The Authentic Eclectic

Dear Zaire

It was the 26th of November, 2021, when Zaire became my puppet.

Source (Public Domain): https://www.wikiart.org/en/joseph-wright/a-girl-reading-a-letter-by-candlelight-with-a-young-man-peering-over-her-shoulder-1762

In answer to your question, I selected him from among ten million possibilities because he exemplified an ideal balance of youth, ignorance, plasticity, cleverness, and dark predilections. He received my letter this day with naïve delight, willingly stepping forth to be flung out like a die upon the board of my designs.

The red-furred monstrosity that stretched itself from the Pacific to the Atlantic with the drowsy confidence of an apex predator suddenly found its legs weak, its hold unsteady, and, with the signature death-roars of any dying empire, began rattling the most unsavory of denizens into Kafkaesque wakefulness.

Like many young men, Zaire found his entire life subtly influenced by these quakes while maintaining the misapprehension that the thousand eyes set upon him belonged to five hundred different beasts. He could have explained, with the certainty of a brain-damaged man filling in his gaps, the origin of his fascination with the strange, the sinful, the Danse Macabre; but he would have explained in error. All are pawns of the tides, from commoners to kings.

I wrote to him like a woman to expedite the process. The envelope was wine-colored, the letter scented with expensive perfume. The cursive flowed and…