Void Man
In which I finally write something in the midst of moping.
My love,
Every night I barricade our bedroom door. This isn’t what I normally do, but I’ve been put into this position for the past nine days. Utterly alone at night. What if an intruder breaks in while I’m asleep? Or worse yet—a monster.
I used to be really good at sleeping alone. Up on my third floor of the forest house where nothing could get me except the spiders that littered my ceilings. I slept facing a gigantic circular window that overlooked the trees. Beautiful in the daylight, but transformed into a deep void-eye when darkness hit. So you can imagine my surprise. If I could fall asleep in the presence of a black hole, why can’t I do the same in the absence of you?
A witch I once dated (this was before you), used to scream at voids. He feared the void that was my circle window. Once he took a pen and drew a small man within my void’s circular frame, like a small guard to protect me from whatever beings that stared in. I loved it at first, but after awhile it got in the way of my perfect view. A pleasure to erase it when we split. I do not scream at voids. What’s the point? A void is not something in which I will find myself. It is nothing. It is empty. Something I know I am not. I just try to keep it out.
Every night you are gone, I light a candle. This is incredibly stupid. Probably dumber than screaming at voids. What if I’m nothing but char when you return from your trip? But I still do it. Just one of the dozen reckless things I’ve done in your vacancy. I light the candle (a little tea light contained in a glass jar) and think of you as I fall asleep. It helps. My version of the small man in the circular window. Because as embarrassing as it is to admit at the age of twenty-nine: I am afraid of the dark. I am afraid of the void.
I take extra precautions. Here is my recipe for a door barricade:
2 boxes of medical supplies
1 vintage suitcase
1 mid-century modern chair
2 fans blaring at full blast (to drown out the house’s creaks and moans)
1 stupid candle
The idea, in my dumb mind, is that the void and the monsters that live inside cannot find me if I partake in this nightly ritual. I am safe, so long as I follow the rules.
People know me as “the monster author,” which is so weird to me. Growing up, I was terrified of beasts. I knew they existed in every corner of the house and forest. Could not stop thinking about them. So why invent monsters and obsess over them when all I wanted was to be carefree? I remember Boggy in the wetland next door—that poor creature I devised in 2003 and now whore out to the masses in the name of art. Convinced myself it was real, and I had to catch it. Extensive notes on its habitat and habits. Scared of monsters, but always looking for them. Maybe if I found them first, they could not find me.
A weird little world I lived in. Amphithere dragons scoured the air chasing planes. Sasquatch peered out at me from the trees every night. A friend and I made up a game where a chupacabra lived in the schools air ducts, except it wasn’t a game to me. An existence always filled with monsters, and I wondered if they followed me here, in the dark, in the void.
I’ve tried to distract myself during the day, sure. Walking around giant malls up north. Visiting old friends and their gardens. Driving to Portland on a whim. Trying to get away from my sadness, from my monsters, from my absence of you. But they catch up with me. I leave parties early. Cancel plans. Hole myself up on the couch and scroll until midnight. And then, of course, I have to barricade the door from the void.
Perhaps monsters—real monsters, not the things I write about—are not beings. I go looking for them but cannot and never will find them. Perhaps they are nothing but pure absence. To fend for oneself in the dark, huddled around a candle or a crude drawing of a man, remembering someone you love.
Come back soon.
Jonah