Haunted MTL Original – Monsters – Linda M. Crate
“Monsters” by Linda M. Crate
Judy breathed in heavily. She hated that the council had decided she was the one to do this. When she had become a monster slayer, she never imagined that she would ever have to do anything this difficult.
How did she know that her father would be bitten and turned by a vampire, and become one of the most vicious and dangerous villains in the whole of their village? She remembered the last time she had seen him as a human. He had told her that he would always love her, that she could always count on him, that everything was going to be all right.
The first person he had killed was the vampire that turned him. Her tortured face looked up at Judy from the snow, even still. The contorted features, the eyes forever staring in the heavens in horror.
How a fledgling could kill his master was beyond her. Most fledglings weren’t that strong. She must have been a powerful vampire, and underestimated the strength of the one she had turned.
The second person he had killed had been her mother. She couldn’t imagine the terror her mother must’ve felt when the man she loved turned out to be a brutal murderer who cared more about his blood lust than anyone else he had once known.
He hadn’t even tried to fight it as some vampires did. Some of them banished themselves from their own families in an attempt to save them, but not her father. He had embraced and accepted the blood sucking demon and become intimately involved with him.
Judy knew he deserved to die for all the harm he had done. But why did she have to do it?
Why did the council need her to prove her loyalty to them this way? She had already killed hundreds of monsters: vampires, werewolves, harpies, banshees, dark elves, dark fae, gorgons, evil dragons, and countless others. She was very good at what she did.
But they insisted that her thousandth kill had to be Bernie. The man whose hazel eyes were her own, the man who taught her how to walk and how to hold a spoon, the man who had first taught her to use magic, the man who had always been her safe harbor. She had always been a daddy’s girl. She had loved her mother…but they had never been close the way she and her father had.
How hadn’t he fought the beast he had become? How dare he just succumb so easily to the darkness?!
Judy breathed in sharply again, and more importantly, just how was she supposed to do this? Judy thought she might have a mental breakdown then and there, had there not been a louder voice inside of her insisting that she had to prove herself worthy of the council so she could finally have more independence. If she managed this then she wouldn’t have to work with any of the fledgling slayers, anymore, she could work with someone more advanced and learn whatever magic they were willing to teach her.
The young witch sucked in another breath. Her mother had been a healer, but she was a slayer. Perhaps, she and her father had been monsters all along and his vampirism just exacerbated what he was always capable of becoming.
She felt torn. She knew the village needed protected from these monsters, and yet she felt guilty.She wasn’t so sure this was the right choice, and yet she told herself she couldn’t be weak. The council wouldn’t have put her on this task if they hadn’t believed Judy was strong. And so she sucked in another deep breath and looked at the weapons in her cloak: a stake, a potion that immediately turned to flames when the glass broke, and blades that were made by stringing sunlight and magic together with metal which would slow a vampire but wouldn’t completely kill them unless one hit them in the heart.
Judy didn’t bother bringing garlic. She knew that if he smelled garlic that he wouldn’t come.
She wasn’t so sure that he would come to begin with, but Judy had sent a letter out with a carrying pigeon. The pigeon hadn’t returned.
“Hello, Sparrow.”
Judy felt her heart leap in her throat. She had just barely arrived at the place she had asked her father to come. She saw her shocked face leap up at her in the glass window of the bakery, and her feet nearly lost their footing on the cobble stone street as if there were ice on the ground. There wasn’t, as it was mid-summer, but she was really surprised he had come.
“Didn’t mean to scare you, Sparrow.”
Her father had been calling her Sparrow since she were a child, she always fought back insisting she were more fierce a bird. But that old nickname was a ploy, she was certain, to make her lose her guard. She wouldn’t. She was aware of the monster he was.
Judy glared at him. “Hello, father.”
“You’ve come to kill me,” Bernie said, with a dark smile. “Go on, then.”
Judy looked around her at the deserted street. Using magic she closed off the sector they stood upon. She pulled out her weapons. “Any preference?”
Bernie snorted. “Do you always ask those whom you kill how they want to die?”
“Don’t make me sound like a monster, you’re the monster.”
“We’re both monsters, darling, even if we don’t share the same fangs.”
Judy threw the potion where Bernie had been standing, the vampire jumped out of the way but not before the flames grabbed onto his cloak and it was a fast moving fire that consumed him. “The council’s using you just like they used your mother. One day, Sparrow, you’ll see the truth.” And then he was gone.
Judy scattered the ashes before she flung herself at the ground, sobbing. She had killed her father, but at what price? She watched the wind scatter his ashes.
Linda M. Crate’s works have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies both online and in print. She is the author of six poetry chapbooks, the latest of which is: More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019). She’s also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018) and two micro-poetry collections. Recently she has published two full-length poetry collections Vampire Daughter (Dark Gatekeeper Gaming, February 2020) and The Sweetest Blood (Cyberwit, February 2020).
I have recently begun exploring Fibonacci poetry and penned this as a consideration for the Lovecraftian terrors while considering that Kansas was once an inland sea. It is also based on the beloved and enigmatic painting of Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth.
She
stares
ahead;
the landscape
yawns ever further
spanning the distance between us
and that deep unthinkable unknowable abyss.
This plain was once an inland sea,
a vast ocean filled
with terrors
beyond
our
ken.
