That was Caroline’s story in her first life. This is her second.
My name is Caroline. I live in a tenement block of flats with my mum and two older sisters. We are poor, really poor. It’s hard finding enough money for food and in winter we are freezing. But we are happy, I think. When we were younger we used to huddle round the fire together and tell each other stories. It was fun, a complete escape. Hours drifted by while we were wrapped up together imagining ourselves in a different world, in a different place and time. In our stories we were richer, but always we were together, and in my sisters stories they always met a kind and handsome man. But my stories were different. There was always a monster in my stories. I don’t know why, he just popped into my head. He lived underground. He was huge and gruff and he growled a lot, and he was always hungry for food. My sisters laughed at me, but I loved thinking about my monster. I loved wondering what he looked like and what it would be like if I actually met him.
I am older now. We don’t tell each other stories so much, but still I think about my monster, in fact I dream about him every night. He has no face, no name, no voice. He is just there all around me.
One evening, when the night was cool and misty rain had begun to fall from the dark sky, I was walking home with a basket of food in my hand. It was getting late and I sensed a thunder storm was coming so I decided to take a short cut through the narrow alleyway. I never normally go down there at night. It’s a bit scary. But I wanted to get home, and as I passed the opening to the long, narrow, cobbled alleyway with high walls on either side, whose end point looked to be so far away it would take an eternity to walk through, I felt strangely drawn in.
Don’t be daft Caroline, I said to myself. There is nothing to fear. I stepped in and began to walk. Immediately I was shrouded in dark silence. I sped up and got about half way down the long alleyway when I saw the shadow of another person begin to approach me from the opening at the other side. The shadow was huge, gigantic, far, far taller than me, but I was sure it was a man. Part of me wanted to turn back and run but the other part of me wanted to keep moving closer. I felt scared. He was moving forwards with long prowling strides. He took up the width of the whole alley-way. I backed against the side wall, flattening myself into a thin sliver of cloth and skin in a vain attempt to let him pass. But the space I created, as my wide eyes stared and my chest heaved, was all that he needed to slip in in front of me. I couldn’t see his face and he didn’t speak, all I could sense was his warm breath and a growl that escaped his lips.
And I don’t know what it was that came over me then. All I could think of was the stories of my monster, and it almost felt like I was in one of my dreams.
In the silent darkness he pressed his body against mine. I closed my eyes as his hands found my hips and his mouth brushed over my cheek. I bathed in the sensual feel of his strong hard chest. Then he kissed me. He was rough, and I was bruised. He hitched up my skirt and I wound my leg around his thigh. He could have taken me in that alleyway, in the darkness where no one could see, where our worlds had just collided like two lone stars in the sky, but he didn’t, he backed away. I could sense what he felt, just as sure as if he has spoken to me. He was ashamed, ashamed of the monster that had just consumed him, and made his actions more like that of a beast than a man.
That was the one and only time we ever met, but he was the monster in my dreams and my stories. I am sure of it.
That was Caroline’s story in her second life. It is now her third life, and the present day.
“There he is again. I’ve seen him before wondering round the campus at
Uni. What is he doing here? In my home town? In the place where I work?
