In a little workshop
downtown, in a room
without windows, a man
sits at a workbench, making
monsters.
He is just a man, not a monster
himself, but fear is his family
business. His ancestors invented
the cyclops, the werewolf,
and the vampire. He has watched
with dismay as these fine old
commodities are slowly drained
of their power, swallowed
by culture, sapped of their strange,
dark potency. Sea monsters
and wolves and apes with straight
razors—his ancestors conjured
all these things. It often seems
to him that all the best ideas
were taken before he was born.
In his early days this monster-
maker did his best
with the possibilities left to him,
creating escaped lunatics
with hooks for hands, psychotic
dentists with chrome drills, and spirits
who appear when you say
the right forbidden phrase
while looking at a mirror
in a darkened room. But in his old
age he has begun to lose
focus, his sense for appropriate
subjects has begun to
slip and fade. He makes monsters
where monsters shouldn't be made.
He is the reason clowns so often seem
sinister, the reason mannequins and dolls
can be so unsettling, the reason a child's
tricycle
sitting unattended in a front yard can be an image
suffused with dread. If he goes on
this way, who knows what other objects
will attain an aura of menace?
Imagine fearing a dessert spoon, or a spool
of thread, or a plain white candle. Imagine
looking at your sandals and seeing monsters,
or turning back the covers on your bed
and being shocked almost to death
by the exquisite horror
of a clean
linen sheet.
Imagine the day when he can't think
of anything to make monstrous
beyond the perimeter of his own body,
and he becomes a monster himself,
and leaves his windowless workshop
to knock on our doors
at odd hours, to call our homes
in the middle of the night,
to whisper the secret words
passed down by his ancestors,
the words that will finally
make monsters
of us all.