Destroy All Monsters

by Sam J. Miller

  That’s the Truth. The thing I learned from the other Ash.

  Seeing the future doesn’t mean anything. We have so many futures. The one we end up with depends on who we are. What we do.

  I stood up. My fingers tingled. The final pieces of my project clicked into place.

  Photographs were not enough. Photographs could only go so far, say so much. Who we are is bigger than what can be captured in an image of us.

  Later, I drove fast, all the way to Poughkeepsie, even though I knew that I was cutting short the little time Connor and Solomon and I had together. I drove even faster on the way back. In spite of my vision being blurred by my tears.

  I had writing to do.

  Things happened fast.

  I wrote an essay to accompany my project, and built a website for it. I ran it by Cass, who edited my sentences and challenged me to go deeper in what I wrote. About the photography, she had nothing to suggest. Just nodded a lot, flipping through the prints, lips pressed tightly together in a very slight smile. One that carried pride, and happiness, and something else—something I had seen in myself and never imagined I could inspire in another person: the complex pleasure of artistic experience, the telltale tingle down the spine. When she handed them back to me, she said only: “You did it, Ash.”

  I wrote:

  Football players. I hate them, and I’m scared of them.

  They are big, they are strong, they are powerful. I see them coming down the high school hallway and I flinch. Every letterman jacket and team-color cap makes me think of date rape, gay bashing, drunk driving. Every bad thing society expects a boy to be, they become.

  That’s how it seemed to me, anyway.

  But I knew that wasn’t the truth. Not the whole truth, anyway. Because they are people, whatever else they might be. I embarked on this photo essay because I wanted to understand. . . .

  Under each image, I wrote a short paragraph.

  I published it on a Tuesday, and I tagged a bunch of my favorite photographers and photography blogs into the posts I did on social media. I slid into the direct messages of editors and influencers, asking them to take a look at what I had done. What I had made.

  Some people liked it. It got some retweets. Not a ton. By the end of the day I was ready to accept that I would not be going viral, blowing up. I was fine with that. That had never been my goal.

  We live in a small town. Everybody is up in everybody else’s business. When I started photographing these boys, I already knew things about all of them. Good things—who volunteered at the local mosque, who had stood up to a racist bully in seventh grade—and bad things. Who had hit a friend of mine, when they were dating. Who told offensive jokes, because he liked to see people squirm.

  But I didn’t do this because I wanted to tell anyone’s secrets. I did it because I wanted to find a deeper truth, about who they are. A truth with a capital T.

  I wanted to understand them. I wanted to be less scared, of the things they do. The crimes people commit. The way we participate in their misdeeds by turning a blind eye. And I wanted to hold them accountable for the damage that they do.

  I’d been writing about them, but I’d also been writing about Mr. Barrett. About how we’re all complicit in their crimes. How we give up our power. Turn a blind eye. Decide not to fight back against the monsters in our world, because they seem too powerful to destroy.

  I didn’t write about the Induction Ceremonies. I didn’t include a photograph of Sheffield. That wasn’t what the project was about.

  I wrote:

  These boys aren’t monsters.

  I wrote:

  I’m still scared. But maybe a little less so.

  Six days later I got a call from the California Institute of the Arts—which, nbd, is only the number three top-ranked photography school in the country. They said they had seen my project. They wanted to know where I was going to college. They wanted me to apply.

  I called up Cass immediately afterward. And asked, “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone from the California Institute of the Arts, would you?”

  I heard her suck in cigarette smoke. “I know lots of people in lots of places.”

  “You didn’t maybe make a call to one of them? Send them a link to my site?”

  I heard her blow out smoke. “You made something great, Ash. That’s your gift, as an artist. My gift as an artist is the ability to make sure that people who make something great can get recognized for it. And get the support they need, to keep on making great things.”

  I had so much to say, but all I managed was “Thanks, Cass.”

  My spine shook, with a thousand magnificent, possible futures.

