Writing Prompt-Beast

I have a few minutes and checked my writing prompt book for something quick and got the word...

Beast

An evocative word. And the first image I get is an auditory one. And, yes, I understand an "auditory image" is a head scratcher but I can hear it. Its an ax, a tomahawk to be specific, swooping through the air and dancing off someone's wrist. Then the head of the ax shucking into the soft space underneath someone's arm. Then it sitting there stanching the bleeding. No screams or anything else except the satisfying smack of the metal into an armpit. That feels and sounds beastly.

Beast makes me think of something curled up and getting smaller and smaller to spring back. When my son is angry he does not want to be seen. He curls into a ball and hides under the Ikea coffee table. The cardboard honey comb structure of that table is exposed due to all his kicks and scratches from other beastly moments. I hear beast and think of some plowing down a long elementary school hallway. Just a husky kid in a huskier coat with a faux fur hood dragging an endless amount of children behind him. And everyone is clawing onto bulletin boards and posters to hold him back so everything is shucking off the walls. The student posters. The 100 things I would buy on the 100th day of school easel pads. The signs thank you for not smoking. 

Beast is what the heroine slays as she pulls a spear from the now defeated 12 heads of a bristling hydra. The snicker-snacking Jabberwock. And from the sinew of the last neck she cranes back her own so her hair whips back in a cinematic victory pose that hems in the falling stars of what used to be the beasts winged and irritating progeny. 

Beast is the series of paper jams that winds it way through the copier and snarls everything up. Someone tries to go fix it and the toner cartridges slides out so everything, all the powder,  flies up into their face. They have to then go home and change out of their cardigan because it is now cyan blue. And for the rest of the day the air is sooty and grimy even after various wipe downs.

Beast feels like slipping on ice and cracking your coccyx two feet away from the front door. It is the neighborhood dog in Mayaguez, Pee Wee, chewing on discarded chicken bones from the bodega. Its the angry eyes from my wife when I forget to put the twist tie on the coffee. It is the flutter and fear when my work crush walks up to the copier. Not the one from above. 

Its a monster but I don't hear it snarl.