By Mathieu Parsy

The King Kong living in my basement stands just 6.3 inches tall, a plastic titan with multiple points of articulation. He stomps through cardboard skyscrapers, dangles miniature damsels, and swats at planes on strings. I snap photos, shifting the angle to make him loom larger, more monstrous. My miniature city—weeks, sometimes months, in the making—crumbles under his wrath, just as it should.

I carved the Empire State Building out of styrofoam, wrapped it in paper, and painted it gray. My Brooklyn Bridge is made of twine and popsicle sticks. The streets, drawn carefully on plywood, curve through neighborhoods of cereal-box brownstones and bottle-cap manholes. A few buildings remain untouched, waiting their turn. The world doesn’t end all at once.

Upstairs, the real world is folding in—hospital visits, pill organizers, symptom charts. Dad forgets who I am. My best friend is shrinking beneath his blanket, fading under fluorescent light. I call. I visit. I pray, quietly, uselessly.

Down here, destruction is something I control and turn into art. I knock over buildings with my hands, rebuild them when I want. I crouch behind my camera, the lens drawing the scene tight. King Kong’s fury is frozen mid-roar, mid-rampage, when my shutter clicks. I recreate frames of the classic movie, sharpening shadows and deepening the chaos on my laptop screen.

In this city, the planes always come, machine guns spitting fire.

In this city, the beast always falls, forever misunderstood.

In this city, the damsel never escapes the gorilla’s grip, yet love always lingers in the wreckage.

I keep building, keep destroying, keep shooting. King Kong lives in my basement, and as long as he does, I am the god of something.

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Mathieu Parsy is a Canadian writer who grew up on the French Riviera. He now lives in Toronto and works in the travel industry. His writing has appeared in publications such as Bending Genres, Maudlin House, Does It Have Pockets, and elsewhere. Follow him on Instagram at @mathieu_parsy.