The Monsters

There are many kinds of monsters in this world.

The easy ones wear claws and open mouths.

They live in forests, crawl under beds, bleed when struck, die when killed.

They are strangers. Outsiders. Foreign shapes we learn to fear. Maybe from stories, and maybe from experience.

They are easy to hate. Easy to hunt.

We build stories around killing them. Heroes are born that way.

But then there are the other ones.

The ones that stay.

They don't come howling in the night.

They pour your cereal. They sit beside you at dinner.

They know you.

They know your name.

You know them too.

These monsters wear the face of family.

They have no claws or fangs.

Their claws are words. Their fangs, silence.

They hurt you in ways that don't leave marks. Not visible ones, atleast.

They make you doubt the pain.

And still—still—you want to love them.

Because you should.

Because you must.

Because the stories never told you what to do when the monster tucks you in bed.

You can't hate them, not really.

But you can't love them either.

So you learn to live with them.

Like a second shadow.

Like an ache you stop noticing.

Like something you hide under your own skin.

Until one day, you look in the mirror—and see their face looking back.

Or maybe, you simply don't see anything staring back.

...

There was a child, once.

He was born with a sickness—no blood, no name for it, just a quiet wrongness that stuck to him like a bad smell.

People called it a curse.

To be more specific, it was a distortion.

The sickness didn't make him cough blood or collapse. It made people look away.

They say he brought bad luck. That his mere gaze could crack mirrors.

That his breath made the crops wilt and wither away to dust.

And so, they stopped touching him.

They stopped feeding him first.

Stopped noticing he was in the room.

He learned to sit still, he was a broken clock in the end.

He learned to breathe softly. Learned not to cry when it hurt.

He stopped asking for love.

Started listening to the monsters in the walls instead. They talked to him when no one else did.

...

Back in the corridor.

Fuck. That memory shouldn't have surfaced. I haven't thought of that crap in years.

I shake my head, wincing at the pain that the memories I had hidden deep in the back of my mind brought. Like the claws of a beast gripping ahold my skull.

Vess walked ahead, muttering to himself.

"Mother... Mother... Mom..."

That's... what? What the hell is he talking about? Is that the distortion?

The walls feel closer. The flickering lights feel too rhythmic—a blink every three seconds.

So. I start to count. If only, to test something.

All my experience with monsters like distortions have only told me one thing.

The possibilities are nigh-infinite.

Distortions are things beyond our comprehension and understanding.

So, even with things like simply counting. There is a wrongness. Something you can feel after a period of time has passed.

One. Two. Three. Blink.

Again.

Is the corridor shorter than before...?

Vess keeps walking. But he doesn't speak. His silhouette stretches a little too far behind him.

A long... long shadow.

I stop walking. Looking at his back. His strangely hunched figure.

"Vess?" I call. A bead of sweat drips down my face.

He stops walking.

He slowly turns, and smiles.

But his mouth doesn't move.

Only the smile does.

I blink.

He's gone.

---

The corridor is empty.

But not silent.

There's a distant sound—like children laughing. Or screaming. Or both.

My feet move, but I don't feel them touch the floor.

I'm not sure if I'm walking or remembering how to walk.

There's a door at the end of the hall now. It wasn't there before. It's familiar, like the door to a childhood bedroom you never want to open again.

I reach for the handle.

The door opens on its own.

...

I'm inside a home. But not mine.

Or maybe it is mine. A version of it. A memory that I don't quite remember.

The wallpaper is peeling. The air smells of rust and rot. There are picture frames on the walls—all of them filled with black static.

A voice behind me:

"Why did you come back?"

I turn around frantically.

Nobody.

...

Somewhere else, Vess stirs. His dream is warmer. A cozy house, glowing with golden light.

He sits at a dinner table. Strangers are praising him, one after another. "You're the future," one says. "You're the best of us," says another.

He tries to hide the smile forming. But he can't. He wants to believe them.

No! He loves them. Everyone loves him. So he should too!

He needs to.

The praise grows louder, starts to overlap with the others. The faces start repeating. The voices echo themselves.

But then.

He blinks.

The room is empty.

The chairs are covered in moss. The table is rotting. A family of spiders has taken up residence in a decaying plate of food.

"Even in dreams," whispers a voice in his ear, "they only liked the idea of you."

"...What?"

The voice deepened. Confident. Like it found a crack.

"If they saw the real you... do you think they'd still smile?"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP! You're lying! You're not even real!"

Vess screamed. The house shook. Praise curdled into laughter.

The faces in the shadows—family—dissolved. Their smiles stretched into mockery as they melted into blackness.

Even his mother. The one person, that person on the top he strived to reach. Even she, had left.

…

Back to me.

I sat at a child's desk. My name carved into it, over and over, each etching more frantic.

The classroom was empty.

Until it wasn't.

Rows of children appeared. Faces smooth and featureless.

The teacher scrawled something on the board. The chalk screeched like metal on bone.

She turned.

Eyes like pits. Voice like a verdict.

"Why did you survive?"

I said nothing.

Because distortions don't really want answers. They just want a reaction.

---

I fell.

The chair crashed.

I landed back in the corridor.

My palms bled. My sword was gone.

Vess was there. Far off. Clutching his head. Whispering.

I ran.

But the hall stretched like chewing gum. Each step stretched time.

He looked up. Our eyes met.

And we remembered.

This wasn't real.

It was a distortion.

It didn't speak.

It didn't have to.

"Goddamn shitty distortion. Haha... you made see shit I haven't thought of in years..."

It was the breath between memories. The ache beneath every scar. The weight of unloved years.

"But I know you," I whispered.

"You feed on echoes."

The illusion shattered.

The corridor crumbled.

We were back—in the real dark. The cold kind.

Not the dream kind.

Vess lay beside me. Whimpering.

Yeah. He was crying.

I didn't blame him. I simply looked at him with a bit of sympathy. I knew how he felt. Since I felt it too.

First time a distortion nests inside your brain? It always breaks something.

There. I felt it. The pressure of wrongness.

I drew my blade and struck the wall.

It cracked—and screamed.

The distortion peeled from the air like a second skin.

It had no shape. No form.

But it was there.

Like trauma.

I didn't hesitate.

I cut through it. Again. And again.

Until the air stopped screaming.

Vess opened his eyes.

But what he felt wasn't relief. It wasnt happiness at the thought of escaping from a nightmare

It was disgust.

"I couldn't even kill a basic Aberrant distortion?" he muttered. "That... thing... it felt real. Too real."

I sheathed my sword.

"Obviously. It was tampering with your brain. It made you see false things by doing that. Even if our entire life was simply a lie fabricated by a distortion. Even if the universe was created last thursday and all our memories, knowledge and thoughts were simply ingrained in our brain. We wouldn't know. That's how terrifying distortions are."

"It was weak. Physically. But mentally?"

I exhaled.

"Its power wasn't in strength. It was in memory. It feeds on the echoes we try to forget. Our mana... our pain... same thing to it."

Vess didn't reply at first.

But I could see his fists clenched tight.

"Well. Congrats on not dying, I guess," I said.

His eyes lit up.

That surprised me.

It wasn't even a compliment.

Guess everyone's holding something fragile.

Some stories only make sense in silence.