Men's Monster

My therapist used to tell me I was retelling my abuse over and over in my writing. That I was analyzing the plight I faced with myself and with my father from a million different 'what ifs'. Perhaps I was. Perhaps I am. It's funny how trauma imprints so hard on you that you can trace its footsteps back to your childhood. When I was a kid, I invented reasons for it. I fancied that surely if he was a monster, it was because there was monster blood deep within him. Now, as an adult, I understand that abuse does run through families in a viscous cycle, not unlike the monster blood I envisioned. So here is the story a nine year old girl told herself for why men did evil things to people.

In the beginning of the earth there were two great wielders of magic, distinguished only by the presence or lack of a soul. Over time, the soulless wielders took a darker, horned and fanged form. They felt no remorse, shame, or any of those pesky emotions empathy fosters. Later men named the creatures demons. The other wielders, those with souls, were known as the great mages. As time went on, the mages encountered many strife due to the nature of their empathetic hearts, and their blood became diluted with all number of creatures far they could take any form and loved easily.

The demons, enjoyed nothing more than medaling in the affairs of the world. While they too mixed with others, including humans, it was less seldom and never for love. To protect their bloodline and keep some of it pure, they formed a counsel and set measures in place to preserve it. Over time, the great mages became nothing more than witches and wizards as they fell in love with human after human and their bloodline became further diluted. And with it their clarity on right and wrong steadily declined far humans had fickle and divisive hearts, though never truly evil.

However, one day the goading of a demon deceived a man. The demon appeared before the man, clothed in charm and an infectious smile, while the man was out hunting. The demon whispered lies and poisonous rhetoric to him. Far, this man had a farm nearby where witches dwelled. The demon, cunning as he was, leaned against a tree, his eyes aglow with mirth and said, "Why dear man, do you not worry about the witches who till the earth near yours?"

"Why should I worry," the man asked. His neighbors were kind, a single mother with her sister and two children, all gentle in magic.

"Well they are witches after all. Why, with their magic, they could do nasty things. Will do vile things."

"Demon, you lie," the man accused. The demon chuckled.

"But do I? Do your crops grow well or do they wilt and sputter? Do the witches not perform magic in the fields? See now, they sap the energy from your soil to fuel their own food."

The man gave pause. This was true, his crops did poorly every year, yet the witches were abundant. The demon's grin widened.

"And do they not cry in disdain when you carry home meat from a hunt?" he pressed.

This too was true, but they never asked him not to hunt. They simply seemed sad when he felled a beast.

"None of these things mark evil," he chastised the demon.

"Ah, but watch my friend, watch. I merely warn you because I loathe the tricky witches. They feign their passivity. They mean to slowly drive you from the land by starvation and plague so they may claim it for themselves. They did it to my brethren long ago."

And so the seed was planted in the man's head. In the following days he watched the witches and became paranoid. Slowly the words of the demon stained his perspective. Every hello came with concealed meaning. Every glance was them watching their prey. Every spell cast was one meant to harm. Then he met the demon in the woods again.

"How is the hunting?" the demon chortled. The man did not know it, but the demon had been scaring away all of the animals.

"Dry," the man said with a frown. The demon shook his head woefully.

"Of course it is. It's just as I told you. The witches have made all creatures flee. And your crops?"

The man grunted.

"A small yield at best. Worse than last year."

"Ah, but at least the river has fish and your well water?" the demon suggested with a devious grin.

"No, the fish are a mere trickle and the well is running low," the man sighed. He wrung his hands in distress. "Demon, what can I do?"

And the demon perked up, his pointed ears twitched and his eyes shone.

"I will tell you what to do my friend. You must take this enchanted blade," and the demon pulled from the very air a knife with a black stone blade, "and plunge it deep into the heart of each witch while they sleep."

The man hesitated, eyeing the blade with caution, so the demon stepped closer, still grinning.

"How can I trust you?" he asked.

The demon pressed the blade into the man's hands.

"Because I too wish them dead, but they would sense my magic should I get close."

Deceived, the man returned home with the knife in his bag. That night while the moon was behind clouds and all deep asleep, he snuck into the house of the witches. First he killed the children, so quick they could not even wake. Next he killed the sister; her eyes opened a mere flash, and she perished with a frown. And, he felt glee are their peril. Exaltation that he was now free from their great curse. He swore he could feel the hold of their magic on the land fading away. But, he found the last room empty.

The mother had awoken and found her children and found her sister. Shrill screams of agony and rage filled the air. She rushed to the room where the man stood, a fury of magic and swirling fabric. The man raised the blade, but her deft hands pried it away. Her eyes widened when she beheld the blade and she wailed again.

"Where did you get this?!" she screamed over the man. He hunkered low to the floor and raised his hands.

"Spare me," he wailed, terrified. "It was the demon in the woods."

The witch screamed again, more pained than the last cry.

"You murdered my flesh with a demon's blade?! Do you know what you have done?!" she thundered. "Torturous human, no soul claimed by a demon blade may depart the earth. They will wander lost forever."

Tears streamed down her face.

"I knew not what I did!" the man pleaded. "The demon tricked me." The witch hissed and threw aside the blade. She wrapped her bony fingers around his throat.

"No heart of good is deceived into such vile things. I will curse you to wander the lands as you have cursed my sister, and I will curse all of your children and their children as you have cursed mine. And while you wonder, you shall all be slaves borne to the evil bloodlust you have displayed."

Magic swirled around the pair and the witch's eyes glowed black. The man's flesh fell away, bearing beneath a rough and gnarled skin. He grew claws and fangs and pointed ears sprouted from his head. His eyes turned blood red and glowed with intensity. And so he was banished back into the woods with a thirst for human blood that he would never satsify. He was drove by the maddening hunger to kill and eat humans. Though monster, in time he learned to resume a human form, but his eyes always stayed blood red. All of his children, no matter how little of his blood they had, bore the same blood red eyes and the same hunger for flesh.

Over time his descendants became known as the blood goblins. They became hated more than even the demons, far they killed and ravaged the land in blind rampages for blood. Hundreds of years slipped by, and still all children of his bloodline were borne with red eyes and a monster form. They found no solace in the world, no piece, no safety. Each of his children's children were left to wrestle with the curse within them. Often they inflicted pain on their families and children. They became cruel, hard, and bitter, and infected the fabric of the human species.

Alas the tale ends not here but on the fist of the next abuser. On the cruel actions of my father wrestling with the decision to be gentle or abusive. He was always at war with the curse within him, given to him by his father. And, sometimes I look in the mirror and see my father's eyes staring back at me and shudder. Perhaps we all have a little bit of monster within us. Perhaps some of us have none at all. But here with me, my family's curse ends.