  Sixty-Eight

  Solomon

  A pair of dire wolves waited patiently at the entrance to the Queen Ananka the Second Hospital Recovery Pavilion, as big as horses and just as uninterested in anything the humans around them were doing.

  “Ma’am!” someone called, hurrying behind us.

  I’d been about to take a picture of the dire wolves, but Cass snapped her fingers at me to keep me moving.

  “Ma’am, you can’t be back here!” said a nurse, when he finally caught up with us. For all her years, my boss could move pretty fast.

  “Nonsense,” Cass said, not slowing down.

  “Ma’am, I’m going to have to call sec—”

  “But we’re visiting our friend,” she said, stopping in front of a shallow pool marked “Physical Therapy,” where a young man sat with no shirt on. “Aren’t we?”

  “Um,” Niv said, so startled to see her that he didn’t know what to say, and didn’t see me at all. “Yes?” Because who ever said no to Cass?

  “You see,” Cass said, and turned to watch the penitent nurse until he scurried away.

  “Solomon!” Niv said, and stood up. Water poured off him, and he winced.

  “Oh, Niv,” I said, seeing the bruises that covered his body.

  “Sit back down,” said the young woman healer at the side of the circular pool.

  Niv sighed gratefully, as he slid back into the warm water. It flowed against gravity, following the healer’s skilled fingers. Glowing slightly, where it came into contact with his wounds.

  “Don’t be scared,” Cass called, to the hallway where Radha and Connor had been hiding from the stern nurse standing guard. Radha came in cautiously, but Connor ran right for the pool and cannonballed in fully clothed, then hugged Niv so hard that the poor man screamed.

  He’d been beaten pretty badly by his captors. Three bones broken. Stitches required. Dehydration; malnutrition. Psychological scars as yet unassessed. But he’d kept Connor safe from the worst of it.

  “What are you all doing here?” Niv asked, reaching out his hand. I took it, and sat down on the cold tile. Connor splashed me, and I splashed him back.

  “This is a huge story,” Cass said. “The boy who risked everything to save his princess? Who learned of a plot against her and hid her away, incurring a charge of treason and becoming Darkside’s Most Wanted for several days? You’re a star, Niv. For at least a couple more days, until some other story rises to the top of the news cycle.”

  “Oookay.” He looked adorable when he blushed. “You’re not going to take photographs of me with no clothes on, are you?”

  “Not right now,” I said.

  Niv smiled, and it was like nothing in the world was wrong. When he smiled, I didn’t see all the bruises and blotches across the light brown skin of his face. He was so beautiful.

  “I’m so sorry this happened.”

  He squeezed my hand. “What, this? Doesn’t hurt a bit.” He laughed, and the laugh became a cough.

  “Are you two almost done?” Cass asked, picking up a copy of the Post that had been lying around. “We have actual questions for you, Niv.”

  “Give us a second, will ya?” I said, and Cass laughed, raising the paper to give us some privacy. Clucking her tongue at the poor quality of their writing.

  The photos w
ere good, though.

  The crowd surging forward to throw their masks into the bonfire, burning away their sins and crimes along with the body of the Shield. A flock of people kneeling before their queen, as tightly packed as the petals of a chrysanthemum. Queen Carmen’s enigmatic smile. Ash’s quiet regal grace. Laughing faces, with a white tyrannosaur towering over them. A single anonymous figure, seen from the back, tossing an ultramarine armband into the flames.

  The queen’s words, spoken to the crowd. Revealing the truth the Shield had promised:

  For too long, I have kept my daughter’s truth a secret. The fact is, she’s an othersider, and that is nothing to be ashamed of. We’ve let hate and fear control our city for far too long. The time is past, when othersiders must keep themselves secret.

  I leaned forward, rested my head on his knee. He stroked my hair gently.

  “I hear it’s rough out there,” he said. “Street fights.”

