I have prepared carefully, secretly, waiting until they are sound asleep. I can feel the weight of silence that has been cultivating for over a decade as I move through the house with the abstracted caution of a man entering a temple: rows of porcelain angels on the vanity table; the air, heavy with the scent of old gospel texts. Every object; every smell is a physical anchor, tying me to a world of rigid, suffocating expectations. In the moonlight, I appear both skeletal and calm, like a cheap church icon, and I can feel a tapestry of scrabbling insects in my blood as my chromosomes reshape themselves into a newly-drawn map that plots my course of action.
They think that the door to the cupboard under the stairs was nailed shut years ago. It was, but not anymore. Sometimes, when the house is quiet, I hear whispers calling to me from within. Initially, the voices were soft and the words hard to discern, but they have grown louder and more tangible over time. Now, the cupboard is no longer simply a place of childhood punishment; it has become a gateway to some part of me that is cold and furious. I crawl inside and sit down quietly next to the claw hammer that I placed there a few days ago. I picture my parents – almost archived to their easy chairs, with religion in their mouths like a cheap dog whistle. My father; miserable with drink and the luggage of archetype. My mother, with her cruel, doubting heart melted away by the acids of righteous zeal. They believe that their place in heaven is assured by the weighted hieroglyphs of a hymn book and the relentless chatter of TV evangelists. It’s almost time to test that theory.
I drape one of father’s old coats over my head, close my eyes and I am instantly transformed into all the fictional monsters that I have always loved: the viral specters, fathomless and vengeful; the werewolf, screaming in terrible, pent-up anguish; the vampire, with its casual cruelty. It feels warm and familiar, like home – just, not this one. When I take the coat away, I go back to being the monster that I have become. That they have made me. My parents don’t know this yet, but they will…soon. The voices are clear now and their instructions rage-filled and honed into an orchestra of wolves. I am smiling; I am weeping with gratitude and I am vibrating at the frequency of a collapsing star as I crawl back out with my hammer, close the door, and prepare to open another one.
John Harrison studied cultural anthropology to PhD level at Oxford University. He has had a number of poems and stories published in magazines, journals and books, including Hollow Point Books, BlazeVOX, Anaphora, the Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Bristol Noir, Step Away, Beyond Words, CC&D, Half and One, Flash Phantoms and Samizdat. His favourite revenge film is The Abominable Dr. Phibes——a retelling of Titus Andronicus, with a delightfully over the top performance by Vincent Price.
