Of Monsters Born

A child’s innocence thrives in moonlight.  Our pale mother watches over us when we are at our most vulnerable �" alone and curled up in bed in a dark room. The moon is our witness and brings with it a silver reckoning full of mystery and fantasy. It entreats us with a large face and oblique eyes. Her face is eternal and unchanging. We return her exchange with fanciful stories. Some tales are full of wonder and others are full of fear. Our pale mother is a witness to both. She is also a witness to monsters. They lurk at the edge where her pale light and darknees meet. Some of them emerge from foreign territories known only to the terrified. Some of them have familiar eyes and we know them all too well. The familiar are the most frightening because they are unexpected monsters.

Monsters can be quick and clever. The truly powerful monsters have escaped the confines of darkness and crawled out from beneath our childhood beds. The clever have peeled away from the web of shadows and emerged to strive in sunlight. These are the most dangerous. They have become so adept at their dark crafts they have learned to create their own environments. They don’t need a night adorned by the moon and stars. They have adapted to our world and hold secret their sinister faith. Their darkness is carried within their hearts as they walk amongst us in daylight. These clever monsters are invisible in crowds. Like spiders, they watch and wait in their invisible webs and wait for their prey to cross their threshold. They’ve learned the tricks of tricksters to usher children into their company. It’s a comforting glow for children tucked into bed.  It is a constant, turning phases as we grow, living our lives under the moon. 

The moon transforms itself, filtering through its cycle, but it always returns to that mystical face so familiar and comforting to us.  We can mark our lives by her phases.  But some children never have the opportunity to create their own magic offered by her.  Some children have the silver reckoning of promises stolen from them.  They are broken before the moon spills its mystery into their lives. I remember her beauty. I still reckon her wonder. I remember my name, but I don’t know who I am. I don’t know whose life I’m living. I might be living a copy of myself. I’m not even sure if I’m alive. I might be dead.

I have memories of a different boy. That version of me was clear and lucid. I was alive then. I was immersed in my little world. At that point, life breathed with magic that was real and everything, no matter how small, was fantastic and meant to be devoured. Violence transformed everything. I changed when I was dragged into the bedroom. There were two of us in the room, but I was the invisible one. Invisibility is a fact. An invisible copy of me emerged when the monster pinned me to his filthy mattress. It was a strange sensation of being there, but not being there. It was frightening seeing, but not seeing and feeling, but not feeling. It was as if my copy was a shadow of me and taking the punishment in my place. The copy was a different me.

Copies have limitations and others would summon themselves later in my life. Copies try desperately to grasp any remaining innocence in the lives of little boys and girls. But copies are only temporary shifts and can’t protect the whole child from a monster’s scourge. Monsters are stunningly powerful. They chew a path into a child and wreak havoc on the psychic DNA of little boys and girls. It is done with such supreme effectiveness, little boys and girls have no idea they have been genetically rerouted. How could children possibly know everything changes in an instant? How could they foresee the twisted permanence a monster unleashes? They have no idea the cartoons they watched yesterday now sound different and aren’t as funny. They don’t know this is why their laughter is no longer unbridled. How could they know this is why their pillows have lost their comfort and cushion for peppermint dreams? How could they know this is why their toy trucks and dolls feel different in their hands? How could they know this is why they wish Mommy and Daddy would stop hugging them so much? They have no idea this is when mistrust became reflexive and everything people said had a sinister double-speak. Copies perform these functions to protect their originals, but their life-spans are short. They are subject to the same degradation as paper copies. They are born of monsters, but carry little spirit.

A copy of a copy loses its color and brilliance. It becomes increasingly transparent and bleeds away its life. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s simply a ghost of what was �" a faint trace of something original. My copies have learned to mimic the living. They sing songs for the wretched. They dance to music. They smile when happy. They shout when frightened. They have learned to speak at the right frequencies to be mistaken for the me. They evoke everything that resembles me. But they do so slightly off center. There is a shift, like a shadow cast to the side, but the difference is imperceptible. Only those who have been victims of monsters can see the difference. Copies can never be exacting; they are born of damage, so their mimicry is inexact. Most people don’t notice those of us who have born copies. To most, we are just faces in the crowd. But we are beacons to monsters. They recognize us as we walk by them on sidewalks. They smell us as we stand near them in grocery stores. Copies warn us when monsters are near. The monster in the grocery store may not be my monster. The monster reaching for a bag of chips might be a monster in the life of another little boy or little girl, but my copy will alert me he’s near.

My copy slipped out my skin in that bedroom and was born beneath a monster. Still, it was a part of me. I could never restore that copy. When a copy is born it takes a part of me with it. It needs a trace part of me to be born. To make myself whole again and visible, I would need to re-assimilate my trace parts. It would mean pulling all the copies together and assembling them in the precise order in which they were born, but that task is impossible. Dark moments, eternal as they are, get lost and can’t be un-copied. I knew this instinctively. I left a copy pinned under the weight of the monster. I wasn’t there, but I felt the monster’s knees squeeze the air out my lungs. I was invisible, but I smelled the sweat my copy smelled. I tasted the urine my copy tasted. I saw the angry lines carved in the monster’s familiar face through my copy’s eyes. My monster’s belt buckle thrashed my copy’s cheek, but the bruise bloomed on mine. I felt a profound sadness. It’s a strange thing to feel sorrow for a copy.

I was on a filthy mattress stained with dried urine and sweat.  The mattress wasn’t mine. Alone, those smells aren’t unfamiliar to a playful little boy whose aim is off at the toilet bowl or wringed in sweat after a long day of play under the sun. But these weren’t my smells. There was something different about them. Old. Dangerous. The springs creaked and cranked into my copy’s back. As familiar as my copy was with the smells of sweat and urine, he wasn’t familiar with the smell and taste forced into his mouth. My copy choked and struggled to breathe. I was terrified, feeling what he was feeling. Gazing up beyond my monster’s fists and belt buckle, my copy could see his angry expression inside sheets of long, stringy, black hair, heavy with grime. As the violent seconds strained into painfully slow minutes, my copy’s eyes began to fade. I saw it myself as the monster’s face blurred. Even my copy didn’t have the strength to endure punishment so extreme and terrifying. I was terrified. There was little color left in my copy. I had to make a quick decision. A searing heat burned through my neck and I could breathe again. Then I felt something crack inside me, as though my intangible soul had tangible mass like bones.  I replaced the copy.

I gave myself up to the darkness, embracing its release and began to melt into the mattress beneath me. I was transformed into nothing. Who and what I was no longer had value. The little boy who carried my name abandoned his flesh and bones. My essence vanished into the grimy mattress, leaving flesh and bone to suffer criminal acts. Melting into the filth of the mattress was a salvation of stains and suffocation.

The monster would return. His face would be different, but I would recognize him. I would know him well. His face would appear kind and eyes express gentleness, but he was still the Punisher Prince. No matter how many times a monster descends into your life and lays waste to body and soul, you are never prepared. Embrace the copies and allow invisibility to find you. Monsters don’t always win. Monsters don’t always find their way in the dark. Monsters can’t find you if you’re invisible. If you weren’t born invisible, you can hide in the shadows.

Hi, I’m René’s ghost. Watch me fade away.