For Making Monsters

Making Monsters

For this recipe you will need:

1. 1 mirror

2. A pen and paper (substitute for keyboard if necessary)

3. Music (any kind will do).

Go to your mirror. Look at yourself. Now, look right into your eyes. Concentrate, don’t look back. Increase the intensity of your gaze, turn it into a glare, and see the fractured red lines of thin veins letting the blood seep in. Hold for two minutes.

Go to your paper, write down what you have seen. Begin with describing your own face, the all-too familiar features of your smile, your chin, your skin. Then go to the eyes. What did you see there, inside your own eyes? Answer the question within ten minutes.

Begin playing your music.

Leave your paper, now you need to think. Do not let your mind wander, it is absolutely critical that your mind can distinctly comprehend what you have just written. Do not be shocked when you cannot recognize the words, when the person you saw in the mirror is unfamiliar. Well, perhaps they are familiar, but they are certainly not you. You will not recognize what is in those eyes, the fears, the malice, the animal hatred that looked back at you.

That is because it was not yours.

Now, back to writing. Take the eyes now and transplant them from your own body, move them on to another creature. It must have fangs, all monsters have fangs. But do not spend too much time on the physical ornamentations of your monster, begin describing them. Their thoughts, their minds, their motives. Then move onto the soul, all good monsters have souls.

It is looking more familiar, isn’t it? The creature rising out of the black ink, blinking back from your page? Yes, I suspect you realize exactly what you are looking at.

Do not be nervous, don’t stop now because you are almost there.

Deep breaths now.

Go back to the mirror. Close your eyes for a period no shorter than thirty seconds.

Do you see it? Scream if you need to, but I am afraid it will not do you any good. As you can see, it is clambering out of the mirror, complete with every horrible feature you gave it. Its’ hands are on the sink now, knocking over your toothbrush and razor. Regrettably, your feet won’t work at this point. I am sorry I did not warn you about that earlier.

As it pins you down, take careful note of the face, of the eyes.

By the time you are reading this part, it has left you, crawled back into the mirror so it can return to feed any time it needs.

Now you have made your monster. And fortunately for you, it will never be far away.

Author’s note: This recipe is repeatable, but it will not produce the same finished product each time. For variation, I recommend that you try different music during the process. Many uses are surprised at the effect that a song has on the finished product.