THAT’S WHERE THE MONSTER IS
-
Everything from To my lost love, to
Let me tell you a story, because I can’t deal with the silence. I’m going to talk to you and if you can hear me, blink that star over there. The one that looks a little blue.
I’m going to talk until you blink.
Is my favourite thing I’ve ever written. And it isn’t even close. If I wanted to sum up a few paragraphs that really feel like me, and that make me feel complete. It’s this.
I adore this character, and her loss, and her journey to face the monster through overwhelming grief.
RJ
⭐︎ ☾
1. Blink
⭐︎
The biggest lie we’re ever told is that perfect love drives away all fear.
A little 6x4 summer meadow and my first life lesson, taped above the oven. Cardboard, steam-bent edges, faded colours among the postcards and life quotes my mother used to make her nest. Dirty little rectangles where the yellowing tape had peeled off and had to be replaced.
Perfect love drives away all fear. A sentence of six words in curly letters that became a voice of constant comfort every time I walked into the kitchen. Sometimes I’d get close up just to hear its voice:
Listen, kid. I know you’re confused and in pain but know this: the worst the world has to offer will one day be eclipsed. All of your panic and anxiety will soon be swallowed up in some aching euphoria and you’ll forget what it’s like to be afraid.
Here’s the problem. Nobody who has ever been in love would ever decide to print that on a meadow. Once I left home and lived in the wide open world, love created the most perfect fear. The fear of endings. The fear of this person I found. This wonderful being who patched my imperfections. That they will one day be gone. That if it was this good, then I had to face what it would be like when it was all taken away.
Perfect love drives away all fear. I’m sure it’s true somewhere. Maybe there’s another universe, or a planet buried among the distant stars. Maybe people live there too. Maybe around every corner you find endless fields of simmering embers and tall beacons of light just waiting to overcome the darkness. Maybe that exists, but it’s a different world to mine.
My simple, broken world. I’ve heard it said that we’re nothing but the sum of our experiences, and if that’s true I’m just a bundle of sorrow and broken hearts.
Sorrow, broken hearts and perfectly cooked toaster waffles.
• • •
Back then, being out in the world filled me to the brim. I’ll always remember the long walks after work, balancing on tired feet, trying not to overflow until I got home. Home with the green door, home with the arch of jasmine. Home where you knew how to unplug me from the day. From every exhausting minute out in the big wide world that filled me up like a bathtub.
The man with the ragged fingernails who reached for the elevator button just as I did. The woman holding her husband’s car keys telling me I didn’t work hard enough. It all spiralled down the plughole when I was with you.
When the 17:03 arrived at 17:05 and I missed the next connection. When the electric meter needed a dollar and all we had were dimes and matches. When the neighbours bickered and blared and we had to close the living room windows in the middle of summer. All of it drained away when I was with you.
But I always knew my handmade fear was waiting. I could see it. It was crafted together over years of laughing at your funny faces and missing you when you brushed your teeth. It was hiding inside a tiny wooden box, maybe crossed with a yellow ribbon, waiting for the right moment. An intricately designed, masterfully created heartbreak.
I learned all this in the café on Fifth when you got your test results, when my hips wrestled the seat and I couldn’t decide if I should chase you out the door. Even when you came back and I was allowed close enough to hold you.
When you sang half a second out of sync to a song you didn’t know, or made up your own lyrics to Mahler’s Symphony Number 5 on late night radio. Even during those nights under the sheets where we became a whirlwind of paper hearts, still I’d be waiting for the knock on the door. I’d be handed a tiny wooden box with a note inside telling me it’s over. Telling me I was right all along.
To my lost love.
My hair is your favourite colour.
You used to say my eyes were pocket bonfires and my freckles were flickers of ash. I used to say if I could choose to live anywhere, I’d build a pillow fort under your collar and fall asleep to the sound of your voice.
But recently I haven’t been able to sleep at all.
We used to tell each other of our vivid, world-saving dreams, but during the heaviness of my new real-life I can’t even breathe without a soundtrack. When the music comes on, I know what to tell you.
