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lost-in-mind-palace · 2 years

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Monsters aren't born, they just exist (Huxloween Day 4 prompt: cultural monsters)

I've taken the prompt a little too literally and it escalated it a weird direction. I don't feel I should be blamed for this. Blame my stupid brain. It loathes logic and sanity and common sense, and I can't convert it on a right path no matter how much I try (not that I'm trying that hard, knowing already that it's pointless lmao). I swear it's getting even weirder and weirder each day. Basically, I can't explain what happened here. Neither do I want to. Also, not beta read, so beware. I don't know if that's even possible, but pls enjoy POSSIBLE CW: brief mentions of psychiatric treatment

Monsters aren't born, they just exist

🌕

The darkness under Ben's bed always had something more to it.

As a little kid, Ben was afraid something lived there—some entity woven from the shadows, whispering along with the branches when they brushed over the window of Ben's room, so the creature itself was never actually audible.

But Ben suspected it lurked there, every night, waiting for God knew what. Maybe the fact Ben knew the creature existed was enough of a treat for it.

The years had passed, but Ben's childish fright remained.

After countless sleepless nights, and numberless rebukes how riduculous he was, Ben decided to swallow his dignity and examine the matter further.

Crawling at the edge of his bed, with heart in his mouth, Ben hanged his head down and peeked in the narrow slit between the floor and bed's frame.

'H-hello?'

Despite that the night concealed his idiocracy from the world, Ben still felt as a blithering idiot. They considered him crazy because he used to hear the voices in his head, but now he was talking to a dark pit under his own bed. Fucking great. Wait until his psychiatrist would get to know this.

'Is something there?' Ben swallowed. 'If yes, please fucking answer or better just go away!—'

'The darkness is tight in here.'

Ben jumped so high he almost hit the ceiling with his head.

'What the hell!' he squeaked, as loud as his fear that he'd wake his parents in an adjacent room let him.

'Why are you screaming?'

Ben could swear he hadn't overdosed his psychiatric drugs. And yet.

The words were quiet, almost inaudible, but Ben couldn't mistake them for a hum of the wind or a screech of the branches. They were too intentional, too clear despite their hush— too human. Their sound almost imperceptible if you weren't listening, like a small droplet disturbing the water's surface and creating the tiny creases.

If Ben hadn't nearly jumped out of skin yet a while before, he'd think it was soothing. But for now, his heart kept hammering in his chest, and his mouth was dried.

'W-who's there?' There was a pause. The creature didn't answer. 'A-are you— a monster?'

'I'm sorry, but I don't know what a monster is.'

Ben forced a thick swallow around a lump that had created in his throat. 'Something what hides under people's beds and eats them when they're asleep!'

'Oh. Then I guess I'm not one.'

'That's exactly what a monster would say!'

With these words, Ben scurried away from his room. This night, he slipped to his parents' bedroom. It seemed less humiliating than having an imagined small talk with no-existing thing that had apparently nestled under his bed.

🌖

Leia was getting ready to sleep, unbraiding her greyish strands from another overly complicated hairstyle. Han was already snoring. Ben had no idea how these two fit together when his father was sprawled across three quarters of available space.

What's more, he couldn't conceive how he wanted to crawl in there with them both. But he couldn't go back to his own room, could he? The monster might be waiting there for him, ready to grip his foot when he would be getting onto the bed.

'Mom? Uhm— can I sleep with you tonight, too?'

God, Ben felt like a 5-year-old again.

Despite knowing her son's weird habits, Leia dared to look baffled.

'Yes, of course, honey. If you feel you need it.'

There was this hidden suggestion, unspoken accusation, always lurking beneath a layer of strained politeness.

'I do,' Ben responded in his most blunt voice, a tone of an obstinate teenager demanding what he wanted with little to no consideration to others' needs. Just as Leia imagined him.

And she had to concede, of course, unless she wished to ruin her image of a merciful mother.

'Alright then, sweetheart. Then you're sleeping with us.'

Ben paid for it too soon.

'Are you having those atrocious nightmares again?' Leia asked absently. She was certainly dreading those were the father-stabbing-related ones. She didn't mention it though, in the meanwhile moving Han's limbs back on his half of the bed with the skill and resignation of a woman who used to do it more frequently than she considered acceptable. 'Are the voices so loud they don't let you sleep?'

