Let me tell you something you don’t know. In a city like Amsterdam there are plenty of places where monsters hide from view. Forget about the seedy alleys, the villainous Red Light district, or the tolerant cafes. It’s the space between the lights you have to worry about.
I’ll tell you something else. They’re not the type you’re thinking of. They don’t come with eight eyes, purple fur, or from the pen of Stephen King. These monsters are worse, much worse.
It’s our preconceived idea of monsters that makes them so successful. We imagine them under our beds, in our closets, or concealed in the darkest corner of our bedroom. We imagine they’re waiting for the lights to go out, and for our soft snores to fill the room before they come creeping out. They hide in our nightmares and use our subconscious for their own private amusement. We wake up screaming. Was it real? A dream? Stress?
Who knows? But I do know this ... they are real.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re asking yourself how does he know they are real. I’ve seen one, and survived.
I’ve looked into its washed out eyes. I’ve smelt its rancid breath. I’ve tasted its acidic sweat dripping onto my dry lips. I’ve heard it whisper. I’ve touched his reptilian skin.
It happened last night.
I left my apartment just after nine p.m. to satisfy a craving I had for Oreo’s and Sprite. The only corner shop I knew to be open that late was a good thirty-minute walk.
I marched on, iPod blasting the latest single from Pink into my ringing ears. I took no notice of the woman who winked at me on the corner. I passed the green neon sign that flashed GOD LOVES YOU above a church door. I wavered aside the man who asked me for a light by imitating a lighter with dirty fingers. I neglected the Salvation Army lady who rang a brass bell for donations.
The signs were there, but I ignored them.
The plastic handles nibbled into my cold hands. Apart from cookies and Sprite, my craving had mutated into a beast demanding a Mars bar, a packet of Jelly Tots, and to ease my conscience, a bunch of bruised of bananas.
I walked past a night crew working on a burst water pipe. A yellow sign flashed PROCEED WITH CARE. CAUTION!
Yes, the signs were there.
Trying to cut five minutes off my walk home, I ducked into an ill-lit alley. It stank of rotting garbage, salty air, and something else I feared to identify.
It felt like a good time to belt out the chorus to an old Aerosmith hit.
A solid hand wrapped around my mouth. I panicked, and tried to scream. A bitter and suffocating cloth was shoved into my mouth. Dizziness brought me to my knees, and I dropped to the dank floor. I never made it to the light at the end of the alley.1
I awoke to stare into a pair of disturbed eyes flickering behind an unnatural purple face of Barney the Dinosaur. He stared at me as though I’d slipped out from another dimension. While he ran an icy hand down my cheek, he repeatedly told me I was weak. A harsh white light emphasized my nakedness. My legs and hands were bound. The room was featureless.
“Yesss,” he hissed. “The night’s always reserved for the handsome.”
My watery eyes followed his movements until he disappeared behind me. Crude hands dipped into my moist hair and stroked my scalp. He murmured something I failed to catch. He giggled, once or twice.
“Amsterdam,” he said, “has its beauty, you know that? It has exceptional canals, grand churches, fine architecture, but such fickle beauty. Take you, for example. A handsome male, I’d say about twenty-eight, probably an I.T specialist or banker. You have a small apartment; live alone, no significant partner judging by the contents of your parcel. Am I right? I bet you could star in the next Hollywood blockbuster.”
He was right: except I wasn’t an IT specialist or a banker. I rented out bikes to tourists, and I had no aspirations to be a movie star.
He came into view, twisting familiar white earphones into his ears. A malicious grin slanted his face.
“I prefer the earlier stuff from U2,” he said, speaking louder to compensate for the music only he heard.
“Perfection is not difficult to achieve,” he continued, “it’s the path to perfection that’s tricky. This whole city cries itself to sleep because everyone wants to be thinner, leaner, firmer, tighter, stronger, and more beautiful. Are you one of those people? Are you, Damien? No, I don’t think you are. Everything comes easy to people like you.”
My heart pounded like a voodoo drum when he took a scalpel from his coat pocket and placed it against my left cheek. It caressed my skin, coaxing the blood from within to come out and play. He howled with laughter as he dipped the tip of his finger into my escaped blood, dotted two spots underneath my teary eyes and told me that they were my bloody tears.
“I was sucked in right from the start. Didn’t even see myself becoming addicted – yes, addicted – until it was too late. Like you, I was also quite handsome. But the constant barrage of media beauty taught me to dislike myself. It started innocently enough but it soon snowballed into something I couldn’t control. My solution is simple; beauty means nothing if it can’t be admired.” He whipped off the mask, “Don’t you agree?”
