Monster, Monster: from the Diary of William Valentine

By T. W’ski

So, you want to read about reality? Here it is a story about a man who ignored all the pre-wedding signs and temptations that life set before him in an attempt to lead him down the correct path it had chosen for him and away from the path his parents, the church, and the state had him going down. It was too late for him by the time he discovered that his path was one filled with the horrors of being married to a monster who for no conceivable reason was out to destroy everything he believed in and held sacred.


FRONT COVER SCENE: This book is about a woman, a monster who
destroys men's lives.

A BEAUTIFLIL BLONDE woman/the Greek Mythological MEDUSA with her Snakes as hair peering out from beneath the Black hood of The Grime Reaper's open cloak showing the outline of her breasts, etc.
Around her head, above the hood, is a halo of fire.
She is holding the Reaper's scythe in her hand and is standing next to a barren tree with a vulture sitting on one of the tree's barren limbs next to her.
SHE HAS A WICKED EVIL LOOK ON HER FACE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 13, 2024
• ISBN: 9781663262738

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Copyright © 2024 T. W’ski.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-6266-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-6265-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-6273-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024909515

iUniverse rev. date: 05/06/2024

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter One

Background

Chapter Two

Three Years before Paragon’s Demise

Chapter Three

1987

Chapter Four

1988

Chapter Five

1989

Epilogue

Tommy Templeton Mystery Series:

The Coven

Bloody Muddy

Templeton Double including:

The Stones Murders

The Harvester

Other Novels by T. W’ski

Stone Blind

BlackHeart’s Treasure

West of Kansas

The Laver and the Purple Sand Pirates

U-601

CROSSings

Apachēē!

The Golden Buddha

A Yo, Ho! Double including:

BlackHeart’s Treasure II

With Wind in Their Sails

Poetry Books by T. W’ski

MACHO

à la mode

Book of Short Stories by T. W’ski

T. W’ski’s Shorts

Irish

A beautiful, generous woman with an unrecognizable

and uncontrollable Monster within herself.

Monster, Monster

(The Monster Without, the Monster Within)

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever though about having sex with a Saint Bernard? Will was standing there wondering if it were possible. Catching himself when the realization of what he was contemplating at that moment made him come to his senses and admit that his marriage was in real trouble and needed a different solution. When self-gratification and the contemplation of performing abnormal sexual acts with the family pet were the only things that were stopping him from losing his mind it was time to concentrate on the situation and find a way out.

"Only if you have been in the deepest valley can you know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain."

Richard Nixon

Born in the first half of the nineteen-forties near the end of the Second World War Will was taught that in order to reach Paragon one had only to live one’s life following the rules of mother church and the laws of the state, by obeying god and giving to Caesar what was Caesar’s.

Married in an institution blessed by god and promising to let no ‘man’ put them asunder Will and his wife started their journey legally joined at the hip in which the pocket that contained his wallet resided. Much later he came to realize that in the oath that they both took that day there was no mention of not allowing a woman or a monster putting him asunder.

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The chapters of this book follow the chronicled events taken from a troubled man’s diary as he struggled against the two monsters that were destroying everything that he had been raised to believe in and everything that he had been taught to hold sacred. They chronicle the events that took place in his life that lost him his search for the much acclaimed Great American Dream – every man’s Paragon.

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CHAPTER ONE

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Background

Leaving the Midwest:

The heat rising from the blacktopped surface of the county road that ran past the front yard of their house turned the cool, blue waters of Lake Michigan into a mirage. Lake Michigan sat there filling his sight left to right and on out to the distant horizon. His view of the lake started just beyond several acres of barren, plowed farmland that ran from the ditch on the other side of the county road in front of his rented house over to the edge of a two-story cliff that stood above the lake’s minimal shoreline. He was standing there his mind a blank staring beyond it trying to make the reality of his present situation non-existent by turning it into something akin to a far off dream. His mind drifted trying to escape the reality of the ache that his heart had been experiencing for some time now. He was tired of listening to all the whining and cutting remarks, the verbal undermining of his father figure’s authority over his son that spouted from the mouth and mind of his wife. He was tired of taking it all for the good of the marriage in the spirit of god and country that had been infused in him since the day of his birth. It didn’t blame his parents it wasn’t their fault. His parents were good god fearing people raised in a time when a strong belief in those things was an asset.