Ben loathed her tricky questions, and that he was never witty enough to tell her what she needed to hear to leave him alone. 'Uhm, a little. But— it's nothing serious, I promise.'

'One more friendly talk with a good doctor hasn't yet harmed anyone,' Leia encouraged adamantly.

A friendly talk was the last thing which would come to Ben's mind if he wanted to describe the meetings with his psychiatrist Amilyn Holdo. A police interrogation would be the first one, though. The only thing Ben treasured about those visits was a consolation received from gaping at Holdo's strikingly purple shock of hair. Ben could at least comfort himself there were people even crazier than him. But there was little comfort in a persistent conclusion that those people actually managed life much better than him.

He couldn't sleep with his parents forever. It had been suspicious enough he'd done it in the first place, and look—he'd earned himself one extra fucking visit to his psychiatrist already. What would come next? For Ben's sake, of course. And to prevent Han from being stabbed when Ben would be sleepwalking and following the voices' vile prompts.

It was tempting to put Leia right, however, Ben was strongly convinced that revealing her that under his bed lived some conversation-liking monster would automatically book him a ticket to the nearest mental asylum, without even consulting stupid Holdo.

When he laid cocooned between his parents, distant Leia and snoring Han, Ben wondered how his monster was doing.

The monster under his bed, Ben corrected himself. Monsters don't belong to anyone, and certainly no one wishes to own them.

In the daylight, Ben had searched the space beneath the bed thoroughly. All he'd found had been a stray sock and a tone of dust. No trace of the monster. Of course, it didn't prove anything.

Unable to fall asleep in the narrow space between his parents, Ben kept drifting in a haze of weird thoughts.

The last time, the monster had said it was tight under the bed. Ben himself probably wouldn't be able to fit in, so he shouldn't have felt startled. Besides the fact of talking to a so far bodiless entity, of course.

(Actually, it had told that the darkness was tight in there, but it sounded to bizarrly for Ben to further investigate. He had enough of bizarreness, and the last thing he needed was adding himself more of it.)

Was it possible that— oh God, was the monster sleeping in Ben's bed now, shamelessly taking advantage of his absence? Ben left his room wholly unguarded. He cursed himself, and then his toe brushed over a heavy, hot flesh that had sneaked under the quilt to sleep in the feet of his parents' bed. Yeah, he should have at least left Chewie on guard. But no, he grounded himself. This goddamned giant Dutch Sheepdog would scurry away at the first unnerving noise reaching its shaggy ears.

Truth be told, Ben had no idea why the monster was so polite that it hadn't attacked him at one of those nights when he was still sleeping in his room, either to feed on him or simply steal his bed.

Was it hungry at all?

Was it cold, perhaps? Could the monsters feel cold? Or was it another plainly humanly inconvenience?

Did it thirst to scare Ben, to feed upon his dread?

(Or was it just as scared as Ben?)

(Was it— lonely?)

The silly questions tingled the tip of Ben's tongue, running too fast to dwell on them. There wasn't anyone to pose them, anyway.

In the dim pit of his heart, Ben regretted he wasn't alone with the dark this night.

🌗

'Are you there yet?'

Ben waited for an answer, clutching desperantly to the hope it wouldn't come.

Nothing positive, however, has ever come from Ben's high hopes.

'Yes.'

If he wished to, Ben could've pretended it was just a wind's whisper breaking in through an ajar window. He wasn't sure if he wanted to.

'Are you planning on— staying there?'

'Yes. If you please. I presume this space belongs to you?'

Oh fuck. The monster asking him for permission to occupy the floor underneath his bed was—dare Ben say—unexpected. He nearly choked on his own saliva.

'K-kind of. It's under my bed, so, yeah, I guess it's mine too—'

'Oh. I didn't know it was under someone's bed.'

'What?' Ben shifted uncomfortably on the bed. He stayed safely in the center of it, far from the edges. He tucked the duvet under his chin, so he could cover under it wholly if the monster decided to show up. Ben doubted it would protect him from being killed, however, if the monster felt like it despite what it had previously stated. 'I don't get it. How can you not know that?'

'I live in the dark, and can't really see what's around.'

Should Ben really feel startled anymore?

'What if I won't agree on you staying here? Will you slaughter me?'

'Excuse me?'

