ME & THE MONSTER

weirdos

Kal's muse was called Betty. She had a drinking problem, an ex-husband in advertising, and a cramped flat in South Bank. Also, she wouldn't see forty again.

In the garden shed, Kal slouched on a chair, scribbling on a notebook. It was here that he wrote songs, here that his brother Nate brought chunks of machinery and breathed life into them. So it was only natural for his muse to walk into the shed. She could smell the creation of things, just like a shark is baited by blood.

"There you are," Kal said, looking up. "I've been praying and praying for weeks, and you turn up now? Fat lot of use you are."

Betty, in her flared jeans and peroxided hair, made herself comfortable on an old rocking chair in a corner of the shed. She fished out a rusty lighter from her pockets.

"Kal Mellketh praying," she said. "Now wouldn't I like to see that. You mind if I smoke?"

He waved a hand.

"Go ahead. Anything to get your inspiration going."

A spurt and a flame, and the muse leaned back, luxuriously.

"Anything, eh? You stuck or what? Want me to spoon-feed you again?" She scratched her black roots. "Artists in distress, you're all cut out from the same cloth. Dickens, Bach, Picasso, you think you rule the world, but you're helpless as a babe without us."

"Maybe," said Kal. "I don't know what to write the next song about. If there's even a song."

She sighed. The chair rocked, back and forth.

"Sure you know what to write. And of course there's a song. There are always songs around us, you just have to listen."

Kal snapped the notebook shut.

"She's – she's a demon, Betty. I found out two days ago. A demon. I did have an odd feeling about her ... but I shoved it down, idiot that I am. Didn't want to be" – he made quoting marks with his fingers– "'reckless', like Eden said I was." – a bitter shake of the head -- "Some hunter that I am."

"Uh-huh," the muse said. She flung back her head, and blew blue cobwebs of smoke into the air. "And how does that make you feel?"

Kal scowled at her. "Now you sound like a shrink or something." He paused. "It makes me feel -- angry."

"Angry? Merely angry?"

"Yes."

She laughed, a tinkle of bells in the distance.

"Lies, boy. I can smell the lies on you. I'll tell you how you feel."

And she leaned forward, in the rocking chair, the muse with the cheaply dyed hair, and looked straight at Kal, and said: "It makes you feel livid, not just angry. You blame her kind, you blame her, really, deep down, for the grief and the ordeal you went through as a child. Another part of you thrills. Thirsts for murder. For revenge, and the blood in your marrow sings. And yet another part of you feels betrayed."

"Betrayed? Don't be stupid."

"Yes, betrayed. You thought Rae Carrows understood. You were beginning to feel close to her. You were beginning to think you'd found someone in whom you'd seen an echo of yourself."

Silence in the shed. Outside, in the garden, a flute blared out.

"I wanted her," Kal whispered. "But I also wanted – a friend."

Betty rose to her feet. She walked over to him and grazed his cheek with a finger. He stiffened at the touch.

"You're so lonely, aren't you, angel?" she said. "You were an odd, lonely boy, now you're an odd, lonely man. Always different from the rest."