Mahler, and I love you.
Let me tell you a story, because I can’t deal with the silence. I’m going to talk to you and if you can hear me, blink that star over there. The one that looks a little blue.
I’m going to talk until you blink.
☾⭐︎
2. The Illusion Cottage
This is the story of the day I left our old house and got lost in the Akaishi Mountains. The hills were covered with cherry blossom to rival my mother’s Sunday desserts and the paths were snowed under with icing sugar alpine plants. I walked all the way to the foot of Mount Kita in canvas shoes and an overcoat with a broken zip to overcome my fear of a world without you.
I packed my camera, though the shutter would stick and let in too much light. Every photo came out blurry but I thought, perhaps, if I was careful, I’d capture one clear shot. I decided even if I ended up with a collection of washed white and crimson watercolours I’d still have something to remember.
The guidebook told me to head towards The Illusion Cottage, at the lake where the Daisekkei Valley meets the river. I walked fast, making good time, stopping only to talk to a breathless old fellow who was trying to keep up with his dogs.
I held up my bottle of water.
“You’re kind,” he said, “but my home is just over the hill.”
He was wearing pitch-black waterproof trousers which slid into heavy walking boots with bright red laces. His white t-shirt had long black stains from the strap of his rifle.
“How did you know I speak English?” I asked.
The man looked up the road and flicked a tiny silver whistle between his fingers.
“It's obvious.”
I looked at my reflection in the black screen of my camera.
“Where are you heading?” he asked.
I wondered if I should tell him the truth. “I’m heading towards the lake.”
“That’s where the monster is,” he said with the whistle in his mouth. He blew into the end of it and a flock of nickel-sized birds scattered from the blossom. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. The man stood up and shifted his hips to make the rifle swing around into his arms. He looked disapprovingly at my camera. “Sun-down soon. You’d better get inside.”
I didn’t want to overstay this short meeting on the mountain pass so I decided to move on. He was right, after all, the day was almost over and I had to get moving.
⭐︎ ☾⭐︎
If I could choose to live anywhere, I’d curl into your palm and travel to your lips at the weekends.
⭐︎
The blue Ōkanbazawa River was a cursive line through the steady hand of the valley. It autographed the mountainside in inky blue verse and as I followed it to the southern side I tried to take a photograph. I clicked the shutter but all I managed to capture was a turquoise swell of the grass and water. Around every river bend I quickly scanned the horizon for the outline of anything moving, fearful of what I might see, but for most of the journey the banks flourished so heavily with reeds and vines that I saw nothing.
I soon found myself walking along the shoreline of the lake. There was a cottage in the centre of the still water. Bricks the colour of just-struck matches. Burnt orange with a flicker of red. What first looked like roots trailing down into the lake were actually just reflections of its windswept thatch, which was covered in hopping birds the size of cotton spools. It had a coconut brown front door there were no windows.
From the shoreline to the front door there was a dotted line of stepping stones, barely wide enough to tiptoe. I wrapped the camera strap around my wrist, held my arms out wide and and hopped across the stones. As I got closer I could make out more detail. The front door didn’t quite suit the rest of the cottage. It felt a bit too noble for its messy bedhead. Maybe in a former life it swung around the hinges of an old chapel, or a monastery’s snooker room. Here it was shifting and shimmering in the descending light of the valley, and I was creeping over the last of the stones towards it.
A gunshot in the distance nearly made me lose my footing but I committed to a final leap and made it to the ledge. I turned around to see the dotted line of stones I had just beaten but they were gone. Now there was only starlight, doubled up in the lake. If it wasn’t for Mount Kita looming at the edges of my vision I would have been easily convinced I was in the centre of some galaxy. Free falling. In orbit.
I turned around and gripped the thick iron handle. It turned with the heavy clunk of coupling carriages and then clicked lightly as the door swung open to a single room. The carpet was thick as grass, and it grew higher against the honey-toned wallpaper. Naked wooden beams with swirling knots swung across the ceiling from wall to wall, and the central beam was covered in a thousand scraps of paper.