Will found that on his side of the road the atmosphere had been unbearably heated beyond belief for the greater part of the day, but not in a meteorological way, in the way two people interact with each other when love had taken a sabbatical. Ever since they had returned from Alaska and re-entered the realm of a large, interacting, on a daily basis, doors always open, drop in anytime, no call of warning required kind of interaction among his relatives his wife had become an unbearable monster. A thousand desert suns all directing their rays on the spot in which he stood could not have made his slice of hell any hotter and all because he and his family were in the process of moving. Yes they were loading a U-haul with all their worldly goods to pull it and transport them out of this state and across a major portion of the country. This was happening all at the insistence of Will’s wife who had insisted that if he was to continue his education that it had to be in a school as far away as humanly possible from his family, his friends, and his relation. After two years here in the Midwest surrounded by those same people she announced one day that she had, had enough. Will’s first choice had been to finish his college degree in Montana, but according to his wife that wasn’t far enough away. California she considered to be too hot so she settled on the upper Northwest Coast and an Oregon university. It’s not far enough away, but it will have to do, she said in a disappointed tone as if a school in the middle of the Pacific Ocean would be more to her liking and preferable.

Coming from a dysfunctional family with little or no relation to speak of to fill the shoes of a mother that had died when she was only twelve his wife was having a hard time getting used to the massive relation and their open door policy that she had acquired when she married him although when he thought about it her objection to that fact didn’t make any sense to Will for you would have thought she’d have known what she was getting into when she accepted his proposal. Will had proposed only after they had been dating for more than two years. During those years she had, had plenty of opportunity to see and experience for herself how a large, closely knit relation lived from day to day and had experienced their open door policy for herself.

While he was off serving his country they had gotten engaged and married in their home town, while he was on leave between assignments. When he had established himself in his new assignment she joined him in that distant land the one called Alaska.

When his four years of service with short hiatus’ in those torrid lands of anger and death had been completed they returned home and settled in the city they had both grown up in. He attended the area’s branch of the state’s university and worked the night shift at a local manufacturing plant, while she occupied her time being a mother and wife. During those three years spent far away, alone, and without his walk-in relation around his wife had somehow decided that, that was the way she wanted to live her life and must have promised herself to make it happen come hell or high water. He had completed the first two years of study at the local branch of the state university, but still needed three years more to attain his degree when his wife had announced that she had, had her fill of his family, his relation, and his friends, and demanded that he finish those three remaining years at another university as far away as they could possibly get. So it was that to save his marriage and make his wife happy in accordance to the rules he had been raised under Will agreed to move to Oregon for her.

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Will! his wife called demandingly from inside their rented house they had just about cleared out, the one they were leaving. Have you any room in the trailer for your son’s train board? The doors on the trailer were already closed and locked and if he opened them up everything that he had stuffed in at the last minute would fall out and have to be repacked. The train board was a six foot by four foot sheet of half inch plywood that he had painted with roads etc. and attached the tracks of his son’s plastic train set to. He thought about it and decided that it could easily be replaced once they got to where they were going. He walked into the house to explain his decision to his son. His wife seizing the opportunity once again turned to their son and said. Daddy says that your favorite toy isn’t important enough to take along, Lee. He’s going to have you leave it behind.

We don’t have room for that big board in the trailer. Once we get to our new house in Oregon we can buy a new board and paint it just like we did with this one and make it even better, Son. We can change whatever you want changed on it adding some of the places that you have told me that you would like me to put on this old board, Will replied trying to reason with a child whose mind had been previously coached into a pre-set mode by his mother. No reply came from his son just a look of ‘It’s my train, Dad and I want it. I want this one, it’s mine’. Why don’t you take this old board and the train over to your buddy Jeff’s house and give it to him. Jeff has always liked playing with it and whenever he does after you’ve gone he will think of you and what a good friend you were. I’m sure that Jeff’s father, Ralph will clear a space under his bed just like we did for you to store the board. Still no reply just the look of ‘I hate you’ was all he got, so leaving it there he walked back outside to attend to the car as they were ready to leave after one more sweep of the house’s interior to make sure they hadn’t missed anything.