'Eat me alive. Choke me when I sleep. Stab me in the chest like I envisioned doing with my father?'

Maybe the monster was actually one of Ben's nightmares, taking a revenge on him for his atrocious subconsciousness' desires.

Maybe Ben deserved to be slaughtered before he could take someone else's life away.

But the answer came, 'No.' And then, 'Does my presence bother you?'

The monster seemed to be awfully cultural so far—actually, it had better manners than most people Ben knew. It didn't speak unasked, and always replied when Ben demanded something.

Truthfully, it was Ben's fault it was disturbed in the first place. Hadn't he opened his big mouth, and the monster would have rested in peace, concealed from the world and Ben's awareness beneath a thick blanket of shadows.

'No,' Ben heard himself saying. He didn't intend the truth to be told. It leaked from him like the clean water spills from a broken glass, until nothing's left. 'It has been bothering me sometime before, but now— now it doesn't.'

'So— can I stay here?'

It was one of those (not so rare) moments when Ben was aware that he was going to do something blitheringly idiotic, and yet he still did it with full consiousness and will.

'Yes. Be my guest.'

🌘

'If we happen to sleep in the same room, it might be good to get to know each other better,' Ben proposed, laying tucked under the duvet another night. He was still keeping himself in the middle of the bed, but the tension which made him ready to jump at the slightest shift of the monster was mostly gone by now. 'And I can't fall asleep.'

'I don't sleep at all. I don't even know how it feels.'

'How do you rest then?'

'What should I rest from?'

Ben shrugged, though the monster couldn't see this. 'Hiding? I bet it can be exhausting.'

'I don't hide.'

'You sit in the shadow. That's hiding to me.'

'Not to me.'

'You're weird.'

As if Ben wasn't.

'Tell me something about yourself.'

'Huh?'

'I hate my parents, for example.'

'Why?'

'And what are the reasons why the teenagers hate their parents? They do what they want, and prentend they have all the answers. Just the same what they accuse their offspring of. Irony.'

'I didn't know this.'

'What are your parents like, then?'

'I don't have parents.'

'Everyone has parents. Even monsters, I guess. How were you born?'

'I wasn't. I just— was.'

'Since when? How?'

'Nobody ever told me.'

'Will you die?'

'Die?'

'Stop living. Expire. Let your sould descend to the hell.'

'I've never lived in the first place. I only exist.'

'Is that supposed to be some kind of a philosophic bullshit? It sounds like my stupid uncle's words. Okay, don't say it, I know you have no bloody idea what a philosophy is. But believe me, neither do I. And your uncle isn't called the second Immanuel Kant. So, tell me, why do you exist for, then? If not for eating, choking nor stabbing others?'

'There isn't any reason behind my existence, at least not the one I know.'

Ben didn't have an answer for this. Frankly, he supposed there wasn't any reason behind his own existence either. Though his parents had never admitted it aloud, Ben believed he'd been a slip-up. And even if there was a cause, an expectancy that his parents had had in mind when they'd decided to have him, Ben surely hasn't met it, and would never do. Finding your kid a new school each year (sometimes a couple in one year, actually) and weekly visits to an exhorbitantly expensive psychiatrist couldn't be any close to one's expectations when having a baby, could they? Ben was a burden, and burdens only do bring everyone down and create worries, not fulfill the hopes.

Maybe it was better—not to have a possibility of a purpose, just—being. It shouldn't even feel sad, due to the lack of contrast which was so garish in a juxtaposition of dreams with reality, the former usually not resembling the latter in the slightest.

'What do people live for?'

'Various things. First, money—'

'What's money?'

'Uhm— something what people use to have the things they want.'

'Oh. Like?'

'Some fancy stuff. To live more comfortably. To brag in front of the others. Ugh, why are you asking those questions? Are you bored or what?'

'What means—'

'Yeah, yeah, of course you don't know what bored means, eh. You don't have anything to do and it tires you.'

'How can doing nothing be tiring?'

'That's the irony of it.'

'Oh.' After a break, 'What else do people live for?'

Ben sighed. 'You won't gimme peace, will you?'

'I thought you couldn't sleep either way.'

'Point.' Ben sighed again, taking in a deep breath. 'Some live for having fun, some wait for something, some beacuse they are afraid to die, others seem to have their main purpose in making other's life more miserable.'

