THE WANDERING DEMON!for Rhawann!!There are...many types of monsters in this world: Monsters who will not show themselves and who cause trouble; monsters who abduct children; monsters who devour dreams; monsters who suck blood, and... monsters who always tell lies. Lying monsters are a real nuisance. They are much more cunning than other monsters. They pose as humans even though they have no understanding of the human heart. They eat even though they've never experienced hunger. They study even though they have no interest in academics. They seek friendship even though they do not know how to love. If I were to encounter such a monster, I would likely be eaten by it. Because in truth, I am that monster. - L!!and you will never see the wandering demon; for he wears a mask.!!Son, dont make me disappointed like she does. Thirty years weve been married and I keep telling her the same thing, I keep telling her but she never listens! These people never listen! So dont end up like one of them, be like your dad! You see me, have I ever spilled? Not once in my life! -My father!!! Theres this one song I like to listen to in times like these, times where everything is broken and everyone seems to be leaving me. Sentimental things like songs to listen to when youre down and immature views of hard times where you call them times where everything is broken and everyone seems to be leaving you seem to be routinely found amongst people my age, younger people not quite out of school yet but who are being treated with hitherto unheard of respect and being given equally unheard of responsibilities, and more often than not I can be found asking myself what it is to do in situations like these, what is expected? !! Do I act like an adult and, in the case this is a mistake risk getting embarrassed smiles from those closest to me when I reveal my idyllic ideas of what could be done to resolve a problem, like a child offering her allowance to resolve a familys debt? Or do I act is if it is not my responsibility to act (which, I am always wondering if it is) and risk being treated as a child again and disappointing those closest to me, making them wonder when I will be old enough to carry the weight? Its in times like these that I like to escape to my bedroom and play my song on repeat, attempting to freeze myself in a soothing bubble before the door again opens and another demon enters my abode.!! For me, I was faced with such a problem not long before my schools exam week, which was what stood between myself and a hopefully forgiving and calming summer vacation. But in order to understand my problem and my coming of age in recognising the demons I was faced with, one must go back to my childhood, to understand how I was raised.!!! I was raised by my father, as my mother was an inherently sloppy person who was never well received by infants or toddlers or children, and I myself at that age simply viewed her as the parent who was not my father. Which is not to say I didnt harbour a love for my mother, I felt the standard affection of children for their mothers, however this love was somewhat dulled by my fathers attempts to raise me. My fathers method for raising his children was effective and effectual, he would keep up a perfect appearance in front of his children at all times and point of the flaws of those flawed people around him, while always reminding his fairly impressionable children not to be like said flawed people, but to be flawless like their father.!! For us children, the primary flawed person in our house was our mother, a person who shamelessly made mistakes and repeated them, and who whenever confronted by us children about changing her crude ways would simply retort that it was none of our business, and whenever confronted by our father would insist that all her life shes been this way, as though that was an acceptable reason to continue to make mistakes.!

! One example of my fathers teaching methods which was especially recurrent saw us at the dining table, where my mother, attempting to scoop some sauce out of our serving bowl would fail to bring her plate closer to the bowl, and on the spoons trip from the serving bowl to her plate some sauce would fall onto our white tablecloth and my father would rebuke her for her mistake, all the while she held a proud, annoyed half-smile as she wordlessly accepted my fathers words. He would sometimes give me a disappointed look, or a disgusted look when my mother did such things, to which I always tried my best to return a hang in there look, or something equally comforting. I can still hear my fathers words to me both in front of my mother at the time of such events and afterwards, Son, dont make me disappointed like she does. Thirty years weve been married and I keep telling her the same thing, I keep telling her but she never listens! These people never listen! So dont end up like one of them, be like your dad! You see me, have I ever spilled? Not once in my life! I loved my father. I loved how perfect he was, how classy he dressed and acted, and I always clamoured to emulate him. !! These events would continuously repeat themselves, and in every one of them I saw how radiant my father was as opposed to my mother, a poor creature who I couldnt ever imagine charming a man as valiant and perfect as my father into marrying her. It was not only these lessons which reinforced this idea, my mother smoked, fortunately not in the house (a practice my father banned), she never cooked, never cleaned, never helped, never showed much interest in my growth, complained, nagged, ate excessively, spoke loudly and always hurt me when she hugged me when she came home, as she hugged my as though I was her size. There is even a diary entry I wrote when I was in my ninth year comparing my mother to my father, where I set up some of the above criteria and checked most for my mother and none for my father, writing under that I do love my father more than I do my mother, an answer to a question always posed to children my age, but never answered, and no answer is ever accepted, a question which i had found much too easy to answer.!! This entry found its way to my mother, she was saddened but I never thought to much about it.!! My father also daily went to the markets to buy all the goods for the house, sometimes for hours in the heat, and despite his age (he was in his sixties at the time) always came back carrying a load too heavy for a man of his age, and he complain to me how it was he who had to do all the shopping in the house, and he would be troubled by this, and I would too, by how unjust it was that a man as eleemosynary and unappreciated as my father would end up with an ungrateful demon like my mother, who he often called a full-time-job. !! This method of raising me left me with a disrespect for my mother, I thought her ugly and crude, especially compared to my father, who my brother called an entirely different creature when speaking to me, and as a result I never did much of what my mother asked, unless my father also asked it of me, and I constantly undermined her, much as my father did, as growing up, she was the villain of the house, she was the demon.!!! ! ! Well Im the!! ! ! ! ! Wandering de-e-mon yes Im the !! ! ! ! ! ! Wandering de-e-mon!! ! ! ! ! Ill eat your heart and use you up!! ! ! ! ! Ill steal your life say good bye!! ! ! ! ! I really really really really-!! ! ! Cause Im the !! ! ! ! ! Wandering de-e-mon thats right Im the !! ! ! ! ! Wandering de-e-mon!! ! ! ! ! Ill come to your life with roses and smiles!! ! ! ! ! Youll bow down to me cause you better off than that!! ! ! ! ! Dont try to run baby cant even try!

