I had this system for getting exactly what I wanted from people. You could call it a gimmick, I suppose, but that would be childish, I think. It's not a gimmick and it's not a trick, it was simply magic, as I always told everyone.
It first began with my mother. She had a habit of doing and specifically asking for things that I did not like or want to do. It wasn't anything I said or did, but she always changed her mind, in the end. I think she saw that, in all honesty, it was for the best. It was about simple things at first, so irrelevant that, at first, I didn't realize I was doing it. She asked me to clean the dishes and I just sat there, alone in my head, and very very quiet, so as not to disturb the beasts who resided there.
But the beasts, see, they had excellent hearing. They generally do, they need it to hear the prey, you understand. So, of course, they heard me. I didn't want them to, because I knew they' d make me do some really bad things.
They felt or smelled my dislike, my uneasiness and they crawled into action. That was one of the horrible things about the monsters in my head – once they got moving, it was really hard to get them to go back.
Very determinate little beasts.
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They crawled, I've always believed, in my mother's head and planted some nasty thoughts in there. The sort only they could do. What I do know for sure is that she changed her mind about the dishes, about the same time I felt them return to my head.
To my cage, as I came to think of it later.
It all went downhill from there.
He was skating on thin ice, that's all I can say. He had been for a long while. Almost for the whole time I'd known him, I'd just never liked him much. And after what he did to Catherine, I began liking him a whole lot less.
You see, despite knowing what resided in my mind, and being fully aware of its power, I was never a dangerous man. I wasn't one of those boys who oozed strength and peril. I wasn't a bully. So naturally, he didn't know to fear me, at first.
That was his mistake.
Mine was not killing him sooner.
I always loved Catherine. She was mine, my beautiful muse. I'd often write her poetry and leave in under her desk, before class. Despite reading them all, she said nothing.
I've always believed that the poems – all very beautiful – came from the beasts, also. Because they were incredible beasts, creatures of great beauty, as well as great danger.
But Catherine never liked my poetry, or at least, never said. So, she fell in love with him, instead. With the plain young man that sat beside her, in class. He never wrote her poetry, though. She fell too in love with him and I felt it, I felt the passion in her veins increasing, as well as the impending danger.
In that last week, I felt I could kill. And I suppose, in a way I did.
It happened one afternoon, in the woods behind her house. I always kept a watch on her. A close watch. But not close enough, it seems.
I was the one who found her. She was crying and she was glad, then, to see me, although I doubt she even knew I was the one who wrote the poems. I carried her back to the house.
I was alone. The beasts had escaped.
The day Sheila brought Hilary to my office, I was stunned. She was just like her mother. Thin, with small bones – petite, I think they call it. And she was blonde with cinnamon brown eyes. I suppose she got her nose from her...from that monster. Nobody ever found him, the beasts made sure of that. He was so, so small, by the end.
I told Sheila to bring her a cocoa. Kids like cocoa don't they? I stared at this young girl, in shock, as she told me about her mother – my precious Catherine – and how highly she had spoken about me. Her savior. The boy who wrote her poems, her protector, I suppose. It seems she had painted quite the nice picture of me in this little girl's head. Her daughter, her beautiful off-spring.
Maybe good things do come from bad happenings. Anyway, that is done now and he is long gone.
And so was she, apparently. The girl – Hillary – had come to me, because her mother had died. The news shattered every bone in my body and went deep into my very soul. I was beyond crying, I had lost even that.
The beasts' blood boiled and howled. MY Catherine had died, and in such silly circumstances. A car accident. It seemed obsolete, impossible that a car could take my precious out of life.
I had failed. I had not protected her as I should've.
As I looked at the little girl, sitting in front of me,I vowed that would not happen again.