The Eyes of Monsters

The fire burns down.
Burns out.


The embers remind her of teeth. Of claws. Of monsters.


Every glowing coal is the black heart of one of those creatures of the night. Those creatures that devour the children who wander into darkness. Those creatures that all other creatures are afraid of.


The world is so cruel to have such tokens of fear be birthed by such a beacon of safety. The shelter of the flames’ righteous anger is always followed by the cold indifference of night. And the coals. And the embers. The eyes of monsters.


So many things can happen in the night. Have happened in the night. Men die in the night who would not have died in the morning. Women cry for their lost children who wandered into darkness. Children, like herself, have sat by dying fires and watched those coals, those glowing eyes until they faded into the morning. The eyes of monsters are tricky and do not blink. They have no pupils, no eyelids. To match their stare is to forfeit sleep, for where there are eyes, there must be a face, and where there is a face, there are teeth. Children, like herself, have sat by dying fires and lost their game with the creatures of the night.
But not her.


And as the warmth of the sun warms her face the way the fire did the night before, her own eyes glow. In them, heavy and haggard, is triumph. It gives her strength. It gives her hope. In the morning, the eyes of monsters hold no sway. There is no longer a face, no longer any teeth. Instead, there are charcoal rocks that crumble under her foot. The dust that remains is the dust of dreams and nightmares. She carefully gathers it up in her hands. It feels lighter than sand, and not so coarse. The slightest breath of air blows it beyond her reach, into the sky, the distant trees. She must dispose of it properly.


The eyes of monsters taste like sand, though not so coarse. Her every breath attempts to blow it beyond her reach, into the ground. Her tongue shrivels, her throat tightens. If she had eaten anything beforehand, this would not be possible: the eyes of monsters are tricky and will force the body to reject them. Instead, she coughs, she heaves, and it feels as if she will die. She has done this enough times. The thought of death no longer scares her.


This ritual takes no more than a few minutes and when she wipes her lips clean of the saliva that has accumulated, her sleeve only makes them dirtier. There is still triumph in her eyes. Satisfied, or as close to satisfied as she can be, she directs them to the sun. To the east.






Her footprints are nearly invisible, even to the man. Nothing remains of her fire but a disturbed patch of ground. The sun has long since set, and he knows that she has stopped. He can wait. He knows that, eventually, he will crest a hill, and he will see the tell-tale glow of a fire in the distance. Then, the crackling sound of wood and flames. Then the heat. Then the girl. He can wait. Until then, however, he sits, and rests, and keeps his eyes on the tracks, the horizon. His eyes look for her. The eyes of a monster.

Hello

I suppose a proper hello is in order.

I had meant to do something like this for some time. Create a blog, I mean. I need somewhere to keep my writings. Short stories, poetry, bits of plot ideas, etc. A portfolio of sorts.

I don't intend to fill these virtual pages with my thoughts and opinions, though no doubt I will, both literally and unintentionally through pieces of writing.

Read and opine if you will, or don't if you'd rather not. Feedback is always appreciated.

And what more is there to say?

This blog is just one of a million others. Most are better, some may be worse. The only reason you continue to read is because my one millionth has been slightly more interesting to you than someone else's one millionth, and I am thankful for that. I have no illusions about this blog. It is just one of a million, I am just one of a million. You are a click away from any number of things that you could be doing instead of reading this.

But I am going to try my damndest to get you to pause, even if it's just for that one millionth of a second.

This hasn't really been a proper hello, has it?

