waiting for the man to reappear.

Now the man comes from the left side.  He sees that the man had forgotten to shave before he reentered the page and has sprouted a moustache while he was gone.  How silly he looks, what a silly man, wouldn’t the silly man talk to Demetrio?  He wouldn’t.  Demetrio doesn’t notice his left hand twitch, and scramble for a second pen.  The man disappears.  Demetrio waits.

Don’t let the right hand know what the left hand is doing, no sirree.  Demetrio doesn’t.  He doesn’t tell the right hand about the emerging bars on the left side, how they burst out like slicing claws from kitty paws.  Nope, Demetrio is good at secrets.  Except for when the secrets belong to other people; but who cares then?

The man returns.  He has a beard now, and is looking distinguished.  Demetrio tries on a Southern English accent, so that he might merit conversation.  Hello old chap, care to stop?  The man doesn’t care to stop--he knows it’s fake.  

Demetrio’s eyelids shrink away.  The man isn’t going to stop--he is going to walk straight into the bars.  Don’t do it little man.  You’re going to be trapped, Demetrio screams but the little man doesn’t listen--Demetrio knew that he wouldn’t.  Bars swallow Little Man.  Demetrio chokes and wails.  

As Demetrio cries he hears chittering, chattering laughter.  He frowns.  The gopher and the bunny decide to show up.  Why, the gopher and the bunny have the keys to the cell. They lock Little Man in--imagine that.  How revolting.  Demetrio knew not to trust them.  He--

“Wait let me see it first.”  Demetrio whips his head and smacks the boss in the face with his uncombed hair.  Realizing his hands are about to shred Bunny and Gopher, Demetrio struggles.  He doesn’t want an escape, but the boss is asking. He resigns the paper to the boss, his heart burned by injustice and shame.  

“Bunny and Gopher save the day, tricking the banker into prison.  That was what you were after, right?”  Demetrio nods.  “It’s perfect.” The boss leaves, the creeping creatures in his protection.  Demetrio shudders, and puts his head on his desk.  He is ashamed.