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Year’s later when Lee was in his thirty’s he would use Will’s having given his favorite train and board to his then best friend as an excuse to cut off all communication and contact with me, even though it had been replaced, as Will had promised. He like his brother Chris who was born later on the West Coast had both attained without any doubt the ‘Swede’ gene from his mother’s side of the family during their conception and with a little extra coaching from her hung me on the backsides of their barns cutting me off and leaving me without any knowledge pertaining to their lives activities stopping me from sharing in them through most of their adult lives, Will wrote among his last entries.

Early Days on the West Coast:

It took Will and his family three days of living in a nice motel with double doors to the exterior that led one to the parking lot and the other to a beautifully manicured and flowered grassy expanse to bask and walk their dogs in before they were able to find a house to rent. The landlord of their new residence was gracious enough to let them pay ‘the down’ in monthly installments, which they added to their monthly rent. Will didn’t have a job at this point, but with a lot of hard pavement pounding by the end of the following week he had literally nailed one down. He had hired on with a company that built pre-fabricated homes and while working through the summer he learned that the economy of the area that they had moved to was not conducive to raising a family and finishing a college education at the same time at least not on what he was making. Talking it over with his wife he finally decided to work through another year, see what developed, and at that time they would reassess their situation. The lumber industry has always been notorious for its seasonal ups and downs. So when late fall rolled around Will found that he had been laid off. Being a newcomer to the area and its employment vicissitudes and not having been pre-warned that this was the normal cycle in this industry suddenly turned what little cash flow and savings they had to low and nothing turning their bills due a bit lopsided. Necessity now required that he find another job as quickly as possible. His wife had been working at almost minimum wage, but given their situation she too started looking for something that paid for her labors at a higher rate. She found a seasonal job on the night shift at the local canning factory where they processed vegetables: beets, corn, peas, etc. Will was hired within a few weeks by a small delivery company that had been an established icon in the community for years paying good wages with great medical insurance, and a retirement plan. This was a most welcomed blessing for his wife soon after his being hired informed him that she was pregnant with their soon to be second son, Chris.

Summer was just starting when their little family added that second male child and two cats to their nucleus. By summer’s end they had finally reached a point of financial security and decided to build a home of their own instead of renting. With Will’s background in architecture and his past experience working in the field he took on the task of personally designing their new residence from scratch. Open beam, pine paneling, rock fireplace, marble sinks, large, down to your knees windows with rooms that were sized slightly above what was the norm, a separate front entranceway, a rear deck, a large garden area, an almost as large pen for their two dogs that they had brought with them from the mid-west in the back of their car which had, had its rear seat removed to accommodate them, and all that with a double garage. It was their paradise. They felt blessed, established, and at peace with their surroundings and Will thought in their marriage.

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Will had made a vow early on in his life that as a parent and a father that unlike his father who was only able to share a small portion of his time with his brother and himself he would share vast quantities of time with his children. He would not leave them grow middle aged yearning for what had never been. So he became involved with them in scouting as a leader, involved with them in little league baseball as a coach, involving them even though they objected in gardening, fishing, hiking, biking, and taking them to the vast array of local concerts. All the things that were wholesome and healthy he and his wife shared with their two sons.

His wife and he were also sharing, but not in an intimate fashion. Before they were married she had refused his advances saying that the church forbade it until after they were married. After their marriage she held the same position even on their wedding night. Will was new to this attitude, but what did he know for this was the first time he had been married or living this close to a female. His wife attitude although not interested in using intimacy to sustain their marriage had changed now that she was living thousands of miles from Will’s relation. They shared in the household choirs inside and outside and the many other responsibilities required of parents involved in raising active youngsters, but sadly that one most important aspect of married life was one they were not sharing with each other. Two is enough and if you want more than two you’ll have to find someone else to sleep with, he was told and despite his argument on the subject of taking the necessary precautions her attitude never did change. One other facet of marriage that they were not sharing was taking an interest in the growth and changes that were taking place within the both of them. Every time Will tried to get involved in her life she insisted that her time was her time and he should find something else to take an interest in. When he tried to get her to join him in something that he was interested in he got the same response.

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Time passed their boys grew taller and filled out. Involvement in what interested the two of them slowly took more and more of their time, but after awhile Will noticed that as a family his wife’s participation for one reason or another unlike his own had grown less and less. The older they got the less she concerned herself with their interests until it became no matter what he did or how he tried to change things it became a father and sons or a him alone existence.

