Mom, I'm Bulletproof

Chapter 4.4: Rat in a Maze

Proscenium marched forward and kicked down the workshop doors.

There was Dr. Critique, sitting on Santa's chair. He wore two cardboard boxes as clothes, one over his chest, and the other as a makeshift pair of shorts. His skinny, pale arms and legs poked out of holes in the boxes. On his head, over his unkept red hair, he wore a boat-shaped tinfoil hat. On the front of his cardboard chestplate, he had the words "Yeah, right" written in black magic marker.

"Care to sit on Santa's lap?" Critique said.

Two young women sat at Critique's left and right, with brown sacks over their faces, and their hands and feet tied.

"What have you done to them?" Proscenium asked, raising both fists.

"Nothing yet," Critique said. "Art doesn't exist in a vacuum, you know. It requires an audience."

Proscenium stepped forward and froze. It was as if the armor had petrified on the spot. He could feel himself willing it to move, but it wouldn't budge. He tried turning into a cloud, but couldn't do that, either.

"Do you like it?" Critique said. "It's a new addition to my arsenal, designed just for you. Beautiful, in its way."

Critique stood up and took a few steps toward Proscenium. "Now, which one of my little babies should I mutilate first? It's all for your entertainment."

Critique paced back and forth. "How to choose one victim over the other? What qualities make one worth saving and one worth permanently scarring? What makes one more delectably deserving of pain than the other?"

Critique leaned in close, his face inches away from Proscenium's mask.

"Art reflects life, my friend," he said. "If art is meaningless, then life must also be meaningless."

He turned away from Proscenium and shuffled over to the woman on the right.

"Did you hear that darling?" he said to her. "Your life is completely meaningless."

He then hopped over to the woman on the left and said, "Same with you, my little snickerdoodle. You are a living piece of art. As art, you have no meaning, and as a living creature, you also have no meaning."

"And killing?" Proscenium said. "Does ending a life also have no meaning to you?"

"You can talk," Critique said. "I didn't know if you'd be able to talk in this state. That's happily interesting."

He jumped up and down and clapped his hands. He then reached around behind Santa's chair and pulled out a hunting knife. It looked like an antique, but recently sharpened.

"Take blood, for instance," Critique said. "Blood is red and it's always been red – no matter who you are. No matter what your accomplishments or your failures, no matter what you believe, think, or feel, your blood will still be red."

He faced away from Proscenium and continued, as if speaking only to the two women.

"And why red? Why not green or blue or purple or Crystal Pepsi? The color red has no meaning as blood. Its only symbolic resonance comes from the millions of writers and artists over the years who see anything red and compare it to blood. Strip away the words and images and all you're left with is blood. Meaningless, purposeless blood."

He placed the knife down on Santa's chair and placed a palm on top of each woman's head. He pulled the sacks off.

Each young woman was teary-eyed, with duct tape over her mouth. Proscenium knew them – Krissi and Trissi from earlier that evening.