The face behind the mask was grotesque. The nose was too small and positioned off centre. Air whistled through a single nostril. One eye remained closed, while the other appeared to have no eyelid. Tufts of hair skirted around surgical scars. The ears were uneven. His swollen lips glistened with spit.
“I don’t discriminate, Charlie. If I see beauty then it’s the perfect candidate for my runaway knife. Don’t worry; you won’t die. Unless, of course, it’s the choice you make.”
The fiend moved towards me, pulling out the earphones. He placed an oily ear on my chest and said, “Now this is the music I like. It has a steady beat, don’t you think?” He placed the scalpel in the centre of my chest and slowly dragged it down the length of my torso. Rivulets of blood glided down my sides.
He stared at the falling drops of blood and spoke not directly to me, but as if to an unseen visitor, “I’ve got my own runaway knife now.”
Tears stung my eyes. My brain struggled to fathom the pain I was in. I closed my eyes and desperately tried to be somewhere else. I clenched my teeth and consciously tried to push my soul out.
I passed out soon after.
I was found the next morning in the entrance to a bakery. Faces loomed large and blurred before me. Perplexing voices taunted me until I lapsed back into the comforting darkness. 2
* * *3
The doctor said I’m going to be okay. He used the word ‘lucky’ quite often. He rattled off my list of injuries as if reading a grocery list; a deep laceration on my chest, two more on each upper thigh, left big toe missing, and a ten centimetre long cut on my cheek. He bragged that over one hundred stitches were used. The cops came in, but I couldn’t answer their questions. My memory had shut down.
But each person who entered my room didn’t look me in the eyes. Why? The nurse who tended to me stared at either the ceiling or the IV. The cops stood by the window, staring out. The doctor looked either at my wounds or wrote something down in the chart that hung at the end of my bed.
I found the strength later in the evening to get up and shuffle across to the small mirror positioned above a plain basin. A square bandage blotted out half my cheek. My eyes were red and encircled by dark rings. But I noticed something else. I pushed back my fringe to reveal a single word on my forehead.
I refused to believe it was real. Revulsion surged through me. No! It’s a sick joke. Four large capital letters in scarlet red ink stained my forehead. I turned on the tap and waited for the water to steam. Cupping the scalding hot water, I splashed my face. I screamed, and continued to scratch at the stain with my nails.
A nurse entered and tried to calm me down. “It can be removed, Mr. Wyatt! The tattoo won’t be permanent.”
“But the memory will be!” I shouted back. I punched the mirror. Each piece reflected back the single word a thousand times: UGLY
I’ll tell you something else. They’re not the type you’re thinking of. They don’t come with eight eyes, purple fur, or from the pen of Stephen King. These monsters are worse, much worse.
It’s our preconceived idea of monsters that makes them so successful. We imagine them under our beds, in our closets, or concealed in the darkest corner of our bedroom. We imagine they’re waiting for the lights to go out, and for our soft snores to fill the room before they come creeping out. They hide in our nightmares and use our subconscious for their own private amusement. We wake up screaming. Was it real? A dream? Stress?
Who knows? But I do know this ... they are real.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re asking yourself how does he know they are real. I’ve seen one, and survived.
I’ve looked into its washed out eyes. I’ve smelt its rancid breath. I’ve tasted its acidic sweat dripping onto my dry lips. I’ve heard it whisper. I’ve touched his reptilian skin.
It happened last night.
I left my apartment just after nine p.m. to satisfy a craving I had for Oreo’s and Sprite. The only corner shop I knew to be open that late was a good thirty-minute walk.
I marched on, iPod blasting the latest single from Pink into my ringing ears. I took no notice of the woman who winked at me on the corner. I passed the green neon sign that flashed GOD LOVES YOU above a church door. I wavered aside the man who asked me for a light by imitating a lighter with dirty fingers. I neglected the Salvation Army lady who rang a brass bell for donations.
The signs were there, but I ignored them.
The plastic handles nibbled into my cold hands. Apart from cookies and Sprite, my craving had mutated into a beast demanding a Mars bar, a packet of Jelly Tots, and to ease my conscience, a bunch of bruised of bananas.
I walked past a night crew working on a burst water pipe. A yellow sign flashed PROCEED WITH CARE. CAUTION!
Yes, the signs were there.
Trying to cut five minutes off my walk home, I ducked into an ill-lit alley. It stank of rotting garbage, salty air, and something else I feared to identify.
It felt like a good time to belt out the chorus to an old Aerosmith hit.
A solid hand wrapped around my mouth. I panicked, and tried to scream. A bitter and suffocating cloth was shoved into my mouth. Dizziness brought me to my knees, and I dropped to the dank floor. I never made it to the light at the end of the alley.1
I awoke to stare into a pair of disturbed eyes flickering behind an unnatural purple face of Barney the Dinosaur. He stared at me as though I’d slipped out from another dimension. While he ran an icy hand down my cheek, he repeatedly told me I was weak. A harsh white light emphasized my nakedness. My legs and hands were bound. The room was featureless.
