Parents never question the intentions of an old man in a lab coat. He's a doctor, a man of science and reason. I'm not writing this because I want the truth uncovered. Those muckraking articles in the tabloids would get a field day out of this, that's for sure.
So if you ever discover this journal, you must destroy it. Torch it with kerosene. Whatever you do, do not continue reading. It is critical that the secret die with me.
I was a starry-eyed boy, seven years old at the time. That was over six decades ago. I was a fool to wander from my hometown. The fields were crawling with beasts, but I thought myself a hero. I had quite the imagination, dreaming up monsters six or seven feet tall with vicious claws and scraggly manes. It was lucky the town's elder found me before I was harmed. I can assure you that my imagination was very much real back then.
The old man sagely warned me not to stray into the wilderness. There were monsters in the tall grass, he said. That's right, monsters. I believed him. He was a man of science and reason. Who was I to question?
He could also see those beasts. My parents refused to believe it; not like Mom listened to anything I said. She was far too busy channel surfing and had more of an emotional attachment to her soaps than me. My dad wasn't around much. He left shortly before my tenth birthday.
I visited the research lab that year. It was custom in our town. I tried to tell my mom that I was leaving. She didn't break eye contact with the television, insisting that the host of a morning talk-show had said it was best for children to be independent and not rely on their parents for support.
The sterile waiting room's front desk greeted me with an obligatory information form asking for my name, gender, and the name of an emergency contact. It took me about half a second to slap down the name of my childhood friend. Although it was tacitly agreed early on that he could kick my ass in a fight, I felt he was more reliable than my mother. At least television took her from me before the cancer did.
The town elder reviewed my application, school record, and medical impairments. Everything checked out and he told me I could set out for the next town to retrieve an important parcel. I asked him about the monsters that populated the road outside town. He eyed me curiously, then told me to follow him.
He had captured many monsters in his day, but he only had three left. I asked him where they were and he directed me to a table. I couldn't understand at first, there were no dangerous beasts that I could see, but he assured me they were safely contained. I chose my guardian wisely. A dragon bonded to my name and soul, what a fortunate kid I was. The professor told me that in return I was to record data on every species I encountered.
That was how I set off on my journey. I trained and fought many adversaries. I never lost and my collection was always growing.
A year later I returned home. I excitedly recounted my adventure to my mom, sparing no detail. She cut me off halfway through and told me it was time for bed. I suppose even the masters of man and creature need to sleep. I went back to school the next day. When I confronted my childhood rival about our final, climactic battle he told me I was full of shit.
Life resumed as though nothing had happened.
A few years later I noticed the monsters begin to disappear. Over time my dragon was all that remained of my grand collection.
He's gone now. I don't know what happened to him. There are no monsters anymore. The professor is dead.
I found a notebook while I was packing to leave home. It was an ordinary, 150 page journal. Flipping through I read my childish scribbles for the first time in seven years. Most of it was nonsense, fantastical descriptions of creatures I had believed lived in this world. There were pictures too. Crayon drawings and such. The little sketches weren't half bad.
Fueled by nostalgia, I leafed through the pages and studied my imaginative creations. Curiously, the last page was taped down to the notebook's back cover. Intrigued, I peeled off the tape and turned the page.
Instead of the lengthy entries I had documented on the other 149 pages, this one contained only a single sentence:
"It was created by a scientist after years of horrific gene splicing and DNA engineering experiments."
Included was a polaroid picture taped face-down to the page. I felt something akin to a childish paranoia of the bogeyman.
The picture was an interior shot of the town laboratory. I shouldn't have known the location because the lighting was so poor. It appeared to be a basement room where excess files might be stored. But there was a strange shape pressed up into the far corner. It took me a while to realize what it was. Children, about seven of them, were huddled together in a tight cluster. They were cowering with anguished, starved expressions. The one farthest to the back looked to be the youngest of the bunch, about ten years old.
The photo's time stamp was from seven years ago.
There are no monsters in this world.