You Don't Matter

There are those who think the world doesn't care about the little guy. There are those who think it spits on the few who already have so little. There are those who curse the earth and the sky and the mosquitos that fly too closely to your ears and make you think, for the briefest moment, that it will get stuck there and you'll have to live the rest of your life with a constant, irritating, buzzing, deaf, or practically deaf. They glare at others, or they keep to themselves, or they drink or they don't. When they're young, they write poetry that varies in quality, they fail classes or they do well. Maybe they don't tell anyone, maybe they do. They look like everyone else. Some try not to. They are right. The world doesn't care about the little guy. But it doesn't care about the big guy either. It doesn't care about me or you or them or us. The mosquitos that fly into your ears don't give a shit about your life and how they made today a little bit worse. The earth and the sky will do what they do whether or not you curse and cry. The world doesn't give a shit if you're rich or poor, unhappy or happy, alive or dead. It keep going whether or not you care whether it does or not. And that's the most wonderful thing about it. There is no fate, there is no destiny, no watchful eye that punishes you for good deeds and rewards you for bad. Or there might be, but if there is, it's out of your control anyways. What you think about the world is irrelevant to what it does to you. Not everything is within your control. In fact, in the grand scheme of things, practically nothing is. The effect you have on the world is minimal to nonexistent. You'll read about people who have or might change the world. You are probably not one of them. Your friends and family and hopes and dreams, your likes and dislikes, your pets, your favourite animal, the last thing you ate, none of those things have any bearing on "the world" that can be registered on any scale worth paying attention to. Probably.

The world doesn't care about you. But that doesn't matter. Fuck what the world thinks. Fuck what the world does. You don't need to matter. You don't need to mean anything to anyone. You might, but you don't need to. And that's something worth remembering. Not mattering gives you more freedom than anything "the world" can give you. Your friends and family matter to YOU. You matter to them. Probably. Your dreams and aspirations might lead to big things. They might crash and burn. Whatever happens will affect you. And you will react. And the only thing that matters in life is that reaction. What you you do, what you think, what you feel, it might not seem to follow any logic, and it might not, but those are the important things. Something will happen, good and bad, and you will, in turn, do something because of it (or just because). The grand scheme is irrelevant. The long game you play with life matters infinitely less than the short game you play with the people around you. You are not even a blip in the universe, and that gives you the chance to live your life more fully than you can think. Follow the rules. Or don't. You can do what you want to. Or you can do what you think you HAVE to. You can live your life as fully as you want. You can spout inane phrases proclaiming your desire to live every day as if it is your last, or you can not. There is no cosmic judge, no universal rules. Or there might be. Questions like that are dwarfed by the fact that the only thing that you should care about in your life is what you THINK you should care about. You have the freedom to live your life the way you want to. You'll probably work within some framework. There are no universal rules, but there are earthly ones. You agree and you disagree with some of these rules. You follow them to avoid rocking the boat. I follow them. You do it because you believe in them, or you do it because you'd rather not have attention drawn to yourself, or you do it because that's the way it's always been, you might not even have given any thought as to why. Good. you don't need to. Anyone who calls you a puppet to "the man" may or may not be right. Anyone who calls you an "irritating armchair activist" may or may not be right. It doesn't matter. Try to change the world. Or don't.

Because you don't matter, because you are insignificant in the grand scheme of things, you don't need to care about anything. But you might. I care about things. I care about a great many things. I care about food, sleep, people. I care about how my feet are freezing, I care about my future, I care about THE future. I don't HAVE to, but I do. I have the freedom to care about things, and to completely disregard other things. I have the freedom to rant and rave about some nonsense about "freedom" I can hardly explain in words. You and I are not obligated to do anything or not do anything. We have the opportunity to choose, methodically or blindly or not at all. The scope of your life is going to be worth absolutely nothing when all is said and done. Probably. You have no cosmic obligations to "the world" because you are a non-factor. Your life, in the end, only matters to you. Everything that makes up "you", your friends and the desire to keep them or make more, your secrets, your favourite food, the fact that you drool in your sleep, that weird thing you can do with your tongue when you're drunk, your family, that time in elementary school when you ate a bug, your first crush, absolutely every thought that you've ever (even the ones you forgot), absolutely everything you've done and even something you haven't, every single one of these things is the only thing that matters to you.

This might sound selfish. But if it does, it's because I haven't explained properly. It's selfish if you want to be selfish with it. You matter to you, and only you know what you want. The world doesn't give a shit about you. Only you do. So do what YOU want, live how you want to live. Or don't.