  “It’s bad,” I said. “But things are already starting to change for the better.”

  And they would continue, with Ash set to begin her formal training—in diplomacy, the intricacies of how city government functioned, in martial arts, in how to master her ability. Whatever Queen Carmen couldn’t or wouldn’t do, Ash would eventually accomplish. I was confident of that.

  Niv shut his eyes. He looked exhausted. He needed rest. His body was working overtime. Connor mirrored his actions, his hero worship so obvious it made me grin.

  “I should go,” I said.

  “Ash wants you on her security detail with me,” he said, eyes still closed. “I want you there too.”

  “That sounds wonderful, but I already have a job. Staff photographer for the Clarion.”

  Niv laughed. “Yeah, I figured. But I had to try, right?” He opened his eyes. Looked straight into mine. “Where are we going to go for our first date, Solomon?”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “Good question,” I said. “Let’s think about it. We have a while to figure it out. You’ll be stuck in this tub for more than a minute.”

  “I always wanted to ride on your allosaurus,” he said.

  “Don’t be inappropriate,” I said.

  “I didn’t mean it like—” Then he splashed water at me. Then I kissed him on the forehead. Then I kissed him on the lips.

  “Shall we begin?” Cass asked, uncapping a pen.

  Sixty-Nine

  Ash

  The last time I ever saw Solomon in the flesh was a month after I posted my photo project online.

  I found him down by the river. For a week I’d been looking for him, in a haphazard and unstructured kind of way. Stopping by the train tracks or looking under the Rip Van Winkle Bridge whenever I could. I’d been too busy to mount a proper search—my application to the California Institute of the Arts; fielding anger and appreciation from the football players, some of whom were loving and some of whom were hating the fact that tons of people online had seen and commented on their faces.

  Solomon sat on the rocks, his guitar on his lap. Winter was well on its way by then. He wore a lot of layers.

  “Hey, mister,” I said.

  “Ash,” he said. He smiled, but he looked sad.

  I hugged him, and he pressed his face into my neck. “You doing okay?”

  He shrugged. So, no.

  I’d meant to tell him the latest about Mr. Barrett. That my father had succeeded in convening a meeting of the school board, to talk about getting him dismissed. That he’d already spoken with two people on the board, friends of his, and convinced them of the truth of what he was saying. So he wasn’t going in there alone. So something might happen.

  But also, nothing might happen. Mr. Barrett had a lot of friends. He could brush it off, deny the allegations, bring a suit against my father for slander. We could be the ones whose lives got ruined.

  I didn’t say any of that. I sat down on the rocks beside him and grabbed his arm in both hands and squeezed.

  “Thanks, Ash. Some days are better than others.”

  “You’re still seeing the therapist they assigned over at CPS?”

  “Yeah. She’s nice. I don’t think she really gets me, but she doesn’t put up with any of my bullshit and I appreciate that.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  We were in touch, sometimes. Messages, voice mails. Whenever his phone was on and charged, which wasn’t often. I knew he was trying his hardest to get help. Some days he was more successful than others.

  Solomon looked at his mittened hands. “I just . . . will I always feel like this?”

  “No,” I said. “You absolutely won’t.”

  “Lots of survivors of sexual assault spend their whole lives dealing with the aftermath.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’ll always be . . . whatever you’re feeling now.”

  Solomon shrugged.

  “Look at you and Sheffield. Mr. Barrett hurt you both, but look how differently you responded to it. He started hurting others. You didn’t. And he was able to choose to stop. We are not our trauma. We are not our brain chemistry. That’s part of who we are, but we’re so much more than that.”

  Six weeks later Solomon turned eighteen, and then he left town. I could see it, then, even though it hadn’t happened yet. Who knows how. A vision of the future; a gift from the Ash on the other side. He would leave. Forever.

