CHAPTER 12: THE TRUTH ABOUT MONSTERS



There is a momentary break in this dream. I’m not sure if I’m still dreaming, and the dream has changed plots, as dreams often do, or if I’m completely awake. I’m in a white room… in a white and drowsy haze. All the things that are missing in a dream are missing right now- scents, tactility, visual definition, complete control over my thoughts… and yet my previous dreams were more vivid.

I am in a white bed… with white sheets… in a white room with white light shining through the window. A white woman- a nurse- comes into the room and puts a needle in my arm… but I don’t feel it… just like a dream.

And yet, despite the detachment, something tells me this is real. There is something logical about these events. I feel like I am experiencing future memories rather than participating in reality.

I hear a voice say, “Stay away from the Crazy Eights.”

And then… this reality fades… and my dream slowly returns... or am I waking?

First, I am talking to the little girl again. “Do you think there are any monsters here?” she asks.

“Probably not the kind you’re thinking of,” I answer, even though I don’t understand why I answer her that way.

“Were you afraid of monsters when you were a little girl like me?” she asks.

“Yeah, I was,” I say, and I frown at the memories.

“I think that they might be living in my closet…” she whispers, “and outside my window when I sleep.”

There is something odd about the tone of her voice. I think she wants me to say something specific to her, but I’m new to this dream again… drowsy, as if I were just waking up. I say, “I was afraid that they were under the bed. I wouldn’t let my arms or legs hang over the edge of the bed.”

“Are they real?” she asks.

“Monsters?”

“Yeah.”

“No, they aren’t real,” I say. I don’t know why, but I add, “at least not the ones you’re thinking of.”

Another dimension is added to the dream- setting. We’re now atop the concentric circles. The light levels are… impossible. The only way I can describe it is to say that there are some areas that I can see and some that I am blind to. I can look down and see some of the circles but not all of them. There should be a progressive radiance to the light around me, but there are only patches of sight and blindness. I can look out into the plain, but it’s a vast nothingness. The fear I had felt before returns and I feel it seize my blood. Little Ivy takes my hand and pulls me forward. I know that I have no choice.

I take a deep breath as I take my first step. The air feels wide open and has a misty and foggy atmosphere with an earthy-organic scent as if it were some sort of field or meadow. The ground feels soft and gives way as if we are walking on earth. These are intense sensations I shouldn’t have in a dream. We are walking in blackness… in darkness… in emptiness. Our steps are slow because we are walking nearly blind. I squeeze the little girl’s hand, and in return she clings onto my hand and forearm, and she seems simultaneously afraid and comforting me.

The cold dampness encloses on us so we cross our arms and shiver. However, the temperature is not from atmospheric conditions but from the cold glare of the darkness. A breeze cuts through the air, and scarlet seeps into the blackness. Our location begins to come clear- we are on my hometown square of New Oxford. It must be another step on concentric circles. This square is different from the one that’s outside my apartment window. A claustrophobic ceiling that appears to be stained and musty concrete hovers just a few feet above us. It has a horrible gloom about its buildings and traffic structures. The grass and trees are dead. Even the fountain, usually beautiful, has a menacing glare.

The air continues to fill with scarlet and begins to take a shape. And then she stands before me.

I look at the little girl with my name and I have an impulse to protect her, although it’s me I should be worried about.

“Is this your mommy?” the little girl asks.

“Yeah, this is my mother,” I answer. This must be the other monster I was referring to.

“What are you doing here, mom?” I ask.

“That’s exactly what I’d like to know, Ivy. I’ve got a lot of things to do,” she hisses. She folds her arms and marches toward me. “And you brought me here, and I’d like to go home, now!”

I skirt little Ivy to my left side in a protective motion and walk past mom. “I didn’t bring you here. If you want to leave, then just leave!” I yell over my shoulder.

When I turn around, I am face to face with her… and this time she is bathed in blood. I jump back at the scare- the image cuts like a shard of glass.

“You are bloodthirsty and lustful,” the little girl says.

“But blood trumps everything, doesn’t it Ivy?” mom asks me with a cocked head and grin.

“No…no…no…” I whimper. I put cover my head with my arms and crouch to the ground in a protective ball. This imagery… it’s much too violent. I don’t understand why my mind would create such images. I squeeze myself into a ball, hoping everything will go away, but I can feel a little girl’s hand stroking my hair.