“Yesss,” he hissed. “The night’s always reserved for the handsome.”
My watery eyes followed his movements until he disappeared behind me. Crude hands dipped into my moist hair and stroked my scalp. He murmured something I failed to catch. He giggled, once or twice.
“Amsterdam,” he said, “has its beauty, you know that? It has exceptional canals, grand churches, fine architecture, but such fickle beauty. Take you, for example. A handsome male, I’d say about twenty-eight, probably an I.T specialist or banker. You have a small apartment; live alone, no significant partner judging by the contents of your parcel. Am I right? I bet you could star in the next Hollywood blockbuster.”
He was right: except I wasn’t an IT specialist or a banker. I rented out bikes to tourists, and I had no aspirations to be a movie star.
He came into view, twisting familiar white earphones into his ears. A malicious grin slanted his face.
“I prefer the earlier stuff from U2,” he said, speaking louder to compensate for the music only he heard.
“Perfection is not difficult to achieve,” he continued, “it’s the path to perfection that’s tricky. This whole city cries itself to sleep because everyone wants to be thinner, leaner, firmer, tighter, stronger, and more beautiful. Are you one of those people? Are you, Damien? No, I don’t think you are. Everything comes easy to people like you.”
My heart pounded like a voodoo drum when he took a scalpel from his coat pocket and placed it against my left cheek. It caressed my skin, coaxing the blood from within to come out and play. He howled with laughter as he dipped the tip of his finger into my escaped blood, dotted two spots underneath my teary eyes and told me that they were my bloody tears.
“I was sucked in right from the start. Didn’t even see myself becoming addicted – yes, addicted – until it was too late. Like you, I was also quite handsome. But the constant barrage of media beauty taught me to dislike myself. It started innocently enough but it soon snowballed into something I couldn’t control. My solution is simple; beauty means nothing if it can’t be admired.” He whipped off the mask, “Don’t you agree?”
The face behind the mask was grotesque. The nose was too small and positioned off centre. Air whistled through a single nostril. One eye remained closed, while the other appeared to have no eyelid. Tufts of hair skirted around surgical scars. The ears were uneven. His swollen lips glistened with spit.
“I don’t discriminate, Charlie. If I see beauty then it’s the perfect candidate for my runaway knife. Don’t worry; you won’t die. Unless, of course, it’s the choice you make.”
The fiend moved towards me, pulling out the earphones. He placed an oily ear on my chest and said, “Now this is the music I like. It has a steady beat, don’t you think?” He placed the scalpel in the centre of my chest and slowly dragged it down the length of my torso. Rivulets of blood glided down my sides.
He stared at the falling drops of blood and spoke not directly to me, but as if to an unseen visitor, “I’ve got my own runaway knife now.”
Tears stung my eyes. My brain struggled to fathom the pain I was in. I closed my eyes and desperately tried to be somewhere else. I clenched my teeth and consciously tried to push my soul out.
I passed out soon after.
I was found the next morning in the entrance to a bakery. Faces loomed large and blurred before me. Perplexing voices taunted me until I lapsed back into the comforting darkness. 2
* * *3
The doctor said I’m going to be okay. He used the word ‘lucky’ quite often. He rattled off my list of injuries as if reading a grocery list; a deep laceration on my chest, two more on each upper thigh, left big toe missing, and a ten centimetre long cut on my cheek. He bragged that over one hundred stitches were used. The cops came in, but I couldn’t answer their questions. My memory had shut down.
But each person who entered my room didn’t look me in the eyes. Why? The nurse who tended to me stared at either the ceiling or the IV. The cops stood by the window, staring out. The doctor looked either at my wounds or wrote something down in the chart that hung at the end of my bed.
I found the strength later in the evening to get up and shuffle across to the small mirror positioned above a plain basin. A square bandage blotted out half my cheek. My eyes were red and encircled by dark rings. But I noticed something else. I pushed back my fringe to reveal a single word on my forehead.
I refused to believe it was real. Revulsion surged through me. No! It’s a sick joke. Four large capital letters in scarlet red ink stained my forehead. I turned on the tap and waited for the water to steam. Cupping the scalding hot water, I splashed my face. I screamed, and continued to scratch at the stain with my nails.
A nurse entered and tried to calm me down. “It can be removed, Mr. Wyatt! The tattoo won’t be permanent.”
“But the memory will be!” I shouted back. I punched the mirror. Each piece reflected back the single word a thousand times: UGLY
Honorable mention
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