9/3/2017 Monstrum in Animo by Joseph S. PeteMonstrum in Animo The bleary-eyed reporter felt truly monstrous waltzing in late with the dank bouquet of too many IPAs on his breath, a storm-tossed Oxford shirt that pined for the touch of an iron, and a grease-sheened bag of White Castle breakfast sliders. Julia strode out into the parking lot with an overflowing cardboard box. “She was probably laid off,” he laughed to himself, more with idle gallows humor than any actual conviction that was what happened. She was probably carting odds and ends back home after doing some spring cleaning. He swiped his key card, without realizing what horrors awaited in the office. In retrospect, he should have seen it coming. A maudlin photographer was telling everyone how much he’d miss them. An embittered copy editor forced into early retirement told the new copy chief he’d been fortunate to work 10 years there, and hoped others would have the same privilege. A digital producer cried in the corner. The guillotine of uncaring corporate downsizing lopped off 20 heads. Survivors questioned how they’d even get a paper out anymore when the newsroom was already less lean than skeletal. The place felt like Death Row, only the perky HR person was the executioner who’d summon unawares victims into a conference room with a seemingly innocuous “you got a minute?” As a dazed new father shambled out toward the unemployment line and an uncertain future, a politician on CNN bleated like a demonic goat on an overhead TV about how the press was the enemy of the people, all liars, the very worst people. The stunned reporter reflected on how he just wanted to let people in the community know when a new tapas restaurant came to town, about the latest art gallery exhibition, and of private-school kids who used 3D printers to forge prosthetic limbs for amputee veterans. As he stewed, the reporter got angry. The real monster was these politicians who demonized a ragtag group of liberal arts majors more interested in the lilt of the prose than the size of the paycheck. The monster was the Craigslist founder who gutted the whole classifieds business. The monster was the failing department stores who took out fewer full-page ads, the local grocery chains that got bought out and stopped placing ad inserts. The monster was corporate bosses who failed to steer the ship of media clear of the rocky financial shores. The monster was editors who neglected to provide readers with what they wanted, who were too hidebound to think about what news anyone wanted to consume. The monster was institutional inertia that stifled innovation, adaptation, keeping up with the times. The monster was the public who just didn’t care. The monster was everyone and no one. The mind sometimes conjures monsters where none exist, finds comfort in a snarling scapegoat, the reporter thought, looking out over the glistening water while on a contemplative stroll later that night. He was trying to make sense of everything, chart his next steps. The place was an abattoir—he'd eventually be next. It was no conjuring, no monstrum in animo. All this was monstrous, all this was a horror, the systemic way institutions chew you up and spit you out. The monster in your mind, that lurks in dark corners during the sepulchral pitch of sleepless nights, doesn't just emerge unbidden from the ether. ![]() Bio: Joseph S. Pete is an award-winning journalist, an Iraq War veteran, an Indiana University graduate, and a frequent guest on Lakeshore Public Radio. He was named the poet laureate of Chicago BaconFest 2016, a feat that Geoffrey Chaucer chump never accomplished. His literary or photographic work has appeared or is forthcoming in New Pop Lit, The Grief Diaries, Gravel, Perch Magazine, Lit-Tapes, Synesthesia Literary Journal, Dogzplot, shufPoetry, Prairie Winds, Blue Collar Review, Work Literary Magazine, Lumpen, Stoneboat, The Tipton Poetry Journal, Jenny Magazine and elsewhere. Don’t tell anyone he wrote this bio, because that’s like a trade secret or whatever. Comments are closed.
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