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The human mind is a wonder of creation. It enables the creatures of this planet to do all sorts of intriguing things. It controls their every move. It controls their every breath, their every heartbeat and all those little valves in their veins that allow their blood to flow to all their vital organs when needed. Their minds tell them when to sneeze, when to itch, and when not to scratch as well as when to blink and stretch. If that were all it could do we would all be creatures of instinct with millions of us following the edict of our mind, but the human mind doesn’t quite work that way. It personalizes each and every one of us. It gives us the ability to distinguish right from wrong and make choices that affect not only our lives, but the lives of those around us. We take our personalized self and inject it into a world that filters us through its surrounding environment. Filtering us like food filters through the body or fertilizer through a plant. Some of our personalized self goes out as waste, while the rest of the things learned in the process attach themselves and form our prejudices, our strengths, our weaknesses, and our personal values. The lengths of time that we are subjected to those things that surround us decide the strength to which they entwine themselves within the fabric of our being. When our environment changes and new influences give us pause to question our previously entwined values it is no wonder that this wonderful bit of creation our mind puts up shields to protect what has already been entwined within its grey cells. Changes like acid dripping and eating its way through a stainless steel barrier our mind with years of reinforced influence behind it will finally yields to our new way of thought if it is persistent finally accepting those changes and casting aside the old. Brought up in a world that adhered strictly to the rules set by God and the laws instituted by man Will needed more than the drip, drip, drip of acid to eat away the values that had entwined themselves throughout his being. He needed the affects caused by an ATOM BOMB!

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CHAPTER TWO

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Three Years before Paragon’s Demise

NO Visitors

It happened while he was at work. Will was standing by the urinal during his morning break relieving himself when a severe pain struck him out-of-the-blue in his side. It was so severe that it made him cry out. Zipping up he walked out to the workroom floor and before he could say a word to his supervisor who having taken one look at him grabbed him by the arm and out the door they went. Lying on the floor in the back of his supervisor’s station wagon curled up in a ball because of the pain he was driven to the hospital emergency room where he was immediately admitted. The problem was serious enough that within hours he was lying on an operating table. Textbook, they said when it was all over. But we’ll be keeping you for a few days just to make sure. That was the fourth time in his short life that Will had been hospitalized five if you count the time he was born. Unlike the times before this time there was no ice cream, and no beautiful, candy striper to give him lotion rubs, but there was plenty of Jell-O and an inordinate amount of time to think.

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His recuperation time in the hospital was four days and three nights following the procedure. In all that time no one came to the hospital to visit, no friends, no family, no co-workers, no supervisors checking to see if he was faking it or not, and most importantly no wife came to console and support him. The state of his marriage at this point was akin to a brother-sister living together affair. There was and hadn’t been for some time now any intimacy in it and something had happened to the way his wife treated him. Will thinking about that particular state of affairs realized that his wife’s change in attitude wasn’t just toward him, but toward their two sons also, whenever it didn’t involve him. When it did involve him she took the opportunity to try and separate them like she had done numerous times when they had been living back within the realm of his open door relation. She had reverted back to her ugly, monstrous self with all the snide remarks, the constant verbal unappreciative remarks toward everything that he did for the family or with his sons and why Will could not fathom an answer. No one came and no one called to see if he was alright. It made him feel as if he were in a state of isolation totally alone in this world without any one that cared whether he lived or died. During those four days Will did a lot of thinking. Thinking about where he was in his relationship with the woman to whom he was married. Thinking about where he was at this point in his life and in which direction that life would be taking him if he continued to allow those entwined values his other monster that was set deep within his psychic to have complete control over it. In his state of drugged delirium and lonely isolation he resolved to take charge and turn his life around no matter what the cost. Life was too short to go through it with no one to care about him, or what happened to him. Life was much too short not to have someone to hold hands with and too short not to have someone loving him in return for the love he gave them. He realized it would not be easy breaking away from those values of life that had been deep-set within his psyche. It would not be easy going it alone at his age. His entire life all forty years of it had been filled with thoughts of providing for his family, living only for their growth in the safety that he provided them. He had been living by the rules set forth by the church and laws of the state which forbade the very actions he was now contemplating. It was with those thoughts and realizations that started the acid dripping away at the foundation of his being. The hope of someone there to help and