OF SKUNKS AND MONSTERS
At the side of a two-lane highway lies a skunk. Chin on paws, she has situated herself atop the white barrier-line dividing roadway from rough, her black coat blending in with the asphalt like shade against shade, her asymmetrical stripe aligned with the white like an off-kilter stitch that, despite its imperfection, still holds the line. At a glance, she is almost invisible. Almost.
Occasionally, a car roars past, sometimes two or three, each occurrence its own noisy reminder of the danger she courts in looking for a moment—just one moment—to think things through. But with each passing car she can’t help but think how slow her gait is in comparison; skunks aren’t built for speed. She possesses, at best, an amble: a jaunty front-back see-saw motion that more resembles a frolic than the desperate haste needed to dodge traffic. But that’s why she’s here, in-between, nestled up against calamity to prevent herself from falling into easy complacency—she needs to concentrate.
Invisibility isn’t the ultimate goal, not even close. Across the highway? Almost certain doom. But back the way she came be monsters, and it’s all she can do to make it to the highway most times—that place that even monsters dare not tread—with the infrequency of her freedom boiling her blood even as she looks the picture of calm. It’s all so much bigger than her—the road, the monsters, these thoughts; yet she remains captivated by the path ahead, by the equivocation in almost certain doom. She shifts her head on her paws and stares across the highway, terrible black-and-white inevitability easing its grasp on her psyche just enough to allow the faintest tinge of hope to colour her view.
She smiles, unbothered by the sudden surge of rumbling traffic that shakes the ground as if in rebuttal to her fading fear. She smiles again, settling her head and closing her eyes, content to let these new colours bleed into the greyscale of old.
With the monsters she is safe, she knows that. They tell her of the many bigger monsters they protect her from, of the many horrors awaiting her out there, on that side of the road. She has never seen them, of course, those bigger monsters; but should she ask, the familiar monsters reiterate, time and again, how lucky she is to have them looking after her, how such a small skunk should be appreciative of said monsters keeping an eye on her every second of the day, without fail, all the time. The skunk, they say, well, she should be content with merely being alive, of counting heartbeats and watching time pass, as that’s more of a mercy than she’d be allowed were they not chaperoning her with their endless concern.
So, she is safe, that’s true. But, at the end of the day, her guardians are monsters, and hers is a cloistered existence of monstrous experiences not fit for a skunk of any stripe. Yet, she should be thankful, and not at all take advantage of the few times she’s caught them sleeping to escape up to the road, where she could have a thought to herself and just be a skunk.
What waits across that road? There may very well be monsters, but she already knows there’s monsters back the other way. What of the cars? It would just be blind luck, getting to the other side; no way to avoid them once she was in the road. And if luck was all she really had going for her, that wasn’t a whole lot to keep her from turning back around.
Of course it was easier with the monsters; the skunk had not a worry in the world. But as the anxiety shrank, something else began eating away at her. It was a small bother at first, just a little emotional recalibration that had since grown into a gnawing loathsomeness, a realization that she had traded necessary uncertainty for basic comfort, that she was more than capable of protecting herself—that, unlike speed, she was built for protecting herself—and with that she understood her need to explore, to chase down all the dreams she’d had lying there in the road.
The skunk stood up, nervous and vulnerable as her camouflage disappeared, and began sniffing in the vain hope that she could smell death approaching. She looked both ways along the shimmering blacktop, knowing that she couldn’t see far enough to make a lick of difference, but looking all the same. The wind was gentle but gave rise to rumblings in the distance that may or may not have been the blood pumping in her ears, and she placed a paw in the road proper, hoping to feel the vibration of danger in the face of the rest of her senses failing her, but no luck.
The road was clear. As far as she could tell.
She knew she could just go back, just take a bit of hell for escaping and settle herself in to dream her dreams in safety. But as her heart pounded and her paws shook, sniffing, looking, listening, feeling, she knew there was only one way through. And with a tentative paw, she took her first step.
Dedicated to Jennifer Moretto