'What sense does it have?'

'If only I knew. They just feel better, having a high ground above the others. I heard—'

'What?'

'Uh, that's stupid.'

'Tell me. Please.'

Ben huffed, perplexed by this odd politeness again. 'I've heard some live for others. But that's bullshit. I haven't met anyone who'd live that way. Sure, some deceive that they do, sometimes they can even delude themselves, like my parents do— but no one actually does it, you know? I think it's not even possible. This thing, they call it— love.'

'Love?'

'Yeah, I know. This even sounds silly.'

'How do you live for it?'

'I don't think I'm the right person to answer it. I only know what you shouldn't do. But—think about someone else's good before your own, maybe. Care for them.' Ben shrugged, keeping to forget that the monster couldn't see him. Or maybe he could. Perhaps he was stretched along all the patches of shadow across Ben's room, in the corner when the cobweb hunged, or the gloom that was gathering under the round doorknob. Maybe.

'All the reasons you've named seem either weird or silly for me. Both, most frequently.' Ben stilled. It was the first time when the monster shared its opinion. 'But that last one— it seems different. It's—'

'Stupid.'

'—interesting.'

Ben didn't remember having a single similarly long and honest talk with anyone before. It was so ridiculous, and yet somehow, pathecially and painfully natural.

Neither of them knew what more to say, so Ben drifted into a restless slumber. The monster stayed in its place.

🌑

'Is there more space, when you are?'

'More than under the bed? Sure. But— why are you asking?'

The monster pondered. 'Would you minf if I come out?'

Yes, Ben's sanity screamed at him for the last time, but his throat was clogged.

Monster's words were dull and gentle, bathed in the soft shadow he concealed itself in. Ben felt them almost physically, spilling over him like a murk which fell over his eyes and lulled him to sleep, encouraged to let go. Let go of the past, and allow all what he's been afraid of for a half of his pathetic life finally die—writhe in agony and let the blackness engorge the remnants. If it was eager to release him from his chains, shadow had to be good. Didn't it?

'No. I don't think so. Not— not anymore.'

The monster which slipped from the shadow was pallid like the moonlight, his milk-white skin shimmering slightly when it was touched by the dim brightness that seeped in through a window. Ben's heart skipped a beat when he approached him slowly. The only black part of him were his eyes, two wide blown pupils which devoured the irises.

He seemed human, despite Ben knew he fortunately wasn't.

'I didn't know I could've come out for all this time,' the monster mused, his voice smooth like silk, even more when they weren't separated by the bed's frame.

'I've never wanted you to come out before.' Ben slid his gaze all over the monster's white flesh, gleaming like if it emitted its own light. 'What are you, if not a monster? Who?'

'Call me Hux.'

It was the most bizarre name Ben has ever heard. If he was ordered to, he wouldn't be able to spell it correctly, he was sure.

'What is it? The name of your species? Your own?'

'That's what I am. The only thing I know.'

Former monster pierced Ben through with his gloomy gaze, but Ben didn't feel overwhelmed. An impression he got resembled ridding of a burden which you hadn't been aware of carrying until it finally slid from your shoulders. The only thing remaining was soreness, a sweet remainder of a long awaited release.

'So, Hux,' Ben repeated, the name screeching on his unskilled tongue. He would need some practice to learn how to pronounce it properly. 'Would you like to sleep in my bed instead? It's a bit tight in here, too, but I think we could manage.'

'It's at least warmer there, I presume.'

A small crescent of smile ghosted over Hux's face, and Ben was glad that, for once, disobeying his faint common sense did pay off.

☀️

The next morning, when Ben woke up, the matress next to him was empty and the sheet uncreased, but the peculiar warmness lingered. It has a shape of a monster's bizarrely human body, and whole day, Ben waited for the dusk.

He waited to meet Hux again, and taste the sweet, liberating darkness his name brought on his tongue.

//Thanks for reading and sorry for wasting your time:)) Damn, I am a cultural monster, aren't I?

Thanks for reading and sorry for wasting your time:)) Damn, I am a cultural monster, aren't I?

#kylux #kylux au #general hux #kylo ren #ben solo #armitage hux #huxloween #huxloween day 4 #huxloween2022 #my fics and ficklets #someone pls slaughter my brain bc this bastard abuses me everyday

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