Blocked (V)

I turned on my heels, and half of a robotic fox’s head laid on the stage. The pupils were the color of a melancholic, soul-sucking silver, and the sclera the same tint. The jaw, reminiscent of an alligator, was a yellowed white. A pile of frayed wires dripped from the maw like a stream of frozen vomit, something I won't deny my witnessing of. They let off sparks with each dot. The eyes flashed silver and coal-black with each beep. A dot for silver, a dash for black.  The morse code held no value to me however, having no need to learn it in my time.

Like a light-house, the sparks of light contrasted with the grey and black darkness of the early morning. It was somehow moving  towards me, like a particularly ravenous caterpillar, without any limbs. It inched closer and closer towards me, the shuffling of wires dragging on the wooden stage.

As I stepped a few inches forward (since the jaw was at my feet, I could stomp on it should things get dicey), whilst bracing myself to skip off the stage to my left, I flicked on my flashlight, and skimmed the beast's domain. My flashlight revealed a bundle of multi-colored wires stretching from what would be the cranium of the severed jaw, like veins and muscles. They were together in a neat, orderly fashion like folded laundry-or Perseus's yarn, they penetrated the darkness of the unused stage. Ten feet back, the wires were still travelling towards infinity, in a rainbow of eternity. Red, blue, yellow, green,  orange and… Black. A black wire was in the middle of these, bigger than the rest. It pumped and throbbed, like a cartoon animal was travelling through a pipe.

Flicking my flashlight back towards the jaw, it halted like a child with it’s hand stuck in the cookie jar. And then, a robotic "whirrrrr" sounded off from the abyss. An unraveling sound, like that of a life-line being used by cave-divers, emitted from the darkness as well. Rope...or wires, being tugged. It got louder and louder.

The jaw suddenly jolted back, behind the stage curtains. For thirty seconds I stood paralyzed, and for thirty seconds the pulling sound continued . The jaw laid upside down, facing the side of the stage. Wires exposed.The beeping began to accelerate and got more frantic.  And the black pipe pumped and throbbed like erectile dysfunction. The pulling sound got louder and louder and LOUDER until I bounded off stage and thrust the door open, as I heard cloth pulled shut.

As I slammed the door shut behind me, I realized something.

I never heard the wires go taut.