The tank is empty and the Beast still goes.  It still wants to.  Even though it is itchy.  Beleaguered by lice, no doubt.  Lousy with doubts, besieged with guilt, wandering with a keening yawp in the night, waking up not remembering.  Not sleeping soundly, soundlessly escaping through cracks in the window, ceiling, floor.  Slipping out like a thin slice of nostalgia after too much wine.

The Beast is out, wandering the night, saying nothing.  It isn’t embarrassed as it is in daylight, choked in a suit and tie, paw nails trimmed, hair matted down, fangs clean and gleaming.  No blood, just protein, unsaturated fat and lean carbohydrates in a perfect concoction.  Blended, a swill drained into the gullet and absorbed quickly.  There is no flavor to be savored.

Beast, now out and about, cool, eluding the authorities, that Beast.  The Beast in cigarette ads, beer ads, selling whiskey to children.  The Beast embroidered on the jackets of bad women sailing down the boulevard on the backs of choppers, in El Caminos and Eldorados, leaning up against street lights.  Aghast mommies in passenger seats sailing by with their driver daddies who close windows and tighten their grips on pistols.  The Beast has nothing to say.  He doesn’t speak their language.

During the world’s waking hours, the Beast transforms into the Monster that survives under fluorescent lights.  A Monster that thrives in air conditioned nightmarish echo chambers, fraught with doubt, the whole beehive communicating through stress chants, ultrasonic wavelengths emanating from their receding hairlines.  They communicate using the monkey chatter of clenched, ground down teeth.  “Ggggrreeeeeaaaattttt, mmmmmmammmammannnn.”  Another and another and another, casualties picked apart casually, dissected and evaluated for cost-growth strategies.  Let down.

The Beast and the Monster fight.  The Beast, while winning, has the cool humility that any hero strives for.  He knows the war will always slide his way, he feels it and knows it, he can bide his time until the sun goes down.  He knows he has always been there and always will be.  The Monster had to be invented, taught, shown how to work and how to feed itself.  The Beast laughs.

Beauty, as she is sought after, is affectionate, perfect, unattainable.  When she passes by, the flowers perk up, forked tongued serpents smile and grimacing frogs blush.  She is the distraught modern damsel in the clutches of corporate King Kong, hanging from the thirty fifth floor from a martini glass, wondering how it got to this point.  Going with the flow.  Not rocking the boat, biding her time.  Ready to be rescued from no particular distress but the boring, inarticulate present that surrounds her.  Ready to be whisked into eternity, past, future, limbo, hell, ecstasy.

The Beast, the Monster, the boys in the band, the man in the tie, they are the underdogs.  Beauty is up there, they toil.  The Beast will win her, he knows it, in the end.  The rest get the script, memorize and highlight, study inflection, and wait for action.  High infidelity occurs in the first and second acts.  The intermission is infinitely short, photos are taken, some go home.  The Beast is backstage, resting.  He idly twists his mane into a lock like a finger pointing to his heart.

Curtains up, the Beast has claws out, ready for riposte against the thrust of the Monster’s pen.  Beauty swoons.  Beast jumps; it is impressive.  Monster does the robot; it is not.  A dance number.  Two clowns sing the chorus part.  King Kong farts outside and the doors are closed, biohazard warnings are issued.  The Neighborhood Watch deputizes the ushers, they douse the audience in pepper spray like cologne in a college freshman bathroom.  Someone’s boss says, “Weeelllll, IIIIII nnnneeeevveeerr!”  The teeth-grinding sound scares the animal act away, the manager hangs himself with his widow’s pearls.  The Beast looks around for Beauty.

Outside, Beast is cool.  He turns away from the melee, clearing his head, smoking a banana peel, cooling off.  Beauty’s gone off.  It may not be the right time.  He finds himself in an all night diner that serves the Monster Mash Special, plays nothing but Andrew Lloyd Weber.  The Beast sits in a booth and orders black tar pudding.  She will come to him, in the end.  He knows it.  He grabs a lock of hair from his chin to use as a quill, dips it in the blood red monster mash and begins writing a love letter on the back of the playbill.  He never stops, the sun never rises.