An Incomplete Kingdom of Monsters
Phylum: Monsters That Cannot Be Seen
Class: Invisible Monsters
Order: Fully and Constantly Invisible
Fully and constantly invisible monsters are the most primitive order of invisible monsters. Hunters, they crave the beefy texture of human flesh, and can devour a coed unnoticed by a slumbering roommate. They kill unceremoniously, gutting the body, though only eating the musculature. This ensures an immediate and silent death as heart, spleen, epidermis and intestine are piled into a sopping mass while limbs and abs become stringy delicacy.
Slights of imagination, overcome by matters of fact. Sustenance seekers; at one with light and dark, occupying only a sliver of space, in which anonymity is achieved through the bending and absorption of light. Mentally registered as tricks or figments, their hungry appraisals of our bodies are felt in random shivers and casual paranoia. Intuited, yet unknowable. There is no protection from these beasts.
Phylum: Monsters That Cannot Be Seen
Class: Invisible Monsters
Order: Selective Invisibility
The predator aesthete selectively controls its appearance by flexing an unimaginable muscle twined through it’s skin. A hidden mass of gray-blue-green spreads enzymes that affect visual dissipation. This order of beast prefers partial revelation, existence as a disembodied arm or head floating stiffly against shadow. Carnivorous, sport killers, they thrive on horror, with an equal attraction to shocked paralysis or frenzied bawling. Shock, more than suffering, produces an endorphin that delivers the strained manic sensation of orgasm to the victim and an enhanced flavor to the monster. Their interest is not in the hunt, but for the visual signs accompanying the realization of impending death.
This order divides into families based upon spacial coexistence. The strongest evidence of the demonic is that singular experience of physical and mental spasms that result from mingled corporeality – the disjuncture of human cells as metaphysical matter meshes through. Monsters without co-spacial ability, generally stay in wait, breathing softly in the corner of a room, still, waiting for the full effect of vulnerability, lingering for weeks, even months. Watching their future victim for a moment of self satisfaction or pride, the less apprehension, the better the time to strike.
Phylum: Monsters That Cannot Be Seen
Class: Invisible Monsters
Order: Camouflaged Monsters
Camouflaged mammal derivations adapted within nature. Ostensibly harmless and preferring the solitude of distant caves, lands and waters. Remnants of primitive tribes, abandoned explorers from previous ages, these are human based, highly adapted herbivores, with a plodding gait, who require solitude. Their adaptation generally includes thick, leathery skin identical to the rocks or trees that surround them. These are not hunters, but have highly evolved defense systems, razor sharp, retractable claws up to 6 inches in length. They are highly suspicious and motivated defenders of their territory who will strike without provocation.
Family variants include the ability to control the precise color and texture of the thick epidermis to match immediate surroundings. Genus divisions come along the lines of natural genetic evolution and the chemically manipulated genome derived from scientific experimentation.
Phylum: Monsters That Cannot Be Seen
Class: Invisible Monsters
Order: Unseeable Monsters
Tricksters, masters of hiding; neither invisible nor camouflaged. Unseeable monsters rank among the ugliest. Their visage is startling and their occasional sightings are responsible for the misconception that monsters represent the social unconscious of physical deformity. Experts at hiding, unseeable monsters are found under beds, in closets, basements, etc. These are not domestic monsters, but also occur in shadowed forests, under deep waters, hiding among the crags of coral, under lilly pads or wrapped in the sea’s weeds.
Their skin is sensitive to light and the 15 watts of a child’s nightlight, scorches their skin, sparking from the black of shadow, dehydrating their bodies, exasperating their thirst for blood. These hunters prefer small animals and merely nibble at the toes of slumbering humans – same as rats. These monsters thrive disproportionately in paranoid fantasy to the damage they are able to inflict.
They are generally are too well hidden to be seen, but are evidenced by the movement of the things they touch, the sounds of their shuffling and the objects they’ve pilfered. They can flatten themselves to the thickness of paint, weave their bodies into the fabric of silk shirts or fill the crevasse at the bottom of the baseboard. They can transform their scaly shells into the consistency of hair gel, a solid mass of shimmering sludge, smudging itself across the floor.
Phylum: Monsters That Can Be Seen
Class: Bestial Monsters
Order: Fantastical Monsters
These Monsters cannot be described. They bear no concrete relationship to man or any known beast. Their bodies are sustained by a an entirely foreign pulminary system, if that’s even an appropriate description. They require a chemistry incompatible with our own need for oxygen. They use unknowable forms of locomotion, unfathomed in the darkest tales of witchcraft. They are neither gastropedal nor hovering. They cut through time and space in a manner which bares no corollary. Sensory perception is unique to their form and concepts of sight, touch and taste falter as comparisons. There are no known biological similarities, no possibility of a written analog.
Phylum: Monsters That Can Be Seen
Class: Bestial Monsters
Order: Common Monsters
Chupecabra, werewolves, sea creatures, vampires, Yetti are among the most famous monsters. Fodder for Hollywood grotesquerie, and the staples of cautionary tales and cinema screams. Ironically, the most famous monsters have become the most endangered. Their weaknesses entered popular culture and inspired centuries of violet daydreaming: monsters can be killed without ethical dilemma. Silver bullets and wooden stakes are known remedies among the smallest children, Saturday morning lore, survival among suburban paranoia. Since the Victorian infatuation with promiscuity and decapitation, the vampire, despite easy reproduction, has become a rarer sight than exotic whales or eagles.
Phylum: Monsters That Can Be Seen
Class: Bestial Monsters
Order: Monsters of the Mist
Electrical storms with consciousness. Gigantic blobs whose true shapes coalesce and dissipate upon the whim of the wind. Generally amorphous, these static charged particles mingle with fog and rain to present a fleeting glimpse of a ferocious countenance hovering above the horizon.
The intentions of mist monsters cannot be definitively discerned; they lack any means of communication. They have neither the means for speech nor a possibility of touch – only a voracious appetite for observation; it is impossible to know what archive these collected observations might feed. As a reader, reclining upon an easy chair in your safest and most familiar surroundings, you are likely in contact with a mist monster. Now; at this very moment. Contact produces no physical effect, neither gooss-bumped chills, horrified shock nor pressure about the body. Just a flood of paranoia that comes in realizing oneself under constant surveillance. Your most intimate bathroom moments as well as the preparation of your evening meal are carefully observed, from numerous angles, with both detachment and zeal.