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. 

Our Modern Dracula

There is no agreement on the literary merits of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Told from a series of letters, diary entries and ship manifests and laden with hyperbolic Victorian prose, the book itself is not always welcoming or engrossing. I admit my own disappointment in my first reading, and that I have only read the novel twice now (the second time it was far more enjoyable, perhaps because I had time to think about the count).

But what cannot be disputed is the staying power of Count Dracula. It hardly seems that a year goes by without the Count showing up in a movie, hardly a month where he is not alluded in a television show or children's program. Boris Karloff's face has become synonymous with plastic, colorful Halloween directions.

For better or worse, Dracula is one of western literature's most popular characters, perhaps only rivaled by Sherlock Holmes. 

However, many are ready to disavow Dracula as the king of monsters. Certainly, the works of Lovecraft are more literary and frightening than those of Stoker. The cosmic nihilism and occultism surrounding Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep is more frightening than a mustache-twirling monarch from the eastern steppes. One can make the argument that the mythos has undergone a similar process to that experienced by the count, one in which the source material has been continuously been added to, reinterpreted and re-imagined for new generations of readers and writers. But Cthulhu has yet to permeate the zeitgeist as much as Dracula. One need not look far for a Dracula costume, but Cthulhu...well...

So, if a monster were to emerge in our time, that would hit the same cultural resonances as the count, who would it be?

It is my opinion that we only have one answer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3ZbnfXEuyc

Let me be clear about my argument:

Pennywise is clearly not a character created in a vacuum. The fear of clowns was nothing new in 1986, and the ultimate nature of the character seems to suggest no small amount of influence from Lovecraft's Great Old Ones. What makes Pennywise a groundbreaking and staying villain are his mannerisms, the drops between childlike innocence and extreme gore. His laugh, contorting in and out of the pipes that make a civilization's underbelly, and his ominous warning.

"Everything down here floats."

And then, there are thematic similarities to Dracula. Just as Dracula attacked women, a demographic which Victorian society viewed to be almost entirely helpless, Pennywise goes after children. As the Count cannot sleep without Transylvanian dirt, Pennywise is sewn into the very fabric of a small Maine town. Then, there is Henry Bowers, a sadistic bully who turns into a character quite similar to Dracula's Renfield.

Already another movie is being made. The first ruined clowns for my generation, and I cannot imagine that the remake will do anything less. Modern copyright law protects Pennywise from the sort of exploitation that made the count proliferate, but should the character ever become public domain it is hard to imagine that its legacy will end with its author. Or, leaving it to the man himself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzC3ZZyC5Go

A Dream about Courtaud

A Dream about Courtaud

            “Ask me your questions.” He says. His voice is thick with a muddy French accent, light tones which suggest his fatal words are lighthearted. The skin beneath his bright brown hair is pale, pulled tight over the sparse muscles of his face and hands. His shirt, neat and collared is stained brown and red. If I did not know better, I would say he is a sickly man.

            But I know better.

            “Why do you do this?”

            “Do what?” He asks.

            “Hunt them.”

            We are on the porch of a rotting wooden cabin, surrounded by dense, coniferous woods with the heavy smell of damp pine. In the fog I hear the screams from the kennels, the men and women brought forth to his ceremonial slaughtering ground, a god’s sacrifice to itself. For its own amusement.

            He smiles and pulls the cup of whiskey to his bearded face. His eyes are dark now, and shine in the right light like a dog’s. He can see in the dark, I wonder if he sense how afraid I really am. Inside, I am screaming with the sacrifices in the kennels. He sips his whiskey, letting it trickle out of the corners of his mouth to blend with the ichor and gore clogged around his face.

            He sighs.

           “You’re asking me about the very state of nature. Every day the human race irrepably damages this planet, kills a species and no one seems to mind. Sure, a few outliers, a few self-hating Homo-Mendaxes will stand up and shout, a few of them will even blow up a clinic or bulldozer to stop the path of human progress. But it’s not enough. They’re just as useless as the bulldozers, just as redundant as the dodo. But human beings have come too far because they have no natural predator. That is me…that is us.”

