BORED-RIGID BEAST

A Prose-Noir CyberBeatSplatter Chant for the Impatient Century

It begins, as all beasts do, in a flickering filament of neon tremor,
a shuddering CRT womb of static,
broadcast from the spine of a rusted god
who once sold cassette decks to the void.

You wake in the gutter of Meaninglessness Avenue,
mouth full of typewriter ribbon,
teeth clacking out Bukowski lines translated into corrupted CSS,
a spill of broken metaphors over your secondhand trenchcoat.
The bartender is a data ghost in a fishnet suit
offering you shots of absinthe code and rat venom.
You decline—
because syntax is sobriety
and you’re trying to stay lucid enough to rewire your trauma.

“They say Beauty’s a loaded gun,”
whispers a synth-eyed philosopher from behind the dumpster fire,
“But Aesthetics? A crime scene with lipstick footprints.”

Your feet bleed existential ink.
Your breath smells like Oppenheimer’s mixtape.
Every corner you turn is a looping GIF of a car crash in iambic pentameter.

You scroll and scroll and scroll—
each post a razorblade in drag
each like a limp handjob from a language model trained on screamo lyrics.

The Bored-Rigid Beast is behind you.
Always.
Clawed with algorithms,
wired with obsidian tentacles that drool nicotine and nuance.
It speaks in pop-up ads for meaning
and rubs its genitalia on your dreams of escape.

You light a cigarette
made from old MFA applications and French philosophy.
It burns the color of canceled television,
ash dancing like giallo blood on Formica.

You try to run.
But your legs are made of Dashiell Hammett monologues
and your shoes whisper Pynchon footnotes every time they slap the pavement.

“There are no endings,”
the Beast grunts from its digital sewer nest,
“Only sequels with worse budgets.”

So you stop.
Open your ribcage.
Let it in.

Let it wear your skin like a noir overcoat
and waltz through the neon apocalypse
reciting beat poetry to bullet casings
and kissing mirrors that refuse to reflect you.

Because the Bored-Rigid Beast
was never chasing you.

You were the beast.
And the chase
was just the plot
of a novel
written
by a glitch
in a mirror.