When I was a child, I stared at the sky, eyes wide, and pondered about stars and stories yet told, and now I'm unsure if I'll grow old.

I had that dream again.

It was distant, a memory that only existed when my eyes closed, the cold touch of frozen lips trailing along the arch of my spine. In my eyes, I saw a monster. At least, I want to say I saw one.

It's difficult to discern right from wrong—truth from fiction—when my memories are hazier than the roughest blizzard.

"That reflection is an apparition, a creature made from muddled thoughts that make no sense. You do not make sense. Therefore, we will not agree with you."

There was no truth to that monster, or so they told me.

And it made no sense to me.

That I could somehow see a ghost, no, a phantom, a creature that only existed in the wide-eyed eyes of a child who couldn't explain its repulsive appearance. I stuttered and stammered when the world asked for an answer. They were too harsh—too quick with their questions.

Ignoring my pleas, they buried me under an avalanche of over-eager problems, forcing me to relive memories of a frigid starry night. I wanted to die, to escape the cold that was pulling me under the tide. They said: the truth is, there's no such thing as monsters.

That, unless I can recall the time and place where I gasped for air, there was no such thing as monsters.

They asked if I didn't try to escape, and I remembered that creature's frozen breath along my nape. Pleading for my life was useless because that monster didn't view me as a living thing. How else would it have found it so easy to sink his claws into my flesh and throw me around like a child's plaything?

And after that, for a while, I was no longer a living thing.

No longer did I view the endless white of winter with wonder.

"You've changed, and you no longer appeal to us. Therefore, we turn our heels away from you."

I wonder if I can escape this feeling.

Always hearing its footsteps in the corner of the room, its heaving breaths combined with howling winds. Shadows that linger when the light flickers, but it's only in my mind. I reassure myself that's the only reason why the corners of my eyes show a figure that escapes when I look twice.

"Why escape your vice? Why not give in to that which consumes you and become the monster you've grown to fear?"

There are no monsters, I desperately remind myself.

And so, there's nothing left.

Just an empty house—lights struck out—and a woman clinging to her pen.

I hope there comes a day when that monster's beastly cries don't haunt the night, and winter's snow is innocent again.