            In the thick of the woods, it is dark now. I hear baying and tortured howling. The mouths in that woods aren’t human. Not animal either.

            “What do you want with us?”

            He laughs and I feel the monstrous eyes staring from just behind me.

            “You are the very portrait of human arrogance, boy. You act as if there is something special about your species, as if I need to have a reason or a special grudge against you in order to justify doing what I do. Can I not simply do as I please? After all, there is nothing alive that can stop me. Human beings are no different from anything else on this planet. They are meat. Just like everything else.”

            The revulsion on my face must show because he continues, “Oh don’t be that way! You know what? A few homo necans get a taste for a fellow and the rest of them act just the way you are, as if some ancient code has been broken and some damn treason has been committed against the whole world. Well I have news for you, that’s the type of world we are: we are a world in which things eat each other, constantly, ceaselessly. Life is a cycle of teeth and claw. The best way is to end it young, while the meat is still tender.”

            My stomach sinks as he says this. I look down on my own cup, trembling and sloshing in my palms. The tears are right behind my eyes, scraping to escape but hiding behind their white prison so that he does not smell my fear.

            “Please,” he seems to know. “As if I would waste my time. My stock back there, those good people, they are my veal. Trained to perfection, star athletes all of them. And it is not as if I am denying them a chance. They may use any weapon they are able, though it would do them little good.” From my sudden memory I recall that Courtaud has revived from machine gun wounds, that he has swallowed fire and consumed lethal amounts of cyanide, as a display of his divinity. My hands come together.

            “Then why am I here?”

            His smile breaks and I see his teeth, sharp and inches long.

            …

            I wake in the darkness of 3 a.m. I am cold, covered in sweat and slime. Outside dogs are barking in panic and frenzy. There are no dogs in my neighborhood, none that I have ever seen before. A pack of strays would need to be an army for this chorus.

            As I glance back at the window shades I see the outline of a man, and two voice speak inside me. And I know that the rational, awake voice is my head is right, that I am dreaming still and must return to sleep at any cost. But the half-asleep voice speaks a partial truth that I cannot shake: That he is standing outside. He is out there and no matter how much I dream, or do not, he is there. 

The Code of Hector Barros

The Code of Hector Barros

            “I never get the killers I ask for.

            “They send me these men and women from ‘war’, straight out of the desert and expect some clean transition into their new war. But that’s not war. You gringos…you go somewhere else, fire missiles from the comfort of the sky and you call it ‘war.’ You attack with all the fury of heaven and thunder, outnumber and outflank your enemy immediately. And you call it ‘war.’

            “It’s not though.

            “No. No ‘war’ is your neighbor’s house burning. War is the enemy fighting from room to room, your family hiding beneath the floorboards with soldier’s boots right above their heads. War is when you have a stake in the dirt you’re fighting on, when it’s watered with the blood of your brothers and sisters, your fathers and mothers and all of your friends.

            “It’s no wonder you gringos lost Iraq. No one wanted that dirt but the Iraqis. Now look, and you see that exactly who wants that dirt is what’s keeping it.

            “But we’re not just interested in dirt here.

            “I don’t care what your body count is, hijo. All you’ve killed are soldiers. Soldados…all they have are thumbs and bones. There’s very little to killing soldiers. Just one moment, that’s all it takes. It’s especially easy when you think they’re monsters, if you truly believe that what they believe is too dangerous to survive. Not to mention that for all of their muscle, armor and training, a solider is just a man in a shell.

            “They’re only human.

            “So, it’s not surprising to me that you can’t kill a monster.

            “I don’t blame you, or anyone else. I’ll never forget my first time seeing one. Only it wasn’t in a cage, not chained up and waiting for an execution, sedated so that you can become familiar with the concept that yes, in fact, they are real. No, the first time I saw a monster was in war. Real war. And…he…was faster, more ruthless and quick than I hope you’ll ever see out there in the field. And inexplicably, fire follows him when he walks. You may think it a myth, but I cannot recall a time I’ve faced him and the world hasn’t been burning.