! ! ! ! ! Its cause you dont know that Im the !! ! ! ! ! Wandering de-e-mon!! ! ! ! ! ! Cause he!! ! ! ! ! ! wears!! ! ! ! ! ! a mask.!!!

You probably wont see this for a while, but your mom is an incredibly brave woman.!-My eldest brother!!! My mother, as I have mentioned, was the demon as I was growing up. My father had quit his job in order to raise me, and my mother had continued working until fourteen years after my father quit. As a result she was generally absent during my childhood, appearing only after four with a hug which I always told her caused me more pain than comfort, as it was more of a squeeze than a hug. I was never closer to her, she always seemed like the parent who wasnt my father, the parent Id ask for money, as I was always embarrassed to ask my father for money. But these ideas would all change soon enough.!! The day my opinions of my parents began to slowly turn and change came not too far from my exams a few months ago. I had promised to go to a restaurant with my mother, which as it turned out, was completely empty except for the both of us, and remained so until we left, despite the local popularity of the restaurant. I had been entertaining outings like these because they gave my mother a chance to vent to me some of her frustration, which made her more relaxed and more importantly, easier for my father to deal with. !! We sat down and gave the waiter our orders and proceeded to make small-talk. My mother began to speak badly of my father as she had always done, accusing him of putting me down and undermining her, both things he was guilty of, but only because she deserved to be undermined. However, over the course of this conversation with her, I began to feel that way less and less. She began for the first time speaking of how she was always called the villain in the house, how she was always wrong and how my father was always posing as a golden figure, even though she knew him for what he really was.!! At first I was skeptical, I had heard her speak like this before, and I had even heard my older brother remark to me that sometimes she speaks out of her privates, but this was her I was speaking to, not my detached brother, nor my intrinsically biased father. She accused me of taking advantage of her, of thinking she was stupid. She accused me of only treating her properly when I wanted her to buy me something expensive, and then gradually receding to treating her badly. She spoke openly of how she was always the demon in the house, how my father spent years propagandising, turning I and my siblings against her, she told me she always noticed, she noticed what he said to us and how he looked at us when she made mistakes, and she spoke angrily of how we all thought she was stupid, oblivious, that she didnt know what was happening, how her image in the house had deteriorated into some evil witch who only exists for the dispensing of cash. She accused me of being like my father and like my eldest brother, something I would normally take pride in, but she called us pigs, people who dont know anything, people who dont love their own mother, his own wife. She began to get emotional, and I saw her as someone who was wronged repeatedly in her marriage, I saw her for the first time not as the villain, but the victim. I saw my mother cry for the first time. And for the first time, I saw my father as the demon. !!!! ! ! ! Well !! ! ! ! ! Dont you come near me girl !! ! ! (Hey!)!! ! ! ! ! No dont you come near!

! ! ! ! ! I say dont you come near me girl !! ! ! (No!)! ! !! ! ! ! ! No dont you come near!! ! ! ! ! Im not the man youre looking for!! ! ! ! ! Too lo-o-ost and not found!! ! ! ! ! Youd best stay clear and not stray near me !! !! ! ! ! Cause Im the !! ! ! ! ! Wandering de-e-mon!! ! ! ! ! The wandering de-e-emon !! ! !! ! ! ! ! And I!! ! ! ! ! wear!! ! ! ! ! a mask.!!!..and I know shell pale when compared to your dad, whos an entirely different creature, but your mom is a really strong person, I dont think you give her enough respect..!-My older brother!!! The song I like to listen to has a segment where the female singer keeps repeating Its all right, cooing almost, some crying child or some wounded animal. Its almost what I keep listening to the song for. !! Not long after this coming of age at our restaurant did I begin to see my father through my mothers eyes. The look of disgust he would give me after my mother made too much noise moving her chair I now met with an angry look, instead of my old shit happens look.!!The wandering demon wears a mask. !All people wear masks, and demons are people too!Or people are demons!But the wandering demon is no person!He wears the mask of people only!He seeks to cause despair and destruction!And so cunning is he that people, in their panic in their fights!Fail to recognise him.!They will only see one another as demons!All the while the wandering demon, wearing two masks, sometimes more,!laughs at us!!! The reason that in my introductory paragraph I said I listen to my song in times like these and all the events presented in my story evidently took place some time ago is that the wandering demon has returned. I am faced with a sad problem, weaved mostly of threads of my own conception. and I am I afraid I might have scared her away for this period of time, which as it happens is the period of time I need the comfort our talks offer the most. I am conflicted and my vision is clouded, only a mawkish sense of longing remains in my mind these days; feelings words do disrespect in their attempts to relay them to her, she is distant. A wandering demon returns.!!I WISH I COULD TELL HER!

-Written somewhere! in some little noteb-! ook on some lost ! page somew-! here cold a-! nd alone! and for-! gotten! .