Daddy's Warning

    How did the creature that haunts our nights and fills our days with grief come to be? They say it began some years ago with a car wreck—a car that drove off the steepest part of the pass, killing both husband and wife.  

Neither was sure what death might be like, but the sterile, almost mechanical environment that met them was certainly not what they expected. They found themselves in a room: the sort of place that would have hosted a large table with comfortable chairs for important people to make important decisions in life. But here, there was no table. No furniture of any kind in fact. Only a looming set of double doors at the far end of the rectangular room. 

    Once they got over the shock of being something akin to ghosts, they settled in to wait. And so they sat together—entwined, unblinking, watching those oversized doors. They both assumed that eventually someone would come. They did not know if that person would come to judge them or embrace them or simply offer some sort of orientation to this new mode of existence, but they were somehow convinced that the doors would admit someone. Anyone. They never did. 

    Of course, this had led to the inevitable fight. Larissa had wanted to go and explore. Phillip discovered within himself a vague uneasiness with the idea of leaving the room that seemed to have been assigned to them. The stalemate had only been broken when Phillip said, “We don’t even know if we can leave!” and Larissa had replied, “Can we leave!?” She had meant to continue with some disparaging remarks about how even an imbecile could see that they would never find out until they tried, but she was cut off by a lifeless, mechanical voice that informed them that they could indeed leave the room but may not leave the plane of existence they found themselves on. 

    The voice had come from the space about two feet above them directly between their heads. Once they discovered that it answered any direct question, they were able to learn a great deal about their new home. Among the most important tidbits was the revelation that, while they could not leave this “plane of existence” as the voice called it, there were “thin spaces”—geographical locations where their new world bumped up against the world they once thought of as “the land of the living” but now considered “the land of the uninitiated.” They never did meet another on their new “plane of existence,” so they spent a good deal of time watching those of us on earth.

These “thin spaces” were places considered sacred to different religions and cultures. The copule discovered that, sometimes, communicating with the uninitiated in these places gave them sufficient reason to stop the tiresome quarreling that took up so much of their time and energy. You see, only one of them could squeeze their voice and their presence into those thin spaces at a time, but both of their intertwined beings could somehow participate in the interaction through the substance of the one. It was the one thing in this lifeless place they found they could enjoy.   

    But today was a special day. When they died, they had left behind a daughter, and she had made the pilgrimage to one of the sacred nexuses that connected her parents’ world to hers. They had watched her for months and planned to meet her as best they could and give her what comfort they could across the chasm that separated them from the child that was so dear to them both. Now she was late. Their nerves frayed with the waiting. Of course, the waiting turned to squabbling.

    “Oh, Phillip look at the clothes people wear these days. If only I could try them on!” Larissa spoke slyly, knowing the effect it would have on her husband. 

    Phillip scowled. “When Eleanor Roosevelt said, ‘great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people’ she forgot to finish the sentence. Stupid minds discuss clothes. I’m sure she meant to say it! Perhaps someone cut her off before she had the chance to finish.” Phillip had a unique way of making a point.

    “Oh--this old bone again! You wouldn’t appreciate fashion if it hit you in the face. At least not unless you saw some abstract, esoteric meaning in the subtleties of the cut and you could pretend you were superior to everyone else because you perceived what others missed. Phillip, you’re an ass if ever I knew one. And knew a lot of people!”

    “Yes, Larissa. I had to meet every boring, drunk, and besotted one of them. You and your little nest of sycophants, all buzzing about telling one another how much you appreciate your mediocre efforts at making something of yourselves. You acted like your humanity is a birthright and not something you have to cultivate and earn. You simply threw ideas and inane projects about like so much candy at a parade and expect one another to offer admiration and support! You know the one type of person you never introduced me to? A good old fashioned truth teller. A prophet. A seer. If you spent one moment with someone like that all your pretensions would melt away and you’d see how meaningless your so-called life is. Then perhaps you’d have the courage to face the void. Then perhaps I’d find a little peace.”

    Larissa had expected something like this and replied readily.  “You see me so clearly now! I wish you’d seen me half as well before you married me.” Hands on her hips she tilted her head mockingly. “Then we wouldn’t find ourselves stuck with one another. If you’d noticed what a bitch I am after even twenty years you could have divorced me. I would have cried for a time, true. But I would have been free of you today and better for it. Now it’s too late!”

