Y'see, honey, I'm just a wave-rider–I don't make the waves or tell 'em what shape to take. If nobody said a word about the place, I'd have no power over it. But when they told the stories of the land of monsters, I had somethin' to work with.
"This is a wicked place," they said. I liked it just fine. Wicked things always make for the best stories. "Evil spirits live here, monsters." I took that shape, that story, and I made it true. I pressed the shape onto the land–this was the home of monsters, of weird and wicked things. The story said that if you stayed away, you would avoid them. I made it so–the hungry waters would no longer roam, for this was now it's territory, the patch of land in the desert that was a danger to all who entered. But in doin' so, I did somethin' I didn't understand.
That momma and daddy all those years ago didn't know what the hungry waters were, and the story didn't say. As it grew, it changed: the waters became a ghost, a man built of metal and plastic, a witch, a shape-shiftin' hunter. Sometimes it was a dead fella, bones risin' to hunt the livin'. Sometimes it was a visitor from another world. So my cage of tale made real started catchin' those as well. I had my den of monsters, but what a den it became!
[Spike in static temporarily drowns out the words.]
Well if you must think of things in terms of fault, then that's right. The fault is mine. I made this place what it is–the home of monsters, to which they all must return in time. But really, honey, that's not the right way to look at things. Fault's a thing for people, and we ain't people. There's just the tall tale for the likes of us, and the taller, the better. Why don't you put that silly thought right outta your head?
You wanted to know what all this had to do with you, ain't that right? I'll cut through the chatter, then.
What you have to understand, honey, is that I was layin' the groundwork for somethin' bigger and better, somethin' new. It wouldn't be the most important parts yet, not for a good while. It had to become home to plenty of strange and wicked things first, something the first monster could eat and toy with and I could shape and battle. But it was the foundation, the outline. I poured myself into that building, that story. I fought with the hungry waters and the shapes it took. We wrestled for control for absolute ages. Oh, I hated it so badly, and it hated me. But we still needed each other: it and my trap shaped around each other, strainin' to burst. I poured myself into workin' more and more until I realized I wasn't just the shaper, the rider on the tale–I had become a part of it. I went from bein' the warden, the scientist to bein' the jail itself, the petri dish. What a shock that was, honey, a shock as bad as fallin' off your board into the cold ocean. Can you picture it?
Of course you can. You were there, after all.
Now, all this is a roundabout way of sayin': it weren't no shock to me when I stepped through those busted doors and saw the security footage. Idle's been a cage longer than it's been a town, and that's the gospel truth. So what if the bars were made of metal, not story? So what if they wanted to leave but physically couldn't, instead of able to leave, but not wantin' to? The effect's the same in the end, and you ought to know that endings are the part that matter the most.
Still, I'd like to think Idle was a bit more comfortable than this place. If you were miserable in town, honey, it was probably your own fault in the first place. In that ugly little hold, I saw trapped rats that had started to eat themselves–no foolin', there was a rabid lookin' woman in an airtight cube who had started to eat herself up. Most folks were sprawled and sleepin', or pacin' around. One boy was glowin' as he looked up at the roof. Maybe he thought he could see the sky through it–he and his family were always aimin' to go back there. The fella made to love the lonely boy was turned off, it seemed. They didn't even bother tyin' him up. At that point he was more an it than a he, anyway.
The Dissent: Entries
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