Last night you invaded my dreams with a blitzkrieg of shadows and muffled sounds. Once again, my thoughts surrendered to you; whatever contentment sleep promised, shattered into fragments of fear and hopelessness. I became your prisoner, frozen in panic, jailed by darkness—an unwilling participant in your deluded rage. You bore the rank of Monster well. You declared my bedroom off limits to sanity. The Monster had recaptured his son. The Monster wanted answers. He demanded of me things I didn’t want to divulge. His cruel and inhumane torture of my soul made the angels cry; their tears dripped from my scarred flesh. The Monster waterboarded my humanity, suffocating all reason until I acquiesced and accepted his skewed view of what I have become—a prodigy of his insanity, and enemy combatant to my own realities.

It’s not one particular thing that the Monster did to me; it’s a collective of everything a father never should impart to his son: the pain of humiliation, the burn of a belt ripping through flesh, the taste of blood as your jaw is broken, the confusion of rape, and smells of sewage and cigarette smoke choking your lungs. No, it’s not one thing; it’s everything. It’s torture.

The carnage of the Monster’s invasion goes beyond me—it seeks out my sons and relationships I let fail. The Monster’s death is nothing more than a plot of land with a carved stone that bares his name—my given name. He lives on in provocation. He feeds on disregard. My sisters don’t remember him as I do. My mother acts like the Monster’s unwilling participant, awaiting her own war crimes tribunal—God’s final judgment.

What caused the Monster’s return? Post traumatic stress? Therapy tells me yes, but today, introspection answers differently. I’m a man haunted through my decades by a Monster. We had our reckoning… a victory of sorts for me. But in all wars, victory can be fleeting. The oppressed can become the vicious—the monsters. No one wins in the end. There are only nightmares and the Monster’s Interrogation.

As I write this, I’m listening to Dire Straits: Telegraph Road. The lyrics speak of a melancholy.

I'd sooner forget but I remember those nights

When life was just a bet on the race between the light

You had your head on my shoulder you had your hand in my hair

Now you act a little colder like you don't seem to care ...

Tonight I want to sleep and dream… nothing more.