Company

She would fashion monsters from those things she found in the vast space around her; combinations of little bits of waste, sharp fragments woven together in a manner not unlike the fusing of skin. These things were hoarded and forgotten, and once uncovered found to be rotten beyond recognition. She wept at the fractured beauty  found in such decay within the horrible constructs she had created, emphatically aware of the futility realised in the casual acknowledging of this crisis.

The Exaggeration Monster

‘The dog was as big as a house.’

‘A house?’

‘A house.’

‘A house?’

‘ A house… with an extension.’

The Kitchen

Those nights where I can see you, at the corner of my eye- in the recesses where the retina may not reach, but the mind may hold its breath and delve- I find that you have waited for me. You exist only in the shattering of light alongside darkness; the flash of the photographer’s camera, or the death of the night amidst the glory of sunrise. But there in that snap, that time of momentary insanity; I find you, in the kitchen. You sit in obscurity in the darkest corner, eyes tormented from sobbing. I struggle to remember your form precisely: your black figure is wretched and incomprehensible, shaking at the dazzle from the artificial lights. Your pale face seems hysterical against the remaining relics of your make-up; long black marks tear open your cheeks and I bite my lip and try not to laugh. I stretch my arms towards you, but you recede… the light is on, and the fear has departed. But with each returning night you find me again, crawling through my skin with the flick of the light bulb. I turn my head towards you and your image dissolves. With each turn shrouded in the insignificance of blinking, I see you there repeatedly, in the darkness, on the kitchen floor. Sometimes you laugh with me. Sometimes I cry with you.

The Hair Ball Monster

My hair had been falling out all autumn. Perhaps it had been the time of the year, the poor diet consisting mainly of toast and marshmallows, or the buckets of hair dye that had caused the little strands to wander off into the distance, making a break from their hairy prison. Hairs would fall out as I brushed them, or dried them, or tried to wash them. They would even fall out while I was asleep, and often I would wake up and find that some of them had tried to kill me. It was the way of things. It was the way it always had been, and always would be. I poisoned my hair with toast; they tried to strangle me in my sleep. I felt we had reached a good understanding.