Hollow

He has a menagerie of hollow beasts. Gibbons smile polished teeth,  tails coiled with hidden wire. Cheetahs crouch, never to pounce. A shark swims in the sky, eyes of black glass staring.

The elephants are his favorite. A pack of two: mother and child. You can feel the immensity of them as you approach. You can feel the realness.

He does not think of himself as a killer. He is a bringer of life. He takes out all that is impermanent, all that is fleeting, and leaves only what matters: the essence of the thing, the shadow it casts upon the world.

“You should thank me,” he whispers with thin voice from twisted lips, fingers withered as old grapes gently tracing the curve of the tusk. “I have made you live forever.”

The elephant says nothing, but he can hear the laughter.

And in his waking dreams, the hollow beasts…