Sticky Notes - I made you something.

Here's the TL;DR...

For the past couple of months, I've been thinking up a memento that can serve as a reminder to both myself and my readers that we can't truly live until we've faced the very thing that scares us most. 

What was birthed from this thinking was this.

The whole story...

I have this reoccurring dream. I'm in my room. I'm lying down on the hardwood floor, staring up at my late grandmother's oriental fan, which hangs above my bed like a paper guillotine.

On the other side of my door, I hear a terrible scratching. It's so violent and so powerful my bedroom door is bending. I know what's behind it but I don't want to face it. 

To my left is my bedroom window. I'd open it and run but God is leaned up against it, nonchalant, legs crossed, sucking away at an American Spirit. 

He doesn't look anything like the paintings. He's dressed in a messy black suit and there are black tattoos stitched to his fingers and his knuckles and his hands and his wrists; black tattoos that time has painted blue. 

He says nothing. He just looks at me with eyes that seem to glow and I know that he has no intention of allowing my escape. I fear him more than I fear what's outside my room.

There is a wild, murderous roar on the other side of my door that sounds as if a lightning bolt has snaked its way inside of my home and blown up the water heater. 

My eardrums ring like churchbells taking machine-gun fire, as hot tears burn my eyes, well up in their corners until becoming so heavy that they roll down my face and into the bellies of my callused hands. 

I look at God and he looks at me and we hold one another's gaze for what feels like an eternity as the cries grow louder from the other side.

Suddenly, there is silence.

The roaring has stopped.

The scratching has stopped.

The violence has stopped.

I can see shadows pacing beneath the crack of my door; back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. They're ready. They're ready because they know I'm ready. They're just waiting now. 

I whisper towards God with cracked lips, bleeding... 

"Let the tigers through the door"

He smiles, gently. He takes one more pull from his cigarette. He ashes it. He stands upright and pats my shoulder with a hand as heavy as a boxer's, before making his way towards the door.

Once there, he stands, motionless, gripping the handle like a man contemplating pulling the trigger.

I hear a click. He steps through the doorway and his absence is soon filled with three tigers as big as oxen and as lethal as Katanas.

They make their way towards me with the calmness of fallen deities; circling me, circling me, circling me.

And the moment I think they're about to rush, they lay down at the foot of my bed and they take their rest.

For the past couple of months, I've been thinking up a memento that can serve as a reminder to both myself and my readers that we can't truly live until we've faced the very thing that scares us most. 

What was birthed from this thinking was a striking, one-and-a-half-inch wide brass coin as heavy (and as dense) as .45 Caliber Slug, hand-forged right here in the United States.

Etched along its face, you'll find a 700 lb tiger-in-miniature lurching to maul your thumb and, along its back, a mantra reminding you to always take the sonofabitch head-on...

"Let the tigers through the door"

Godspeed, my friends.

Yours, 

Cole.

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