Madness

by Norah Brady

It’s like a point and shoot video game. Their gray little bodies. In black and white infrared he aims and kills, and the brain still pumps motion into their limbs for a long time after. Little bastards. 

Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski took a particle accelerator to the head. Big bright flash. Loudest noise he ever heard. Wobbling on the ladder, and declining to tell anyone. Going back to work. Later his face — well you should have seen his face! Like a balloon. 

If there was blood would it be different? The rats distribute themselves into neat piles of matted fur. The violence of categorization. When birds fly into the glass, shake themselves, fly away, they’re most likely bleeding into their paperthin skulls. 

The point of watching is to milk the sadness out. When I keep myself awake inside myself, the person there is musing about blood. I surprise myself— I love obliteration. With my preoccupation, I honor it.

Norah Brady is a moon enthusiast from Boston, MA. Her poetry and short fiction can be found in COUNTERCLOCK, Kissing Dynamite, Blue Marble Review, and other publications.