The Monsters Without: Chapter Two (currently untitled) continued again

Note: I strongly suggest going back and reading the earlier parts of this before proceeding, especially the beginning of this chapter.

Having to move to another school was, technically, a bad thing. But he hated the school he was in, and he didn’t really want to go back there after what he’d seen. He didn’t know yet that the newer school would be worse, a school of kids deemed too problematic to be normal classrooms. The newer school would also be better. He would be allowed to, mostly, do his own thing at his own pace. He would finally make some friends with other students who were smart and troublesome and, though they would be tormented by delinquents, actual troublemakers, and violent offenders; he would not be alone. For the first time. But that was still the future.

Before he could get there, he had to see counselors and therapists, all of whom would be trying to figure out what caused his… “episode” and none of them being able to do it. They wanted to fit him into some kind of troubled box, but all they could really find was a fairly normal book nerd of a kid who had an episode of thinking he saw monsters. Almost universally, they decided he had an overactive imagination and should probably not read so much. Or, at least, find less fantastic books to read.

All of this therapy cost his mother quite a bit and having to get him to his new school every morning proved challenging. It was a 45 minute drive without traffic, and she had to drop him off more than an hour before school started so that she could get to work on time, which she hated doing, but that was the only option. Then he had to wait three or more hours everyday for her to be able to pick him up. She felt like she was failing as a parent and couldn’t figure out where she had gone wrong. Everything went back to the postman, and she developed an intense hatred for him and everything he represented.

Jeremiah knew none of this. He loved his mother and thought she was a great mom. He didn’t know about or understand the ideals she was trying to live up to, and, more so, didn’t understand how much she had changed over the past few years. He also had no one to compare her to, not really. There was not much parental participation in the schools after his first one. He just didn’t understand, yet, what bitterness, rage, and hate can do to a person.

What Jeremiah did know, in some vague way, is that he had now seen monsters twice. He believed in the monsters. He knew that if he ever saw them again that he would need to not freak out the way he had the last two times. He needed to know where they were coming from and where they were going away to. He needed to know how to stop the bad things from happening every time he saw them. He knew enough to know that when he saw monsters things got worse for his mom, and he needed to keep that from happening again.

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