Monsters

By Derrick Jensen

Monsters is an illustrated collection of wild, weird, and whimsical tales with a twist. These stories are not about mythical creatures; here, the creatures speak for themselves. There’s an orc who hates Tolkien, a young demon awash in teenage angst, an angel abandoned by Jesus who finds the Fates. Jensen creates a world both delicately dreamlike and all too real, where the villain is sometimes the victim and evil is not always what we thought.

If stories teach us how to be human, then the stories in Monsters are the ones we need now. These are fractured fairy tales for grown-ups, where the roots of sadism are laid bare and the horrors of human supremacism are firmly faced. But as in all of Jensen’s work, love is both always possible and also a call to action. By turns macabre, melancholy, and magical, these stories and their accompanying images will leave you wondering who the real monsters are and how they can be defeated.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Flashpoint Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781629634524

Derrick Jensen

Hailed as the philosopher-poet of the ecological movement, Derrick Jensen is the widely acclaimed author of Endgame, A Language Older Than Words, and The Culture of Make Believe among many others. Jensen's writing has been described as “breaking and mending the reader's heart” (Publishers Weekly). His books with PM include How Shall I Live My Life?: On Liberating the Earth from Civilization, Resistance Against Empire, and the novels Songs of the Dead and Lives Less Valuable. Author, teacher, activist, and leading voice of uncompromising dissent, he regularly stirs auditoriums across the country with revolutionary spirit. Jensen holds a degree in mineral engineering physics from the Colorado School of Mines, and has taught at Eastern Washington University and Pelican Bay Prison. He lives in Crescent City, California.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

From beginning to end, this book, like many books, is the result of a series of conversations.

The first conversation took place at a local book signing. Someone approached me, handed me a pile of her books tied with a ribbon, and said she was an artist who’d like to work with me. I often get approached by people who want to collaborate, and I have to turn almost all of them down, mainly because I’d never get any of my own work done. But there weren’t many people at the signing, and the more I looked at her artwork, the more I liked it. And I was between projects, so….

A couple of lunches later we’d decided I’d write a series of stories on monsters, and she’d illustrate them. I was excited. When I was a child I loved reading myths and fairy tales. In my early twenties I graduated to reading Joseph Campbell (whose book The Hero with a Thousand Faces had as its working title How to Read a Fairy Tale) and others who described the importance of stories to the transmission of culture from generation to generation. The stories of Hercules, then—or Hansel and Gretel, for that matter (and of course the same is true for every cultural story, from Star Wars to ’Salem’s Lot)—can be read as lessons on how to be human. Then in my late twenties I encountered the work of feminists like Mary Daly and Jane Caputi, who made clear that these stories not only teach us how to be human, but teach us how to be human within the particular cultural context of the story’s tellers and listeners. So Jason slaying Medusa or the male god Marduk slaying the female dragon and earth-creator Tiamat became stories of the violent ascendancy of patriarchy. The same can be said of stories in the Bible, and the same can be said of many of the stories in this culture, from those told by Hitchcock to those told by Norman Mailer. And these stories, even those told a very long time ago, have real-world effects.

All of which brings us back to stories about monsters. What do they teach us? Why do we so love them?

Whatever the answers, stories about monsters are among the most popular ever told, from our first oral tales to Bram Stoker’s Dracula to the latest Stephen King novel.

Perhaps you can see why I was excited about this project. I wanted to write stories that would reimagine monsters. And no, I didn’t want to make them warm and fuzzy. I wanted them (or at least some of them) to still be frightening. Monsters do exist, and they scare the hell out of me. But the older I get, the less frightened I am of Medusa, and the more frightened I am of her killer Jason.

So I wrote the stories. Then I handed them over to the artist, and…. Well, nothing. She disappeared. Which reminded me of one of the reasons I don’t generally collaborate with people I don’t know.

It all turned out for the best, however, because this gave me the opportunity to widen the conversation, to include not just one artist but many, each adding his or her own vision to these stories. That process has been a joy, and from my perspective at least, a triumph. I’m proud of the varied interpretations these artists have brought to these stories.

