QUENCHED, BUT
The lawnmower gags on the grass and shuts down, presumably embarrassed by its inability to perform the single task for which it was created. I leave it to its shame and begin picking the various brambles from my sleeves, my pants, my hat—the remnants of dead vegetation, of corpse-fingers that have been snatching at me for the better part of the morning, pulling on my threadbare outfit like a gaggle of monstrously needy children. I retreat once again to the shadows, where, perspiring and lukewarm, my lemonade sits: a beacon of pure disappointment.
I watch birds flit about in distinctive, colourful gangs, calling out in trills of indecipherable agency; I see a rabbit poke its marble-furred head through a hole in my fence to stare—not so long that I might trap her, but long enough to ensure I grasp her utter lack of fear—before exiting as quickly as she came; and right beside me, just outside my peripheral vision, in its ambling, parasitic parabola, floats the first mosquito of the season.
It is sweltering, and I am reminded that while the argument against wool slacks is valid throughout the year, it is much more powerful when under the first rays of a coming summer. Still, as is the case with my tweed jacket and accompanying ascot, I have my reasons. I gaze over to the pool I have created in the cupped hands of a blind, stone gargoyle and shiver in anticipation, mopping the sweat from underneath my balaclava / sunhat headdress while still in the cool embrace of shade, allowing myself a quick smile before readjusting my outerwear.
There is no skin of mine exposed; of that I am sure. The mosquito flirts with me regardless, its plump carriage indicative of its lifespan—this is no youngling bred in my statue’s still waters but an old soul, a wizened elder just recently fed. Perhaps my neighbour is just now ripping at his distended flesh with a palsied hand, his bruise-yellow nails worrying at the itch while he absently scans his crossword puzzle, his lemonade doubtlessly fresh and crisp—chilled just so, ice still clinking in the glass—mocking me with its effervescent refreshment. Perhaps; perhaps not.
The mosquito’s girth was noticeable as it probed for an opening, banging up against my oversized sunglasses—their translucence like twin oases of maddeningly disappearing sustenance—and whining with impatience. I let him consider his options a while longer, savouring the long moments of indecision apparent in his ambling flight-pattern, before literally and figuratively pulling off my mask and inviting him toward my uncovered mouth.
The tricky part was getting my glove off in the precious seconds between the mosquito’s recognition of my offering and his attack thereupon, as the trap is only as effective as the speed with which I can paralyze his wings betwixt my thumb- and fingernail. But I am a predator long of tooth and even longer of incisor, my fangs finally free to pierce my engorged suitor with practiced elegance, certain not a drop will be wasted. The mosquito sizzles against my lips, the crackling danger of absorbed sunlight insistent on his shell, though ‘twas an expected side-dish, adding nothing more than a touch of zest to the already delectable flavour. Spent, the carcass falls from my fingertips like the wrapper from some less-quarrelsome snack, and I turn my attention back toward my treasonous lawnmower.
I am greeted with an unexpected surge of empathy, however, as I come to realize the lawnmower and I share a similar philosophy: I have sworn off humans’ blood just as fully as it has done with grass, evidently, which begs the question—should I not allow it the same freedom afforded me, to find its own mosquitos with which to occupy itself? All at once, however, I catch myself in my anthropomorphizing folly and screech a litany of curses at it as I recover my body with cloth and my mind with reason. What of the lawnmower’s imaginary desires, after all? For what use is any construct of thought when the grass has yet to be cut?
