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His mother had told him the stories often. A frightful creature, dark as the blood drying between father's fingers after a hard day's work. Eyes that find little boys and girls hiding beneath the floorboards, behind trees and rocks. Catch more than a glimpse and the mere sight of it will leave you screaming and writhing on the floor, scratching at your eyes until there's nothing left to be seen at all.
As he grew older, he'd become convinced they were just the kinds of stories parents told their children to keep them in line. Never mind that this monstrosity with no name didn't seek out those who misbehave. Never mind that there was no lesson to be learned, no secret way to keep the creature at bay. Never mind the haunted look in his mother's eyes every time she spoke of the destruction it would leave in its wake, were it ever to find its way here. Or the way she spoke of it more than she ever spoke of where she came from, yet her voice held the same fear and loss for each.
He never forgot the tales of this creature who eagerly devoured both land and sea, man and beast, sand and stars. Even after his mother was dead and buried, even after his siblings had scattered to the far corners of the world, rarely reminiscing in the way they used to, the way that kept anecdotes passed down to them from their parents alive.
It nagged at him during every eclipse, every storm. Everything that seemed cruel and dangerous enough to feel just outside of the natural order of things.
His mother had never named the creature, but somewhere along the way, he had named it for himself. When he was a young boy, still so thoroughly caught up in his mother's tales, there had been a cashier at the neighborhood market. Her eyes were yellow, cheeks hollowed out with age. She smelled of smoke, and her hair reminded him of the nest of baby birds he'd once found underneath the house, dead and crawling with maggots. Every time she smiled at him, her teeth were unnaturally white. Perfectly straight. An anomaly within a disheveled, burdened appearance.
She always smiled. And she always smiled at him.
Jolene.
She used to come to him in his nightmares, larger than life, the way she felt to him then, barely old enough to see over the counter as his mom unloaded groceries onto the conveyer belt. She never did anything to him in his sleep. Only stared, smile wide and bright, as the world melted around her. The walls turned to ash, the sky grew red and black. She would stay frozen, smiling, as her skin sloughed off in pieces until nothing remained but bones and teeth.
The image of her faded in his mind over the years, leaving only a name and the smell of ash, the dread it awoke inside of him at every campfire, every cigarette, every candlelit dinner.
She haunted him, even as he told the tales to his own children, warned them of a creature that came to destroy, came to devour without rhyme or reason. Jolene, he thought to himself. "The beast," he said out loud.
It wasn't until his wife lay dying on the eve of his second to last birthday that the image of Jolene came to him once again, as bold as the day he'd first sat in his mother's shopping cart, kicking his legs as she argued over the price of cereal. He'd thought he was sleeping, lying in the chair next to her, hand holding her hand. He couldn't move as a woman dressed in scrubs the color of blood approached. Wasn't sure he was even breathing. She smiled — all teeth, perfect teeth — and he knew. Knew what his mother had always known, about the nature of the beast, whatever form she took for each of them, when the time came.
The monster from which no one can hide. The darkness that consumes each and every one whole.
His mother had been wrong about one thing. When he awoke in the morning, he still had his sight. He didn't scratch his eyes out in despair. But as he looked at the empty hospital bed next to him, saw the doctor come in with a pitying look on her face before she gave him the news, he understood why other men would. The smell of smoke lingered in the air, and he begged for a peace that would not come. Not until he saw Jolene one final time.