Eight Jaguar the Post-Modern Prometheus

Eight Jaguar

Eight Jaguar: Introduction

Just the other day, my pretty wife told me that I was "becoming an ass." When she said this, I had been watching TV, it was a documentary about the battle between the Germans and the Russians in Stalingrad. I never watched that much television, but lately I have been enjoying it and apparently making up for lost time. I wanted to keep watching the interesting TV set, but I clicked it off and looked over at Minerva. She was brushing her pretty hair and as usual, I was enchanted with the sight. She was talking, but I began to wonder what the sound of her hair being brushed would be like, if I were really tiny and her hair was a forest all around me, charged with static electricity and smelling like strawberries, maybe her brushing it would sound like many pieces of paper being torn slowly, or wind in leaves made of paper, or the gentle creaking of a boat on water? Which reminds me, I have been becoming quite easily distracted by a sort of gentle sensory overload, I often focus on and wonder about textures, sounds and flavors, and then I associate them with my emotions and my feelings... this is also very new to me, so I will try to control the impulse to hyper-focus on everything occurring around me as I write this.

Mina normally has only the sweetest of words for me. I was trying to pay attention to what she was saying and I had to decide how to respond to her in a way that would address her statement, without initiating an argument. While I was busy thinking, she went on to pronounce that I had to: "Do something about it."
I realized that I had to act quickly. I abandoned her harmless little insult and asked, "Do what, my darling?" This was a risky move, because I am learning that in a committed, monogamous, romantic relationship, one is often supposed to know exactly what to do or say, without asking. Apparently asking is like cheating or something, and none of my new faculties of perception seem to help. I held my breath and waited.
She looked at me for a moment. "I want you to write out your story, Victor."
I skipped the part about what made her think that I could write anything more eloquent than the extremely ineloquent technical articles that I used to write for medical journals. I also skipped the part about how writing my story would only provide potentially incriminating evidence and possibly lead to our discovery by the authorities. I did, however, mention that I have always doubted that keeping a diary could be a substitute for actual therapy.
"I never said I want you to keep a diary, or even a journal," She said, defensively.
I asked her if she meant that I should write out what we had been through, like it was a book.
She brushed her hair luxuriously and said, "Yes, but the real story, instead of all the bullshit that the tabloids have printed; you know, Victor, the story."
She suggested that stories like mine had been successful books, and that I might just get lucky, because according to her, the really badly written books always get published and really tacky ones even become movies. She brushed her hair some more and told me that the most important thing is that writing would keep me busy.
I admitted that I was bored, but I did not tell her that I was happy just watching lots of television. I did not tell her that the Russians killed three times as many Nazis as the Allies.
She finished brushing her wavy red hair and she pointed out that my story was all that I had left. "Besides, it's all you have left."
I repeat this last statement verbatim, because I had never considered my situation in this light. Of course, she was right. I used to be a doctor. I asked my beloved if I should use a pen or a pencil.
She snorted a nonverbal warning and pointed to the laptop computer that I have been carrying around with me. She calls it my "Football" and she jokes that I would handcuff myself to it if I had handcuffs. I would. It is an older model, and it looks like it had been on a long camping trip, which of course, it had. The hard drive in its guts contained some extremely valuable files; in fact its memory was completely full. I patiently reminded Mini that it was not available for use as a word processor, and that it contained certain data files that—
"Dump it." She leaned her head to the side and pulled the brush down through her hair again.
"But you know what's on here! These files are all we've got!" I realized that I was whining, and I stopped quickly, because Mina does not like it when I whine, and I try very hard to please her in every possible way.
She looked at me with her mind control stare, "No, Victor, your story is all you've got. No one can take that from you."
I hung my head in mock shame. I asked her if erasing my critical files and writing a book would help me to not "be an ass" anymore. She said it would. And since I love my instant wife dearly, and since I generally do everything she says, with alacrity, I deleted twenty-seven priceless folders, each containing dozens of files relating to a surgical procedure that has already cost some two, (or three?) people their lives. Now this story is the only part of the whole fiasco that I have as evidence that any of it ever happened at all. And I have to admit; there is a part of me that is just itching to tell the story. And she's right. Those files needed to be trashed. I want nothing more to do with them, and if indeed I am becoming unpleasant company, it is only because I am being forced into an unnatural condition of inactivity. Yes, I have been compelled by recent circumstances to live the tortured existence of the idle workaholic genius. Perhaps this writing project will amend my shattered sense of purpose. Perhaps.