1.  Climb onto the kitchen counter to take the salt from the highest shelf. Pour a perimeter around your bed, then look at it and pour a second perimeter a little further out. Pour a third. Turn the lights off one by one: the ceiling light, the light in your closet, the lamp on your beside table. Set an alarm so that you wake up an hour before your mother. In the morning, hold your breath as you kneel with the broom and the dustpan. Don't think about how the first two lines look like someone scraped them over with a rake. Don't think about how the third line, too, now juts in wavy points, like something from inside of it was pushing with a testing finger. Just sweep the salt up carefully and flush every grain down the toilet.

2. Don't tell your mom. Don't tell your dad. Don't tell your best friend Tyler, or your other best friend Mike. Don't tell Megan the babysitter, or Mr. Anderson your soccer coach. Don't tell your teacher. Don't tell your doctor. Don't tell the parents who drive in your carpool. You are eight now, too old to believe in monsters, even if by this point it has learned how to say your name; even if by this point you've learned how to say its name, too.

3. During the day, attempt an offering. Take note of what works and what doesn't. Peanut butter sandwiches. Carrot sticks. Fried chicken. M&Ms. If the monster likes something, you will know, because in the morning the food will be gone. If the monster likes something, you will know, because you will have slept through the night. Keep good track. The monster is fickle and something that works on one night might not work on the next. Keep trying. Texas sheet cake. Orange peels. Spaghetti. If the monster doesn't like something, you will know this as well.  

4. Your brother didn't have a monster. Your brother had an angel. He said that it was beautiful. He said that it scared him to death. He said that it looked like lightning entering a black hole. He said that it looked like wind whipping through a mountain forest. He said that when it spoke to him, it spoke in his own voice, amplified through a speaker the size of the storm on Jupiter, and always in a language he couldn't understand. He said and he said and he said and he said, and because of all that saying, your parents sent him away. Not saying requires practice, because saying is in your blood. Write everything down and burn up the paper. Go down to the lake in the woods behind your house and scream it across the water. Stare into the bathroom mirror and see how long you can hold a smile. Don't let it droop by a centimeter and mark the time on your brother's old stopwatch.

5. At the dock on the lake in the woods behind your house is a rowboat that's been tied there forever. The rope that keeps it moored in place is thick and the color of termites. When you pull your hands away from it they smell like rocks and old rain. Scatter pebbles on the floor of the boat and lie down in it and take a nap. In this way you will learn to sleep on a surface that is hard and rough, on a bed that's constantly rocking with the movement of something huge.

6. Offer it paperclips. Offer it coins. Offer rocks and sticks and the bones of small creatures you find along the shore of the lake. Offer the dregs of your dad's coffee. Offer the lipstick your mom throws away. Offer it the failed history test Megan the babysitter leaves on the sofa. When, for periods of time, it doesn't seem to like anything, offer it absolutely nothing for a while, and see how it likes that.   

7. You will want to say it by drawing. You will want people to see. You will make great loops for tentacles. You will draw huge curves for claws. You'll make groups of tiny circles with dots in them for eyes, and draw great jagged slashes for wings. Stop it. Remember how you're trying not to be a person who says and use a grip of brighter colors to transform the picture in front you. Turn tentacles into roller coasters, claws into snowy hills. The eyes could be anything from frog eggs to sushi rolls, and upside down, the wings could be mountains. Your teacher will praise your imaginative art. At night, slide the pictures under your bed. Listen to the noises the monster makes, how it seems, almost, to be laughing. 

8. Sometimes the monster will be too much. Sometimes your salt defenses will fail and your offerings of food and other items will seem to send it into a rage. Don't try to be a hero then. Just get up and go. Leap over the salt and hurry to the door. Open it and shut it without looking back. You cannot go to your parents' room. You're too old now to crawl into their bed. You'd like to talk to your brother about it, but the number for where he is isn't anywhere in the house. Go into his room, but don't turn on the lights. Don't look at anything except the dark shape of his bed. Get on the floor and crawl under it. Swipe the dust bunnies out of your way. Reach your fingers for the angel and feel it there, reaching back. Curl into a chest that hums like a giant beehive. Feel on the top of your head a breathing as hot as a bear's. Within the cosmic thunder of noises exploding here beneath the box spring, hear what sounds like weeping. Hear a wave bringing a mountain low. Hear two words over and over again, loud as a planet: I know, I know.

Derek Heckman lives in Boston. Via his Twitter profile: "[he writes] fiction about sad Midwestern teens."

Read his postcard.

Detail of photo on main page courtesy of Rachel Melton.





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