Alexandra
Iknew life wasn’t sunshine and rainbows for everyone, but eventually the clouds always broke, revealing the sunlight once more for them. But in my case, the darkness that seemed to follow me never cleared.
I had learned a long time ago, life wasn’t fair, and at some point, I just accepted it.
The only bright spot was when I was able to climb into my bed, crack open a spiral notebook, and forget reality even existed while being transported into the world I created when I put my pen to paper.
I poured all of my despair and desire onto those sheets. The ink was my pain, and the pages were my savior.
It’s where I found myself now, contemplating the events of the day and how I would cope with them. I was lounging on my bed in an oversized Aerosmith t-shirt I'd found at the thrift shop and some black sleep shorts.
Shoving the rest of my chocolate chip cookie into my mouth, I grabbed the plastic cup filled with the delicious delicacy known as RumChata. Taking a gulp of the cinnamon alcohol, I swallowed down the lump of cookie that lodged itself in my throat before setting the cup back down on my nightstand.
The alcohol had been given to me as a bribe to not tell on the girl across the hall for smoking a joint. I honestly didn’t care what she did—I wouldn’t have turned her in anyway, but I wouldn’t turn my nose up at alcohol.
Despite not having any friends here, I kept to myself... it was just easier. My life had enough chaos without me creating enemies. I had my own shit to worry about. If the girl wanted to smoke pot to get through her days, who was I to judge? We all had our own ways of coping.
The RumChata left a trail of light heat in its wake as I reached for my black spiral notebook that had seen better days. The edges of the pages curled slightly from being bent a bit when I wrote at odd angles. Flipping to the next blank page near the back of the book, I realized that I would need to grab another one soon and add this full one to the plastic bin beneath my bed. That bin held the only things in the world I cared about, the only things that held any value for me.
As a ward of the state, I hadn’t enjoyed many luxuries in life growing up. Even now, being on an academic scholarship for my junior year at a small private college, I wasn’t afforded much. The single dorm room was definitely a plus, though.
I couldn’t dwell on the fact that all the possessions I cared about could fit into one measly bin beneath my bed. One day, things would be different—that day just wasn’t today. I was what you could call a “pessimistic optimist.”
My scholarship covered my classes, school materials, boarding, and a small stipend for food. I’d be the first to admit I had a pretty shit diet. I wouldn’t eat all day, then I’d use my budgeted allowance for the day to order a large pizza and cookies and binge eat as I wrote through the night.
Another terrible habit was my almost non-existent sleep schedule, and I often found myself cursing the first rays of morning light as they streamed in through my small window. They took me away from my fantasy world filled with delicious men I was unhealthily obsessed with, signaling that I'd once again be heading to classes running on fumes.
Often I dreamt of being one of the supernatural creatures of the world instead of an isolated, forgotten human stuck in an endless loop that kept reminding me of my place in life.
But unfortunately, this seemed to be the hand I'd been dealt. I just needed to find a way to make the most of it.
That didn’t stop me, though, from checking my teeth to see if they’d elongated to sharp points like a vampire's, trying to conjure fire into existence in my hand like a witch, or wishing I’d grown a pair of demon horns overnight.
Maybe I was just a late bloomer in the supernatural community?At least, that’s what I liked to tell myself when I found myself sinking in the bleakness of my life.
Grabbing a pen with a slightly gnawed black cap from my nightstand, I backed into the corner of my bed against the wall, a cozy space where I had my pillows arranged and smashed in a nest of sorts to engulf me. Drawing my knees up, I rested my notebook against them, closed my eyes, and tipped my head back to rest against the wall, thinking of where I would be transported to this time.
It was time to cut myself loose from reality and escape to the world between my pages. A world that inspired awe and forged hope within my soul. Hope that one day the world I lived in would be a better place.
My fantasy world was one in which I righted the wrongs of the world. Where the monsters most people were afraid of helped me hunt down the true bad guys—the humans.
Because I can assure you, my monsters were angels in comparison to the true evil that lurked in my reality. Humans just happened to wear skin suits that were more pleasing to the eye.
Closing my eyes, I allowed my mind to drift to the image of my monsters, sinking into the alternate life I’d created for myself.
At first, when I’d created them, there had been nothing beautiful about my monsters, but they had morphed in my mind over the years. Before I learned how to write, I drew them as faceless shadow creatures draped in the fabric of black cloaks with ripped edges at the bottom. They moved in the darkness, shifting with the shadows, undeniably hidden from the human eye.
Then, as I wrote them in stories instead of drawings, when they weren’t traveling in the darkness, the lower halves of their bodies were still mostly swirling shadows, but there was a section in the middle of their chests that thrummed with a steady glow, like a human had their heart.
Each of my three monsters had a different color that emanated from the piece of them I liked to think of as their soul, spreading into their necks and up into their faces like veins beneath the surface.
Lucien was red.
Elwin was green.
Kylo was blue.
Then, to top it all off, they had four arms, two on each side, with razor sharp claws at the tips of their fingers. Some might find them disconcerting, being so devoid of humanoid features, but it’s what I loved about them. What you saw was what you got, unlike humans.