victory

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Last night was a historic, historic night.

    Historic.

    Eighteen years I have lived on the wrong side of a series of glass boxes.

    Eighteen years I have raged. Seethed. Screamed curses at the sky.

    Imagine a balloon, an ordinary red balloon. Imagine it being pumped up with pure frustration and hope until it cannot hold any more, and explodes, and falls down to the dirty supermarket floor, defeated, collapsed, aching with failure. A failure that is not its fault. A failure that is the fault of the useless metal claw within the glass box, which falls and stays and rises and clamps back unto itself halfway back up its fucking rise to the ceiling of the glass box.

    I am that balloon. I have seen all my hopes and desires sit within those glass boxes, unmoving, untouchable, mocking me with their loveliness. Mocking me with my failure. Saying, somebody else will succeed, I shall escape my prison, but you will not be the one to succeed, because you cannot succeed. You will never succeed. Never, never, never.

    Guess what, you little bitches?

    I have done it.

    I have seized one of your fellows from his rest atop a strangely green Tweety Bird and the head of that slut Betty Boop (wearing a Santa hat) and a friendly owl whose eyes were glazed with death and unintelligent love.

    I have claimed the soft orange fox, and his large, startled eyes could not be more appropriate within the context of last night.

    I have done it.

    I have beaten the claw machine.