Black Lagoons
Even monsters long to be touched.
I’m feeling like a monster tonight.
Dr. Frankenstein would be proud.
It’s an identity crisis, really.
I’m weary of being the man
everyone expects—
the one they need.
Heroes are mostly theater anyway.
They crave rescue as much as the damsel in distress.
More, probably.
But cries for help meet only silence.
Or questions.
Or worse—
consternation.
Monsters are like the homeless:
everyone agrees they need help,
but no one wants them
in their yard.
“Get help” really means—
get it somewhere else.
What I hate most
are the conversations
where I open myself—
Flagellation not for me,
but for the masses,
only to be corrected before I finish.
“You NEED to do this!”
“You NEED to do that!”
No shit, Sherlock.
My problem isn’t ignorance.
It never was.
It’s self-worth.
Confidence.
The belief I’m allowed to exist.
To unwrite this curse
In me that says
“Your life is a
Cosmic joke.”
I know the rules,
right from wrong,
the moral compass—
In my soul,
etched deep.
The best I’ve ever felt:
I was simply accepted—
believed,
supported—
whether I was
light or shadow.
But now,
and likely forever,
I am darkness.
No oil left for the light.
My peers still see:
the bastion,
the wall,
the herald.
Inside,
I want only to lie on the floor,
to let the world wipe its feet
across my face,
call me a ruined rug.
I’ve prayed for peace.
Waited for rescue.
Reached for God’s word,
but the portal grows
Ever smaller.
His voice—faint. His touch—gone.
Accursed myopathy!
Monsters do not wish harm.
Their hideousness disgusts
them too.
Their loss of control—
terrifies.
They remind us
of what we are all capable of
when principle slips.
Like Loeb said:
“My friend has a bruise on his leg
where I press my knee every time you speak.”
It isn’t one blow that breaks us—
it’s the constant pressure.
We say
“I love you,”
“you’re sweet,”
“I do.”
But the fine print reads:
As long as you keep
earning acceptance.
Any less—and you are unworthy.
The bruise has become the body.
The body—the mind.
The spirit itself.
That pressing knee,
a whole-soul pain.
And still,
the helpers bring only salve
to a gushing wound.
What the creature needs
is a tourniquet.
Monsters need love, my dear.
But all they see are
pitchforks and torches.
So they hide from the daylight.
They hide from everything.
You think we hate because we’re evil.
That we murder from lust or rage.
No.
We are monstrous for lacking
the one thing a man needs most—
love.
Tell me, reader: when you see me lumbering in the dark, eyes burning red, brimstone on my breath—what will your gut say to you?
For the story ends as all monster-tales do: with the world holding its breath, waiting to see if the beast is hunted or healed. I cannot hide what I am, nor beg you to unmake me. Still, I confess the secret truth of every creature called ‘monster’: we do not crave destruction—we crave embrace.
And so I ask again, when you meet me in the dark… what will you raise? Malice… or mercy?
Likely, you will do what most men do: simply close your eyes and pray this stinking hulk simply fades away.
The desperate irony?
The monster wants this too.
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Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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