White, yellow, pink. The yellow of your auntie’s dress during Christmas dinner last year and the pink of her shoes on your birthday.
Paper. Covered in words and sketches. Some with thin pencil lines, some with brushes. The room smelled faintly of acrylic paints and pencil shavings until I opened a wooden box from amongst the clutter on the table. Then all I could smell were pine cones.
⭐︎ ☾
If I could live anywhere, I’d live in the spaces between your fingers. I’d swing between your thumb and fingernails and write poetry on your knuckles.
⭐︎
I was close to making a nest in that thick carpet. I could have pulled some blankets down from the hooks by the door and made a cocoon, but that wasn’t why I was there. I wanted to see the monster.
When you died I shut the world away. All I could do was burrow. Now it was time to face what was outside.
I remember picking up the torch by the cottage door because it was the same one you used to have. It even had the same scuff marks from our weekend at Maroon Bells when you used it to hammer in the tent pegs. I twisted the end until the powerful beam shone out, then unfocused it to give me a wider view of the darkness. I closed the heavy door behind me, resting my hand on the latch for just a moment. I knew I could go back if I needed.
•••
I always knew when you were anxious or afraid. You’d fiddle with your fingers and pick at the skin around your nails. When the pain started in your stomach your fingers were so pitted and scratched we had to bandage them up with a patchwork of plasters.
But you were so brave. You used to tell me, when something came along that made me nervous or afraid, I should throw myself at it. Just clap my hands together once and walk towards it.
That night I hopped my way back to shore, swinging around the white beam to pick out each stone at a time. It was blind faith that they would keep appearing and I wouldn’t become stranded in the middle of all that water.
When I was just a few steps from the shoreline, I stopped. I could hear something breathing. It rumbled like a bear, threatening to growl, and I could hear light clicks of claws on gravel. My hands were shaking and I aimed the torch at my feet, too afraid to look up. He was there. In front of me in the darkness. The very thing I had come to face.
I stood, shivering on the last of the stepping stones until I plucked up the courage to look. I rested the torch under my arm, clapped my hands together once and walked forwards, throwing the light from the torch at the shore. There was nothing there but reeds and grass.
I often daydream about living without fear, but sometimes I can’t even breathe without a soundtrack. The music comes on and I know what to do.
Rachmaninov, and I imitate you.
⭐︎ ☾
☾ ⭐︎
3. The Two Figures
⭐︎
This is the story of the day I left our old home and got lost in the Akaishi Mountains. The hills were littered with evergreen forests and gravel paths, scribbling choruses across the mountainside. I walked all the way to the foot of Mount Kita with light brown hair in tangled ringlets, lightly strangled by a frayed scarf, to see if I could overcome my fear of being in a world without you.
I was following the guidebook, even though it got so wet that the ink smudged into a solid colour. Inside the back cover was a list of locations under the heading Reported Sightings, which I decided to follow until I could claim one of my own. It was daylight by the time I reached the next site on the list. The Two Figures.
I could see them for miles before the path wound around the mountainside for long enough to actually see them up close. Two tall, chalk-carved statues that overlooked the valley. The book said they were twenty feet tall but years of weather had worn them down so that now they were both barely taller than me. I ran my hand along the first chalky figure. It was cratered like old rock but the white dust made it smooth. The whole figure was scored with thick grooves from top to bottom and near the ground I noticed a small chiselled word in the chalk.
Tatemae.
I looked over at the second but whatever it said had worn away.
“It wasn't.”
It’d been so quiet on that cold morning hillside that the voice made me jump. I turned around to see who it was. A lady no bigger than a bedside table was feeding lychees to a ragged little bird on her shoulder.
“It wasn’t the rain that wore them down.”
She was standing next to a small wooden hut with a patchwork curtain flapping in the doorway.
“What are they?” I asked. The guidebook didn’t say.
The lady poked the bird until it ruffled its feathers and bit down on her finger. She shuffled towards the figures and stood perfectly still while her dirty white and dark red kimono rippled in the cliffside breeze.
She turned back towards me and said, “Both of these figures are you.”
