Our childhood is full of them. Shapes in the closet, something breathing under the bed, a figure standing just past the reach of the nightlight. We know they cannot be real, but that is hardly the point. They feel real, and that is not a mistake. They give form to the first fears we cannot explain. They are the first rough drafts of understanding.
Our monsters were jars. That is all they ever were. Not just things in the woods waiting to drag you off, but vessels. Old, heavy things we filled with what we could not stomach in ourselves. Fear, cruelty, hunger, the quiet itch to take more than we need. We gave those things shape so we could face them. Greed had horns. Hunger had teeth. Violence had claws. A monster, at the very least, is honest. It stands there in the dark and tells you exactly what it is. It does not pretend. It does not soften the edges. It does not ask to be understood.
So we grow up and smash those jars and call it rational. There is no room for superstition or fear of the unseen. We have data, systems, and explanations. But you do not destroy what is inside the jar by breaking it. You let it out, and it finds new forms. The same old evils walk around without a face you can recognize. They dress better and speak with softer voices. Greed wears a suit. Hunger presses its tits flat across the glass as you scroll past. Violence signs its name at the bottom of a document and calls it procedure. There are no horns, no roars or growls, only paperwork.
Our fear becomes a dull weight in the chest and calls itself fatigue. You cannot fight fatigue. You carry it to work, and you drag it home. You scroll through it until you fall asleep. It is not terror that lets evil win, but exhaustion. We let it consume us, because when we buried Grendel, we buried the part of us that would have hunted him. The man who would walk naked into the dark did not disappear. He was starved out and trained to look away. Told there was nothing there worth naming.
Now what do we fight? You cannot shoot a bureaucracy. We turn into cogs, installed into the slow grinder of an undead army, doing what is required because it is required. But out there, our shattered heroes wander, still humming with the courage to take on the world, seeking a home inside us. They seek the one willing to take their lumps and call it, “Groovy.”
The trouble with outgrowing monsters is that they never went away. We just don’t recognize them. The jars were tools, and we need new ones. New shapes for the old truths. Something that lets us point at the darkness again and say, there. That is the thing we are up against. Because if you cannot name it, you cannot fight it.
Releases
Cryptid Carl Chronicles: Hollow King (Book 1)
Cryptid Carl Chronicles: Black Water (Book 2)
I look forward to these insights. You have a gift at elevating horror into something deeper-- formative and sociological. A damn pleasure to read.