Time
stands
still for
none of us.
It marches towards
our inevitable decay.
Our fragile flesh succumbs to the horror of the void,
cradling our fallen progeny
and yearning for home.
Christina,
hurry
back.
Now.
It
could
happen
anywhere…
The farmhouse beckons
from its horizon vantage point,
thousands of blades of grass groping like tiny tendrils.
The ancestors grasping at straws,
hoping to evade
inevitable
collapse,
their
loss.
Stars
fall.
Panic
sounds beyond
our comprehension.
Their silent screams fall on deaf ears.
We cannot interpret their guttural languages
or understand their diminutive cries
this far from the tide.
Slumbering
depths still
snore
here.
The
ebb
and flow
roil and churn
with water’s rhythms,
caress the expanse of grasses
covering this now fragile and forsaken ocean.
The landscape gapes and stretches wide,
reaching to grab hold
of her dress,
earthbound.
Lost
her.
I hope you enjoyed this jaunt through Christina’s World into pure terror. Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website. Or go on a trip to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.
So what better follow up to Invisibles Among Us in Nightmarish Nature than Monstrous Mimicry? Further exploring the leaps that critters will go to in order to eat and not be eaten. This time we’re focusing on those creatures that want to intentionally be mistaken for one another.
Insects Pretending to Be Insects
This is a pretty common subgroup in the mimicry set. Featuring such celebrities as the Viceroy Butterfly, which looks an awful lot like the Monarch. Why? Because everyone knows Monarch Butterflies taste nasty and cause indigestion. Duh? Though it appears the Viceroy took further cues from this and is not all that tasty in its own right either. Dual reinforcement is totally the way to go – it tells predators not to eat the yucky butterflies regardless. But some bugs go a bit further in this, imitating one another to seek out food or protection. Various wasps, spiders, beetles, and even some caterpillars impersonate ants for access to their nest or because ants aren’t as appetizing as their buggy counterparts to much of anything outside of the myrmecophagous crowd (as shared before, here’s a fun diversion with True Facts if you have no idea), though some also have nefarious plans in mind. And similarly, the female photoris fireflies imitate other firefly signals luring smaller males to try to mate with them where they are instead eaten.
Kind of Weird Mimicry: Insects Pretending to Be Animals
Moths are pretty tasty, as far as many birds and small mammals are concerned, so several of them find ways to appear less appetizing. Using mimicry in their larval form, they may try to look specifically like bird scat or even like snakes to drive away predators, with elaborate displays designed to reinforce their fakir statuses. And once they emerge as moths, they continue these trends, with different species flashing eye spots to look like owls, snakes, cats, and a myriad of other animals most of their predators don’t want to tangle with. But other insects pretend to be larger animals too, with some beetles and others producing noises often associated with predator, typically towards the same end – to deter those who might otherwise eat them.
Animals Pretending to Be Animals
Similarly some animals will mimic others. Snakes may resemble one other, as seen in the Milk versus King versus Coral Snakes and the popular rhyme, Red with Black is safe for Jack or venom lack, but Red with Yellow kills a fellow for all that it isn’t 100% accurate on the Red-Yellow end (better to err on the side of caution than not – so assume they are deadly). Fish and octopuses will imitate other fish for protection status or to conceal opportunistic predatory behaviors. And lots of animals will mimic the sounds others make, though Lyrebirds tend to take the cake in this, incorporating the vocalizations into mating rituals and more.
Really Weird Mimicry: Animals Pretending to Be Insects
Some of the weirdest mimicry comes out in animals pretending to be insects or small fish, where a predator will flick its strangely formed tongue that looks like a fish or water nymph to draw in more tiny critters that feel safe with their own, only to find themselves snapped up as dinner. Snapping turtles are notorious for this, disguising themselves in the muck to make their big asses less obvious and reinforce the ruse. Even some snakes do this.
Weirder Still
Then there are things that pretend to be plants. Like orchid mantises. Or sea slugs that look like anemones (some of which eat anemones and have stingers to match). I mentioned a few of these in the Invisibles Among Us segment last time, because some are highly specialized to look like very specific things and others just aren’t. Essentially, nature loves to play dress up and be confusing and adaptive. It’s like Halloween year round. And who can really argue with that?
Here’s a fun video from Animalogic exploring some of these themes. And feel free to check out more Nightmarish Nature here.
This prose poem considers sinking into self, how ongoing struggles with mental health and well-being have led me to take actions that reinforce the patterns therein, especially regarding depression and existential angst, succumbing to cycles that are familiar in their distress and unease. For these struggles are their own form of horror, and it can be difficult to break free of their constraints. I know I am not alone in this, and I have reflected upon some of these themes here before. My hope in sharing these experiences is that others may feel less isolated in their own similar struggles.
She withdrew further into herself, the deep, dark crevices of her psyche giving way to a dense thicket. She felt secure. In this protective barrier of thorns and stoicism, she hoped to heal from the heartache that gnawed at her being, to finally defeat the all-consuming sadness that controlled her will to live and consumed her joy. She didn’t realize that hope cannot reside in such a dark realm, that she built her walls so impenetrable that no glimmers of light could work their way into her heart to blossom and grow there. That by thusly retreating, she actually caged herself within and without, diving straight into the beast’s lair. And it was hungry for more.
Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
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