The Button
by Steven Craig
There rests within all of us, a button marked exit, this way out.
When all of time is piled about you, when the pressures of the mind expand to encompass thoughts with pain and fear, when each breath is an exhaust of mindless terror, when all of what you are is welling up within you in a super-heated panic, there is this button.
This implement of self-destruction.
This excuse.
I reached out and touched this button, this mindless tormentor of reasonless passion.
I caressed it with a fingertip, frozen cold by the temptation,
charged by the desire to explode.
I touched it again.
And the world stopped and held its collective breath.
There was the shrill wine of impending destruction.
Every cell in my body was afire.
Consciousness was in a death struggle with the commanding force. Power was at stake.
And the button poised, awaited its call to complete its role.
The finger quivered, the fatal stoke prepared.
And I withdrew.
The commanding force was overthrown.
06/27/2006