I must have given her a blank stare because she looked at the sky and muttered something, then walked towards me and gestured for my hands.
“Let me see you,” she said, holding my hands in hers. She looked me in the eye and said nothing. Then nodded as if waiting for a response.
“Hello,” I said.
“Let me see you.”
“I’m here.” I shrugged, “and I’m enjoying the amazing view-”
The lady held up her hand and let mine go.
She gestured towards the first statue. “This is how you present your feelings to the world. We call her Tatemae.”
I looked at the figure. It was the taller of the two but still nowhere as impressive as the guidebook described.
“Your tatemae is fine,” she said, “but come to mention it, isn’t everyone’s?”
By the way the lady reminded me of your great grandma, the night of the Louisiana Primary. She was the only person in the room who truly understood what was happening on the television but she just sat in the corner making cryptic comments and spilling popcorn on the carpet.
Eventually the lady with the bird explained the two Japanese concepts of Tatemae and Honne - both represented by the mountainside statues. One, the part of yourself you display in public, the other, your true self. Hidden away but for when you’re in safe company.
“What did you mean, it wasn’t the rain?” I asked, holding the camera to my face, trying for a clear picture of the figures.
The lady whispered something I didn’t hear. I clicked the shutter but it jammed.
“I’m sorry?” I said, trying the button again.
“That’s what the monster does,” she said quietly, “he sharpens his teeth on the stone.”
I put the camera down and turned to face the lady, but she was gone.
⭐︎ ☾
If I could live anywhere I’d live in the weave of your Christmas jumper. I’d curl up in the darkness and listen to chatter of the radio.
I often daydream about saving the world but sometimes I can’t even stand up without you. The music comes on and I know what to do.
Mozart, and I clap my hands.
⭐︎ ☾
4. JL-5201 to Seoul
⭐︎
There’s no way you’d know this, but the night you died there was a thunderstorm. It shook the house so hard it tripped the downstairs fuse and turned the windows into rattlesnakes. I was curled up in the conservatory under a blanket, never feeling more alone. Nobody called, nobody visited. We didn’t even get any mail.
I remember looking out through the glass at the washed-out garden. The rain was battering the pool into permanent spikes and the trees were losing their branches in the gale. The whole house creaked and shook with the unending storm and I hated facing it alone. I needed company, I needed you. There was only one thing that wanted me, wanted my company, and it knocked at my door for three straight days.
Three days without a break. Hammers of lightning pounded the roof tiles until they came loose and crashed into the patio. The rain rose so high it leaked through the door frames and the carpets darkened in widening circles.
Three days of watching and hiding. And then I finally found the strength to stand up. I decided it was time to let it in.
I started with the sliding doors, pushing them back as far as they would go. The water poured over the step and across the tiles. It rushed against the cabinets and the stereo, turning the room into a muddy bath of sticks and snail shells and newspaper supplements. I opened the kitchen and dining room windows and the flood filled every cupboard and bottom drawer, every wall socket and switch. Pretty soon I was running around the house opening every door and window, turning the house into a stage of filthy rainwater while the world roared and flashed its bright citrus sparks through the darkness.
But for once, I didn’t feel alone, and that’s when I decided to leave for the mountains. Standing there with my dressing gown draping in the foot-high waters, I reached down into the murky mess and found my camera next to the Honshü guidebook you borrowed from the library. I dug around in the top cabinets for the only clothes that were still dry, and left that night for Japan.
• • •
My tatemae is walking down the mountainside, worn down by the sharp edges of the world but happy to be in the fresh air. My honne misses you so much I can’t sleep. Something in me knows I need to meet the monster. To trace his footsteps until I find him. I can’t go home until I see him face to face because it’s either that or a lifetime of letting in the rain.
I followed the path towards the centre of the valley, where the wreckage of the JL-5201 to Seoul lay in the middle of a wide open field. It was clear as a broken bottle in the grass, and the third in the list of reported sightings. The still-legible pages of the guidebook told me the flight had crashed eleven years ago, but nobody had cleared it away. Apparently it was in such a remote location that it’d been forgotten about.