    “So it’s my fault, is it? As if you didn’t have eyes and ears! You knew that I wanted you to change, and you never said a word about it. I hoped that you would do your inner work and change, but you knew yourself. You knew that you never would. If you had just told me how insufferably stubborn you would remain, I would have divorced you and out daughter’s tender feelings be damned.”

    “And what of your eyes and ears? What of your responsibility? Don’t you think I believed that you might change too?” Something akin to genuine sadness slipped through her anger for a moment before she choked it back and gave herself over to rage. “Every year you got more and more selfish, more and more withdrawn, and more and more pompous. It was unbearable but I told myself that the night is darkest before the dawn and determined to bear up under it. Oh. . . I loved the idea of who you might become and so I warmed myself with the hope that the tides within you would change and you would become more human and not less. Now look at you! Look at us! If only you could have been for a moment who I knew you could be!” This was the line of attack she knew would find its mark. “Just one time, Phillip. One moment of nobility—one moment of real, self-critical insight instead of the pompous, self-serving nonsense that you suckle on—that’s all it would have taken for the ice to melt off my heart and then maybe things would have been different.”

    Now his features went blank, and sarcasm coated Phillip’s voice like sickness in the ICU. “Yes Larissa, I am responsible for your twistedness. You couldn’t have made any other choices. Your nobility fated you to destruction at my hands. I absolve you and declare you an absolute angel bound by some unearned misfortune to meet me.” Anger flashed in his eyes and his mouth tightened so that his lips hardly moved. “C’mon you idiot. When will you learn to take responsibility for yourself!”

    Larissa had nothing left to say, but she met his gaze defiantly and glared back at him with a hatred so pure it seemed steam was rising from her eyes.  Phillip returned the look, intent on dominating her will by continuing to stare vindictively through her skull once she could no longer maintain eye contact. 

He was so surprised when the rage in her eyes turned to panic and she abruptly looked down that he also glanced toward his feet. She was looking at the place that what passed for their legs had tangled together when a similar argument had led to the car accident that killed both their bodies. Their legs had been twisted together like gnarled tree roots, but they had divided just below the waist. This gave them just enough separation to glare at one another but never the freedom to escape the constant dripping of her comments about this or that tablecloth or urn or roll of wrapping paper.  But now an odd tingling pain filled him and his waist felt like a candle melting under a flame. Speechless, he watched as first his waist and then his belly and his heart merged with that bitch he disdained in the deepest parts of his incorporeal being. He heard screaming and he knew not if it tore from his throat or hers until he realized with revulsion that where once there had been two mouths, now there was only one. Desperately, his mind sought some escape but found that the struggle only bound them deeper together like two bugs caught together in a spider’s web. 

Then Phillip saw his daughter walk into the shrine. He instinctively moved toward her tear-stained face to warn her away from this horror. Larissa had followed the same instinct. 

The daughter came seeking direction. She came seeking hope. The year had been hard on her and something—she knew not what—had led her to this place.  It was as if part of her had heard the promise of receiving the blessing she desperately needed if only she came here, today. She knelt and bowed her head in an attitude of prayer and, as she quieted her mind, a discordant, supernatural shriek resonated back and forth across the room. Again and again it tore at her vulnerable heart and the strands that held the personality of the beloved daughter were torn apart by the dread, intimate knowledge of her parents true selves. Her personality dissolved into a base creature of mere appetite and instinct and her body was possessed by the dark creature we all fear.

So my daughter, if you hear a discordant shriek resonating in the dark, don’t move a muscle. The shriek comes from one body, but she has the tortured strength of three desperate souls caught in the web of vindictive, inappeasable hatred and appetite. Every moment bitterness and desperation grow between them and the only release they know is to loose their resentment and sate their hunger upon another only for the cravings and loathing to build again and again, intolerable, unavoidable, and all consuming. 

In that moment she looked at her father. The light caught an odd glint in his eyes and for a moment she thought she caught the shadow of a monster dancing behind those familiar eyes. It reminded her of how angry he had been when her mother had disappeared two years ago and how he had screamed his rage at her into the night when he thought she was asleep. Then he blinked and the daddy filled with the certainty and love that she relied upon returned. She wondered how deep that goodness ran and if the monster she thought she had seen really did lurk beneath it. With a shiver she thought that now, if ever she heard that preternatural howl, she wouldn’t know where to turn for help.