The Horror of the Pervading Monster
Have you ever seen a horror you canโt run away from, like a sight searing into your mind?
Have you ever seen a horror you canโt explain, like a nightmare?
Have you ever seen a horror you canโt exist with, like a moment that defies all understandings of the world?
Have you ever seen a horror you canโt relate over, like a political event that no one perceives as you do?
Have you ever seen a horror you canโt fight, like a memory, or a thought, or a pervasive state of mind?
This CGI footage struck me a few days ago and I couldnโt stop thinking about it. Whether it was the surreal atmosphere it created, the questions the comments posted, or just isolation finally getting to me, it burned into my mind, touching on something deep and almost primal, as if the sensation given off of this video was always with me, and scared me, and I couldnโt fathom why.
It felt so real. The CGI looks great, but thatโs not what I mean. It felt familiar. Obviously, I searched around my mind for all the kaiju movies or shows Iโve watched that could match this feeling, but I couldnโt find it, but as I thought about it, I started to craft a description of the true horror this sight explored in me.
I've rarely seen a story that follows the reaction of a giant monster, a real kaiju, just trekking through your line of sight. Of course there have been movies that have done this, but theyโve seldom linger and rarely, if ever, have the kaiju cause no prominent damage. I donโt recall any movies focusing on the days or even weeks after a kaiju passed by, where the witnesses have nought to do but grapple with that fact. This may be because of my love of introspective stories, or even sociological stories, but I felt there was more than just a passion to this new interest of mine. This monster has always been with me, perhaps as an evolutionary instinct or as some kind of unresolved trauma from my childhood, and Iโm writing this as I go so Iโll find it along the way.
Imagine a skyscraper-sized lanky humanoid creature mindlessly wandering through your home town, not in a destructive way, not destroying everything in it's path, maybe crushing a bit of private property but none of it is yours, just walking slowly but surely into sight and right past you and then slowly but surely out of view.
Just imagine how much that image would utterly fuck with you. Like just that image, just the moment you notice it or it comes into view, just the idea of seeing something that defies reality, something that has only existed in fiction, and your vision doesn't cut away to officials reacting or high views of it to put it in another perspective or any action involved or cutting to hours later when it's finally passed, just your vision.
How would you react? How could you react? There's literally nothing you could do but watch this predominant thing go by. Most importantly, it's not a threat, if it was heading for your house or was damaging your town or something like that then it would be easier to comprehend, it would be easier to do something, because you'd have a purpose. In that scenario you would have to escape your house, get people to safety, live in the chaotic aftermath, even fight against it, and when it's all over you'd still have something to do.
It's like when someone you love dies, the first day isn't the worst because you have something to do, you have the mourning process and the shock to deal with and the funeral to organise, it's the days after all that that are truly the worst. If this monster destroyed your house then you can have a clear goal, but if it just passed you and did nothing to you then you'd be lost, what can you do?
There's hundreds of kaiju movies but I don't recall any that deal with just the horror of witnessing one, no action and no threat, just an inexplicable event dragging on and having no physical effect but the psychological effects being so immensely damaging that it destroys a person.
The worst feeling would be if everyone around you simply went on with their lives and looked back at that event as "something really freaky". If everyone reacted appropriately and freaked the fuck out, again you would have something to do, a chaos to fight against, a scramble for safety and order, but if everyone else just adapted and didn't let it get to them, that would be so much worse. Imagine if it passed by, or worse, remained in your view, and there was little reaction to it. Just this colossal attention-grabbing being lurking around in front of you while the government still talked about the economy and your friends mentioned video games and your neighbors talked about the weather, and all you could focus on is it. Itโs there and they canโt see it, but they know itโs there too, and theyโve adapted and forgotten about it. Perhaps itโs because they donโt want to deal with it, or canโt deal with it, or have the luxury of believing, and being right, that is simply is not a threat to them right now. It is there and it is pervasive and it is a monster and it is unfathomable and it is gone unmentioned as it stares you down with itโs very existence. Itโs there, and itโs fucking with you by existing just there. You canโt think of anything else, just this pervasive monster.
You watch it, and it watches you. It could do anything; it could kill you, it could destroy everything around you, it could start moving in more threatening ways, it could be irradiating the land around you, it could be spreading diseases, it could be the start of something worse, but for now, it is just there.
As the days go by, the weeks go by, the months go by, it is still there. You sometimes think you see it move, but you canโt be sure, itโs gotten to the point where you can barely look at it, but you can barely look away. Is it meaning something? Is it talking? What is it made of? Are you hallucinating it? Is this some long fever dream? What does it mean? You have no answers. The truth is, and youโre mind is doing all this thinking, and it is just there.
Just imagine that. The internal reaction to the monster would be worse than the monster itself, and it fucks with you so thoroughly that you go mad. You wish, you beg for a disaster, something out of your control that would justify this or would explain this or would get rid of this or would do something new that you could focus on. You cry for an physical attack so you can just be physically attacked, thatโs something you can fight against. But it stays there, and creeps further into your mind, and day by day, week by week, month by month, you start to feel like the disaster wonโt come from the pervading monster, but you.
I simply started thinking out loud and considering the absolute horror of this idea. I didnโt know where I was going when I started writing this. Now the revelation has hit me, Iโm not going to edit this down or rewrite it to fit a more thematic or consistent structure, Iโm going to preserve it as the steady journey to the real horror. The idea of that monster just struck me in such a way that I felt I had something to say about it, at first I thought it was an unexplored perspective in kaiju stories, then I thought I was writing my own psychological story akin to Junji Ito, but it was when I was writing the final line in that last paragraph that I figured out what I was really writing about this whole time. I now know why the dreadful horror felt so familiar.
The Horror of the Pervading Monster; A Mental Health Issue Allegory.
It was always with me.