The sun was going down behind me, casting the shadow of Mount Kita over the wreckage. It was colder here and the spring-tinted leaves seemed to shiver with me as I walked closer to the first piece of debris. A huge broken tail stuck out of the ground, and though the details had faded, the sun-bleached words fly into tomorrow were still visible along the side.
Behind the tail was a runway of scorched dirt where the plane had hit the ground, and for half a mile or more it was a yard sale of burnt bushes and buckled metal boxes. In an eerie silence, I walked the whole length of that blackened dirt until I reached a line of tall dead trees. Their trunks were sticky with oil and filled the air with the dizzying smell of gasoline. Baggage straps and broken suitcases nested in the bare branches and in the fading light of the evening I even thought I saw a bundle of bones.
I took out my camera and held it tight, praying that it would take a clear picture. The treetops came into focus but as I took a step back to capture a better image, my heel sunk into a marshy patch of ground. A square of grass I’d walked over just seconds before. It smelled of old wine and trash cans and it burned my throat when I breathed. It was then I noticed, I was surrounded by small patches of drool-like pools, sticking like egg whites to my shoes.
I began to move away from the marshes but as I did, something made me freeze instantly in place. There was a clicking sound coming from directly above my head. Just a few feet up, in the trees. I looked straight ahead, terrified to move. I couldn’t move my hands or my feet. I could barely breathe.
In that same moment I saw the old man with the rifle. He was running towards me, still a way off at the edge of the valley. He was waving his arms over his head, and when he got close enough I could hear him shouting Don’t! Don't look up.
• • •
Are you even listening? Blink now, so I know I’m not just laying on the cold bonnet of your old car talking to myself. Maybe you don’t have access to the stars where you are. Maybe dying is like Christmas afternoon, that limbo state after a lavish meal where you’re full enough to fall asleep but awake enough to hear your family thanking you for their presents. Well, if that’s the case, I’ll keep talking. Damn I miss you.
The old man ran directly towards me, but stopped when he was about fifty yards away. He rested his rifle on a shoulder-high stone and I heard a click as he loaded the magazine. In that moment, a fear much more vast than the monster overtook me. I didn’t have my photograph. I needed to see him but I was too frightened. I couldn’t clap my hands.
The first of the shots buzzed past my head like a wasp and cracked loudly into the deadwood. Then a second, and a third. I held my arms up and yelled stop! but the man continued to fire.
Splinters of sun-bleached bark showered over my head and scattered across the muddy ground. The old man was a lousy shot. As he stopped to reload I heard a tremendous thump behind me and the ground shook beneath my feet. A long frantic leg stabbed the ground beside me and scuffed in the dirt before scurrying away. I caught a brief glimpse of the skinny limb, knuckled and covered in stubble. It made my head spin in sickening circles.
As I stood, paralysed, the monster sprinted away. Behind me his thunderous strides echoed across the valley until all I could hear was the old man cursing.
He was angry and short of breath. “I wasn’t firing at you!”
“I know.” I said, like a scolded child.
“Why were you waving your arms and asking me to stop?” he wheezed, “Didn’t you see it?”
I remember feeling so much anger, but I couldn’t release it because I didn’t know if I could explain it. He yelled at me a little more while I reached into my pockets for the guidebook. The fourth sighting on the list had been blurred out in the water, I couldn’t make any sense of it at all. I tried to hold it up towards the light to see if that would help but I was distracted by the man in the corner of my vision. He was rummaging around in his pockets.
“Have you lost something?” I asked.
“My whistle.” He said, looking back towards the edge of the valley, “I don’t know where my dogs are.” I breathed in to offer some help but he turned sharply back to me and asked, “Why didn’t you let me kill it?
“What?”
“The monster. I had a clear shot. Why didn’t you let me kill it?”
“I-”
“Don’t you know what it did?”
“I’m sorry.”
The old man paused. “Well it’s long gone now,” he said, clicking the safety on his rifle, “It’ll take weeks to track it down.”
I looked at the water-damaged book in my hands. “What if we look together?”