A bit of reflective Olivia for your reading pleasure.
(For Piratesmiley. Consider this medication for your Clarkson relapse.)
In the Shade of Monsters
More reflection is granted to the concept of monsters than is suitably healthy. An eternity of thought boiled down into the constraints of a day, each dawn birthing new beasts to slay until thinking of them individually becomes difficult to maintain. It has become easier to hate the collective than attempt to divide the gray from the grayer.
Some monsters shouldn't be considered lightly...
Fables educate children on the creatures beneath the bed, in the closet and behind the flesh of strangers. Despite the intention of fairy tales to help little ones sleep, it is these fanciful stories that keep many tiny eyes peering from beyond the fortress of blankets, scanning the familiar for the frightening. It is the paradox of youth to both dread the unknown and remain eager to glimpse impossibilities.
Some monsters won't disappear with closed eyes...
Children outgrow myths but the themes bore inside to mate with old fears, as inseparable as DNA with the embrace of stubborn static. Adulthood is meant to weed out the undergrowth of childish awe, programming them to ignore the fuzzy fantasy of juvenile things. Despite the hardening of years, there are moments when a former innocent will notice the hollow space beneath the bed and wonder.
Some monsters don't fit into traditional hiding places...
In the days of pigtails and loneliness, Olive believed that all there was to fear in the big world was housed within a man with a thick body and a voice that poured from every corner of the room. The sound of his approach was the coming of thunder and the rain he brought soaked into her soul, watering a sticky panic into bloom. When she gets bigger, she always promised herself, she will fight the beast.
Some monsters can't be physically accosted...
Standing against the crash of the big world, Olivia finds too many demons to battle at once, fighting back akin to beating the impurities from the air. They cast a fearsome shadow, encompassing every shout of defiance and whittling the words to dust. And it is in the cold of the shade, when all she fights against hovers as a superior over the wayward, that Olivia knows who was hidden under her bed all these years.
Some monsters couldn't appear more conciliatory...
There is a legend of Anansi, the trickster with the kindly, joyous face who bartered for his enjoyment by robbing those around him. Olivia has seen the modern version, the flesh of fable and he is a pied piper trailing victims of science in his wake. The Olive within recognizes the beast and scratches at the binding skin from inside as the Olivia outside hears the stubborn static soak into her soul.
*Anansi borrowed from Neil Gaiman's Anansi's Boys. If you haven't read it, we must have a talk...