            “But, I was like you. I froze up. What do you do, against all of that? They tower over us, walls of muscle and teeth. All of the horror movies you’ve laughed at, and they’re so much worse than Lon Chaney in make-up. They’re demons in the skins of men, women, even children. And they’ll sob and scream and tell you that they can’t control themselves.

            “And they’re not lying. In our war, the enemy is often innocent.

            “But the only cure they’ve got is death. The alternative is worse than you can begin to know. If you don’t believe in souls…maybe you can’t grasp the horror of it, taking communion with that devil.

            “But you’ve only ever killed men.

            “Quiet your soul. Steel you heart. Clear your mind. Steady your hand. Suffer no illusion. Spare no evil.”

            “You’ve only just began. And if you’re lucky, that’ll be the only child you’ll ever need to kill.”

IPA

IPA

            The bubbles are popping across my organs. I feel their little tendrils probe my veins in stretching, writhing movements as the bitter taste tickles the back of my mouth. Already I am reaching for the cup; the liquid parasite that I know will only destroy me further. But its roots are in my brain, whispering sweet songs in furthest parts of my mind. With another swallow I fall to the floor, stomach aching as it churns around, looking for away to escape the acid.

            There is a rupture and I scream. The cup is looking at me, a million living things with incalculable eyes looks at me from the other side of the crystal. I shouldn’t have drank it, I knew what it could do but the prospects were simply too sweet. At the time, when I had discovered the recipe in an old alchemy book I had thought I had discovered either a miracle drug or a million-dollar recipe.

            But I am drinking a homunculus.

            It is growing inside me, polluting my being and spilling corroding my bones. My femurs are the first to go, dissolving as teeth and branches pull them apart into white fragments floating around in a red pool. I know I will never walk again, and whisper prayers that my mother taught me when I was two, recalling every memory I have stacked away in the hopes that somewhere in my mind I am ready to defend myself.

            But it knows what I am doing. My eyes become golden. Brown. Then black. There is a slipping sound, flaming pain as my hands reach out to try to find my eyes. They touch the roots…sticky with what I know is my own blood and I try to scream. Something slithers up from behind my throat.

            The new limb is limp. Then it pulls, slides out and wraps itself around something cold. If I drink the last of it I will be lost forever. I move my arms, but the roots hold me back, snaking around and holding me still while the long tongue brings the glass closer to my mouth. The cool glass touches my nose, I can smell the hops and the fizzing malts which had lead me to believe I created something special.

            My only regret is that I was right.

            The last sip is the best thing I have ever tasted. 

What the Dog Tells Me

When Aunt Martha leaves I watch Atlas.

            Atlas is a Great Dane whose head reaches the middle of my chest when he is on four legs. He is slow and cautious, a shadow that lurks in the corner of my sight and watches me from behind corners and the backs of hallways. For a long time Atlas does not approach, does not trust me. He does not make a sound. His growl is low and shaking, a rattling fear that crawls along lower spines like parasite spiders. In nights when I sleep in the guest room of this unfamiliar home I think I hear it, but in the mornings Atlas is silent, and I know I am imagining things.

            Aunt Martha’s house is big and lonely, deep into suburbia where she has cut herself off from familial relations with her neighbors. Her house is full of photographs of a family that has grown old and apart; sons who speak only through email, daughters who send Christmas cards, pictures of grandchildren who she has only held once before. They stare out of their glossy two-dimensional lives and look into the vast now-emptied home that they left behind.

            Atlas is in some of these pictures, but he always looks the same. No grey hairs, sagging jowls or sad eyes from the living shadow whose puppyhood is as ill-documented as the rest of his history. My cousins do not talk about the dog when I see them, nor do any of them have funny or cute stories which people so often consign to their animals. Instead they shrug, change the subject and say that Atlas has always been around.

            I come under the impression that Atlas is not watching me out of suspicion but instead out of curiosity. As I water the plants and clean the shelves I feel his eyes on the back of my shoulders as a physical weight. When I turn I see a black silhouette retreat back into a place unseen. I cringe and whistle my fears of Atlas away. Increasingly I believe that he hates that I am here and am filled with the unnatural sensation that I am not the master in this house.