I want to look at my mother as the entity who granted me life with love and compassion… but she’s so self-centered… she tries to make me feel as if I owe her for giving me life, although she’d never say it in so many words. Since I was a little girl, she has been slowly asphyxiating me. My rage should give me the strength to overpower her, but my love for her weakens me. I lose every time. Every child wants to be loved by their parents. They can’t escape it. They can’t run from it. And neither can I. Mom was right- blood trumps everything.

I look up, and my mother is still there, but she looks fine now.

“You see,” little Ivy says, “if you don’t face it, it will only get worse.”

I wipe a few tears from eyes and stand up. I look at mom. I look her directly in the eyes. “You didn’t love me,” I say.

“Of course I love you, Ivy,” she says.

“No, no… don’t you do that. You admit what you have done. Mothers are supposed to hold you and comfort you and love you. Mothers are supposed to be the bright shining gateway into the world. Mothers are supposed to teach you how to love and how to be a woman… but you’ve been nothing but a raging selfish bitch.”

“I’m not going to admit to anything, young lady. I made a lot of sacrifices in my life for you.”

“You know what? I’m sick of your martyr speech. You did what you had to do because it was required by law, not out of love, and you can’t guilt me into giving in. I want you to apologize to me.”

In a very offended tone, she says, “I will not apologize to my own daughter!”

“Even though you’re wrong?”

She doesn’t answer. I stare back at her.

“And it’s your fault dad killed himself.”

Without hesitation, she replies, “It’s not my fault, it’s his fault. I didn’t cut anyone or pull any triggers or unplug any machines.”

Her reaction stings me, probably because it’s true, but also because she won’t accept responsibility for anything. She won’t give an inch.

“So is that it?” She continues. “You’re mad at me because your father was weak?”

I will never get through to this woman. This woman will never understand anything beyond her own interests. She drowns me in her selfishness. She has the power to give me so much happiness, but that means she has the power to give so much unhappiness. She’s a poisoned spring. Anyone who tries to draw love or life from her suffers. All you have to do is look at me or my father for evidence of that. And over the years I’ve seen her lure in rich men and people with low self esteem like an infected flower attracts bees. Her lure is her beauty but her disease is invisible. Everyone needs love from her but all she gives is unrequited sour venom.

Little Ivy squeezes my hand, and hisses at my mother like a cat hissing at a predator. “You’ve committed false witness against thy neighbor…” she says. “You are a traitor of your kindred…” Such strange words coming from a little girl, I look down at her and realize that she is not a little girl. I remember that this is a dream.

“You have no self control…” she says, and this time I am not sure who she is talking to, and I realize something.

The true torture is that I may become my mother.

Monsters… The horrible truth of life is that when the monster catches you, it doesn’t eat you- it turns you into another monster. You become the monster that catches you. The monsters that exist today aren’t sleeping under beds or hiding in closets- they are mothers, fathers, uncles, neighbors, family, strangers… Selfish people, greedy workaholics, child molesters, alcoholic wife and child beaters… these are our monsters. We become our abusers. We inflict our own trauma. We become our monster.

If only I could be that little girl afraid of the darkness under my bed and in my closet again. Those monsters never hurt me. They only scared me. This monster has hurt me more than even I can understand.

“How could you have had sex for a website?” I ask.

“I don’t have to answer to my daughter for my sexual preferences,” she answers.

“But it affects me, mother,” and I giggle sickly at the word ‘mother’. “’Mother’, that’s the whole point, isn’t it. You can argue all you want about pornography and its place in free speech and sexual freedom… or even feminism… although you are the last person I want to hear a speech about feminism from… but what you don’t get, and have never gotten, is that once you become a mother, things change. Everything you do affects me. Everything you do reflects on me. If you sleep around town- listen to me- WHEN you sleep around town, and destroy your reputation, you destroy mine too. When you have sex for PUBLIC EXHIBITION, it’s not only going to change how people think about you, but how people think about me.”

“It’s not all about you, you know. I did what I did for my own reasons.”

“Without any consideration for the people you’re supposed to care about,” I say.

“I don’t have to answer to you,” she says.

“I’ve noticed.”

And with that, I’ve had enough, and I refuse to argue with her anymore. And the dream changes, and becomes violent. She is holding me underwater in the fountain, and I am drowning. She is killing me and I can’t struggle free. Blood drips from her face a mixes with the dancing water that I am struggling against. Maybe she had a right to do what she did, but to me she was still mommy…

I look up at her and think, If only a storm would sweep her away…

And then, my dream fades, and reality slowly returns… and instead of drowning in water I am drowning in white.