And finally, I’ve always loved learning about the seeds from which other authors’ stories germinate, so at the end of the book I’ve appended a brief description of each story’s inspiration.

Enough of this palaver. The bottom line is that I enjoyed writing these stories, and I hope you enjoy reading them. I must admit I also hope that at least one or two frightens you just the tiniest bit.

Monsters

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANITA ZOTKINA

HE WAKES, AS HE SO OFTEN DOES, moments before his alarm is to ring. He reaches to the nightstand to turn it off. He hears the soft sound of his wife’s footfalls as she makes her way across the still-dark room, hears the door open, then sees her silhouette against the slightly-less-dark hall. The door shuts again. She’s on her way to wake the children, and then to the kitchen to make breakfast for all.

He is filled, as he so often is, with a profound gratitude for this life he has been given, for the family he shares, for the simple elegance of their daily routines, for his ability to work and to provide food and shelter for them, especially during this time of sacrifice.

He reaches again to the nightstand, this time to turn on the light. Then he sits, and slides his feet from under the covers and over the side of the bed. He stands, walks to the wardrobe, opens it. He dresses.

By now he can hear the children, their sleepy voices drifting through the walls.

He’s at the kitchen table. The scents of coffee, sausage, and eggs permeate the air. The children file in, sit in their accustomed chairs. His youngest son’s shirt is buttoned wrong, so he points this out. The child fixes the error with his tiny hands.

An overweight, graying dachshund waddles into the room. The man looks at his children, ostentatiously checks to make sure his wife’s back is turned, winks, then hands the dog a piece of sausage.

His wife says, I know what you just did.

The children giggle.

She turns to face him, says, We shouldn’t be wasteful. We must be grateful for what we have.

I am, he responds, and he thinks again about his good fortune to be able to provide all this for his family. He asks his children, Are you grateful?

Yes, papa, they say.

He takes a bite of eggs, chews carefully, swallows. He looks at the dog again, then asks, Where’s Schatzi? Normally their two elderly dachshunds are inseparable.

His wife responds, She can’t get up this morning. A look passes between them. She continues, I think it may be time.

Another look between them. His expression warns her not to discuss it in front of the children.

Message received, she says, brightly, But maybe some sausage will convince her to get up. She looks at the children, Who would like to give Schatzi a treat?

All of the children raise their hands.

He makes the short walk to work. The sun is not yet up. There was a wind in the night, so the air is clean. One of the few things he does not like about his work is that sometimes the smell offends him. But not on mornings like this.

The transition from home to work doesn’t come for him the moment he steps out of the door of his home, a villa provided on site. Nor does it come the moment he walks into his administration building. It does not come as he greets those who work for him. Nor does it come when he exchanges pleasantries with his personal secretary. It does not come even when he walks into his office.

It comes as he sits in his chair. That is the moment each day when the awesome responsibility he carries strikes him anew, the responsibility he carries as commander of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

This is what happens.

You don’t panic when the first entrance is sealed. There’s no reason to panic: that’s why there are multiple exits. You move to the next exit. It also is sealed. You’re still not concerned. Of all places, this is where you’re supposed to be safe. Nonetheless it is troubling that two entrances are sealed. You check out a third, and a fourth. All sealed.

You’re not the only one to notice. Many of the younger members of your community are confused, discomfited. You and some of the others of older generations reassure them, the same way members of older generations among your kind have always reassured those younger when they’re scared. You say again and again, It’s going to be okay.

They start to calm. Then one of your daughters—she’s nothing more than a pup, really—complains of nausea. Her grandmother—your mother—rushes to her side, strokes her head and back, talking to her constantly. Then one of your nephews doubles over, begins moaning from abdominal cramping. Your sister hurries to him. The nephew lets go with explosive diarrhea. This does not deter her from comforting him.

You find the father of your children. He opens his mouth as if to speak, and blood gushes out. You touch his hair, whispering to him. Blood pours from his nose, from his other orifices. He cramps, then begins to convulse. He tries to speak. You say to him softly, Don’t talk. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.