  “I mean, look at Helen Keller,” I said, feeling like my throat was starting to close up. “Everyone just assumed that with all her challenges, she’d never do anything with her life. Even the people who loved her just wanted to keep her in the house like a shameful secret. But she got the help she needed, to figure out how to live and thrive with her disabilities.”

  “Don’t you use Helen Keller against me,” he said, his face opening up into a big beautiful grin.

  “I read that book you gave me,” I said. “Her autobiography.”

  “Amazing, right?”

  “So amazing.” Tears sprang to my eyes, as much from the memory of Helen’s story as from the realization that was settling into my stomach. That I was losing my best friend in the world. “She died knowing she hadn’t accomplished everything she wanted to accomplish, making all the changes she wanted to make in the world. But she died happy, because she knew she did everything in her power to make those things happen.”

  For a while I would get messages from him, on social media platforms. For a while he would send postcards—from Montana, from Saskatchewan.

  Then he wouldn’t.

  Sitting there, watching the sun slip away, I could feel the loss of him even though he wasn’t yet lost. I couldn’t control what I saw. I got the outline, but not the details. Did he become a hugely successful rock star? Did he find a boy he loved, who loved him back, and then build an incredible life together? Solomon strummed a chord, which came out muffled with his mittens on.

  I’d been reading a lot, about people with severe mental illnesses. Their memoirs, their essays. Books and articles by the people who loved them. I knew what weird, twisted paths their lives took. How often they ended up in jail, or dead in a ditch after a knife fight, or a cabin in the woods with no contact at all with the outside world.

  But those weren’t the only stories. People got treatment, found jobs, built families. Created great art. Made the world a better place.

  His life would be full of pain, but also beauty and love. So would mine. So was everyone’s.

  Solomon could be happy, in a life I couldn’t imagine. One where I played no part, not because he didn’t love me, but because life would take us down two different roads.

  He would be okay. So would I.

  He held his guitar closer. Strummed three chords. A shiver went through me. The telltale tingle.

  “Play me a song,” I said.

  He smiled, and started to play. I shut my eyes and saw, as clearly as when I looked through the lens, the story he was telling. Great clouds and bubbles and spreading ink stains of emotion. The eerie power of what he wa
s making, and how his emotions could transfer to me. How he could make me feel what he felt. Music was magic, and he summoned it up from somewhere (the other side) I could not imagine.

  “You’re going to do great things,” I said.

  “So will you,” he said. “You fucking lunatic. I pity the fools you go up against.”

  At the exact same time, we both said, “It takes a certain kind of crazy to change the world.” Then we laughed together. Then we fell silent.

  A long serpentine neck rose up out of the water, capped with the beautiful, terrifying head of a water dragon. Blue metal scales glistened in the weak winter sunlight.

  “Pretty,” Solomon said, pointing.

  “It really is,” I said.

  What a gift that sight was. Solomon had taught me how to see a whole other world, but it had nothing to do with our trauma or our brain chemistry. The things he felt—he could make other people feel them too. That was his gift. His magic. It would serve him well in his life as a musician. As an artist. Like me.

  I still got glimpses of her, that other Ash. Sometimes she showed me things. Futures, that might or might not be mine. Sometimes she told me things, when I was on the border between waking life and dreams.

  We’re all a little bit magic.

  The world tries very hard to break us.

  Sometimes it succeeds.

  We can be broken and still survive.

  “This place gets the best sunsets,” I said, pointing across the river. The sky above the Catskill Mountains was painted in broad, messy strokes of mauve and orange and blue gray.

  “It does,” he said, and reached out his hand. I took it, and I held it. High overhead, the lights of the bridge came on. Ms. Jackson spoke softly through the open windows of my car. She played old songs we loved. New ones we hated, and would one day discover to our great surprise that we loved.

  “It’s okay,” I said, and it was not a lie. “We’re okay.”

  Solomon nodded.

  I wanted certainty. Clarity. The belief that everything would be fine. That we’d be strong enough to survive whatever the future hit us with.