It Wears Many Faces

They come in various shapes. Tall and thin, detailed or faceless. Short and wide, seething or emotionless. They come in all kinds of colors; ones like you and me and sometimes something far from us. They look like people until you start to see there's something else underneath; human flesh is just an incubator

and when it hatches it's a temporary prison.

I speak of things alive and dead, of monsters both internal and externally made. Desires that run rampant or a cruelty that has sought shape. Possession, reincarnation - it matters not. I reserve the use of the term monster for very special cases. A being or even an aspect of an individual that has proven irredeemable, even if you hope for otherwise.

There are many things out there. They hide in caverns or up in mountains, beneath beds and under houses, in the dark corners of the laundromats - in every place you hate. It's worse when it is in the places you love. They exist in your mind and in the stories you read at night. Every tale passed down has come from somewhere, once upon a time.

I've seen monsters far from human both at night and in broad daylight. Others that look like people and feel like them too; some who are dead inside, rotting within an old house. There are creatures we can't touch but if they so choose can touch upon us and they come loudly, softly, in whatever way to make you listen.

I believe in no supreme god of creation. I believed in finding the answers and possibly a laugh when all was said and done - provided I didn't simply stop existing. I've learned well how nothing just ceases. Souls are durable and the energies that make us up will exist and spread; we may not be there for it but the imprint of what once was will always remain. Perhaps even become altered. The stronger the focus the stronger the imprint. Hate can haunt like kindness can soothe - and people wonder why they feel something strange within a building but there is no ghost lurking.

There was a time before all of this where my face was my own and not this. Thrust through the veil, brought back a little different each time. That's the problem with the deep dark depths of death itself; it's as consistent as you and me, and by that I mean as inconsistent as we mortals are.