You’re having a hard time holding down your own panic. Around you, your friends and family are losing control of their bodies. They are vomiting, defecating, bleeding all over themselves. Some are moaning or keening. A few are screaming. You want to attend to them, but you need to help your beloved.

And then his body stiffens, seizes, seizes, and seizes again. Something shifts inside of him. Then it leaves, and he is finished.

You turn away from him and toward the chaos that until very recently was your community. You bark out commands, telling this one to take care of the young, that one to find a way out. You don’t know what is sickening and killing everyone. You just know there must be a relationship between the forced sealing of the entrances and the deaths that have now followed.

Those around you are vomiting, convulsing, seizing. Those who can still control their limbs are clawing at the walls. You move from individual to individual, trying to calm those you can, comfort those you can’t. You keep saying to anyone who will listen, It’s going to be okay. We will get out of here.

And then you feel it. Your mouth begins to water, and the first wave of nausea rolls through you. You force it down, but it returns. Your chest tightens, and in that moment you know—as you’ve known all along, but would not allow yourself to say, even to yourself—how this will end. You begin to vomit blood, and you desperately wish that there was someone here to touch and kiss and stroke you, someone to whisper to you over and over, It’s going to be okay.

She knocks on his office door, hears him say, Enter. She does. She’s about to speak when his phone rings. He has set his ringtone to play Tears of a Clown.

She likes the song, but hates that he’s using it. She hates most everything about him, from his intentionally ugly hipster glasses to his expensive suits to the smug superiority he seems to show at every moment.

Last week his ring tone was the opening vocals of Afternoon Delight. She knows he chose it to convey the message to anyone within hearing range that he can choose a crap song and still be cool. He pretends he doesn’t care what other people think, but he’s so empty that his entire persona is based on his perception of how other people perceive him.

So far as she can tell, he doesn’t have a genuine character, or anything resembling an interior life, but only a shell he puts forward to everyone he sees. His only redeeming quality, she thinks, is his ability to make money. But, she also thinks, the ability to make money makes up for more or less every sin. She thinks it’s interesting, too, that making money is the only area of his life where he actually doesn’t care what other people think. He’s going to make it, and if someone doesn’t like it, well, they can fuck right off.

He glances at his phone to see the number, gives the screen a tap, then puts it to his ear. He says, Speak.

Fucking typical, she thinks.

A silence as the caller say something, then she hears her hipster boss, the moneymaker, say, You killed them? Good.

More silence.

All of them?

Short silence.

Why not?

Long silence.

Don’t give me that shit. You were hired to kill them all. We need them all dead.

Silence.

I don’t understand why anyone cares either. They’re vermin. They’re in the way. They have to die. It’s not like they’re humans, and Jesus, even if they were … But they’re not. Kill the rest of them.

Silence.

I don’t want excuses. I don’t hire you to tell me what to do, and I don’t hire you to tell me what’s possible. I don’t hire you to tell me what’s legal. I hire you to figure out how the fuck to do what I tell you.

She’s only half listening. She’d be hard pressed to say how many times she’s had this same experience, standing in front of this same desk, listening to him speak on his phone, telling whomever is on the other end that he will brook no impediment to making money.

He ends the call without a good-bye and palms it down hard on his desk. He looks at her, says, Prairie dogs. Fucking prairie dogs. Holding up a multimillion dollar mall. Can you fucking believe it?

She asks, How do they kill them?

Moneymaker makes a sprinkling motion, says, Drop in poison pellets, seal up the dens. Then he does a double-take before saying, The fuck you care? They’re in the way.

This is the moment you live for. Not this one, right now, but the one you know is coming soon. You know it’s coming soon because it’s that time. You know it’s that time because everyone else does, too. You can tell by all the jostling: everyone’s trying to get in position.

Hey, you say to one of the jostlers. Quit poking me. You poke her back. She pokes you back. You poke her back. This could go on for a long while, especially when—as is nearly always the case—the light has given one or both of you headaches. But this time it dies down after a few pokes.