“If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley – Frankenstein

Monsters are as real as you and me,

lurking in the darkest corners of humanity.

I live in a tower overlooking a lake on the edge of a village not far from nowhere. From my tower, I ponder the possibilities of human nature, the universe, life and death, life after death, love eternal, redemption denied.

Then a plan. Some say a dream, but indeed a plan.

I will create a creature in my own image and he will be the thing I’m not. I will name him Gogad, after the great nomadic Gogadian warrior. I will make him a rock star with tacky tattoos and a Fender Stratocaster swung across his body. I will teach him Russian so that he can know the language of deceit and revenge. I will deny him certain pleasures to justify his rage. I will make him neither human nor beast, but something resembling both in the worse ways. That’s how creation works.

And when the time is right, I will release him upon my enemies and therefore destroy all who have wronged me. And though he may call me Papa, he will loathe me for what I have done to him. And when he finds the time right, he will one day return to the tower and destroy me as I have created him, and the villagers will mourn my death and call me a great man, a visionary whose only sin was being a man with a vision.

And this is how the story goes. As destiny unfolds, so is destiny foretold. And more is evermore.

But before I am destroyed, I will create a wife for Gogad so that he may know the difference between love and hate. I will call her Gogoishe. She will be big, beautiful and brash—created from the remains of graves of castle lords—with the mind of a rock star groupie lifted from an asylum basement. I will also teach her Russian so that she can understand and fulfill the desires of her mate. In her creation, I will fail to give her the joy of music, and she will never understand the joy of life.

And as Gogad has destroyed me, so will Gogoishe destroy him.

And as I write this, I see that the monster hiding in the closet is wearing my clothes, telling me to sleep with the lights on.