            He watches me while I eat, sitting almost as tall as I stand, silently observing from across the room. I keep the television and radio off because the hair on the ridge of his back stands up when they speak. Atlas enjoys silence in his home, and in its totality he watches me until I lock a door. From the other side of my sanctuary I sleep uneasy in the knowledge that he is awake, sitting laying silently on a couch with his eyes open; waiting for me to unlock the door so that he may continue his persecuting vigil.

            On the fifth day, he finally speaks.

            His eyes, formally black-brown opals, slide aside to reveal panels of shimmering white light. A horse moan issues from his long mouth, a tantric chant that begins with a guttural grown and crescendos in a man-like scream of rage. His meaty paws come down on my chest, and in a moment I am paralyzed under him as his teeth come closer and closer to my nose.

            “Leave.”

            And after that he is off of me. I wonder the house in a daze, splashing water on my face from the kitchen sink. I feel his stink still on me, and I wonder if this truly happened. I wonder if Aunt Martha’s hollow estate is really a good place for my admittedly disturbed mind. I had been told previously that the medication could wear off and that I would be at the mercy of hallucinations if I was not careful in my routine changing of my prescriptions.

            My breathing is heavy and labored, my hands shaking as stammering weeping comes out of my mouth. I had believed that I had made real progress, that the doctors were right in saying that I didn’t need any more treatments. I am on the verge of real weeping, remembering that I had schedule interviews for the week I was to return from Aunt Martha’s.

            Then I feel Atlas’ stare, and I wonder if I have ever been anything but insane.

            In a delirious moment, I imagine the house is laughing with him. Then he shakes his head and leaves. I understand how hopeless I truly am. I clutch myself and cry on the kitchen floor.

            When I wake up, he is peering over me.

            He calls me horrible things, obscenities and slurs that are so foul that they cannot describe a human being. He tells me of the awful things he wants to do, the profane and abominable sins he wishes to unleash on me, on the world. He dips his head to my ear and begins to sing a song: He sings that the worm eats the man, that the worm grows the dirt and that all things walk on a bleeding planet. I begin to weep and he bites into my shoulder, telling me to stop my worthless screaming and that if I will do one thing right in my life it is to listen when he speaks.

            Atlas tells me of the world that has been woven into ours, about the evil men that live under the clear surface of water, the twisting snakes that crawl under the gnarled bark of trees. He sings about the black planet that moves closer and closer into our solar system, carnivorous and wide he says it will swallow us all. I feel warm and Atlas roars with laughter.

            Men, he says, are incapable of dealing with fear in a rational manner.

            I open my eyes and Atlas is gone, the house is quiet.

           

            Aunt Martha will be home tomorrow…

            

The Anatomy of a Haunted House

Inside a Haunted House

            It’s all in the foundation.

            The dust, the spiders, the bodies, the little beams of light which reveal only enough of the cavernous (carnivorous?) basement. It’s in the loneliness, the isolation, in secret histories and past violence which resurface like the head of a laughing demon from a bottomless well. It’s in the decay of house and family, in lengthy shadows and dark corridors.

            A haunting, every part of it, is in the foundation.

            Allen Ginsberg tells us that to write the truth we should kill our darlings.

            In the story of a haunted house, we cannot afford to kill our darlings. We must keep them close, close to save us and close to hurt us. Our darlings must be kept for their longing heart beats and their curved, bloody claws. A house and all of its ghosts are made real by detail, by feeling. And without our darlings, literary or not, we can hardly be said to feel.

            But hauntings are not always people, not always demons.

            A man can be haunted by a memory, by a taste. Souls can be dogged to the end of the earth by longing, by unrelenting force and by a past that stares back at them from the hungry dark. Revenge, regret, hatred and even love are forces far more powerful, far more terrifying than translucent man waving chains, some bloody face or burned serial killer. These forces are real. Sometimes they can be destructive, sometimes they can even be evil.

            It takes more than a ghost to make a haunted house.

            More than a demon.

            It takes something real. Palpable, terrifying, strong emotion.

            A good haunting never ends, but follows us long after we put down the pages.