The Big Bad Monster has come again.

He rages outside the door, stomping his big bad feet and pounding his big bad fists and unleashing his big bad shouts of fury that make the air shake and the floors vibrate. The two children in the house have barricaded themselves behind the door. They’ve shut the lights, hoping the monster will believe they’re not home. They’ve covered themselves with blankets and muffled their ears with pillows, hoping to drown out the monster’s roars, and hoping their own cries will go unnoticed. The sheets are soaked with tears they dare not wipe away, for any motion means the Big Bad Monster may hear it, sense it. He makes shadows in the sliver of light piercing through the gap in the door, stomping this way and that. The children have their eyes glued to to it, watching where he goes. If they sit and wait, the monster will go home. He will settle down again and sleep, and so can they. If they just sit and wait.

But the Big Bad Monster doesn’t forget them. Stomp stomp stomp! The light underneath the door is now black. His feet stand right behind the threshold, waiting. He raises a big bad fist that the children can’t see but can feel and hammers at the door.

BANG BANG BANG! “Is this door locked? IS THIS DOOR LOCKED? OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!”

One of the girls shrieks, the other shushes as soon as she does. The pillows come down harder over their heads, contorting themselves to cover every crevice where sound may permeate. But it can’t hide the shaking of the beds with every blow.

BANG BANG BANG! An intermission. Now there’s a violent jerking at the door, the handle spazzes in the dark. He’ll rip it right off, the little one thinks. He’ll rip it right off and there will be nowhere to go.

“Open the door,” the monster yells again. For a second there’s silence. The girl contemplates it. He knows she is contemplating it. Her sister’s eyes glow white in the dark. Don’t.

“I SAID OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!”

“No!”

The sister shrieks as the little one tears through the darkness. Her hands clasp the doorknob and fumble; they’re wet from tears. The monster pounds at the door and it makes her hands shake more than they already are. Just wait, she pleads. I’m opening it, just stop.

The flood of light reveals the Big Bad Monster in all his glory. He takes up the door frame, a thick shadow. Finally his commands were obeyed. He looms over the children who dared to think they could hide from him.

“Don’t ever lock me out again.”

The little one cries and nods her head. Her sister glares behind her back. One knows there’s no point in hiding, the other tries to think of how to hide for good. Somewhere he won’t ever find them. As they stare up at that raving man, both of them know one thing.

The Big Bad Monster will come again.

When I was ten my father sent me out to the well in the backwoods of our home to fetch water. It was winter, and the snow burned my bare feet. The neighbors kept hounds in their back stables for hunting in the spring and summer, but every year they seemed to forget about them, and in moments of desperation the poor things would break from their lockups and roam our forest for the last skinny scraps of meat that weren’t able to hide away for the winter. One set its sights upon me and gouged the flesh from my neck and that’s how I ended up here.

I watched from that ethereal place above where everything you touch just barely escapes your grasp, like dandelion seeds in the breeze. I watched as the sun fell behind the white mountains and rose again in the east and still my carcass lay in the snow, the wetness keeping the blood fresh and the frost glistening on my skin like marble. I imagined my family’s search party must have taken all night. Indeed, when my father finally came it was with our own hunting dog, and when he saw the patch of red in the snow he shrieked and fell backwards. Then he came for me with frantic, open arms. I stood and opened mine back but he passed right through me and took my body in his arms and carried me home.

My mother and sister shed their tears silently as they washed me and covered me in a shroud of our warmest blankets. My father had dug a small grave at the base of the evergreen in our backyard, and slowly, like he was carrying a sheet of the most precious silk, he picked me up and laid me in it and buried me in the snow.

It was at this point that passersby had begun to crowd around our home, inquiring about the whole ordeal. I fluttered among them like the shadow of a butterfly, going here and there and hearing this and that. The heavenly veil that separated us warped their sound, and I strained to hear. When someone asked who had died, one old man shook his head.

“Wicked thing,” he said, and spat on the ground. He gestured to the grand old house at the end of the road. It stood tall and black against the snowfall.

“The Baron?” someone said.

He nodded. “Set his hounds on his own slave girl, the one whose parents died last winter. I tell you, must’ve been hard for the poor thing. No family and all.”

Grey clouds

line the white skies

and drift, languorous.

I stare and think: “How shall I live,

today?”

Tumblr posts re-shared to Pinterest are, arguably, the greatest sources of life advice.

I used to scour Pinterest for them. And there was one—that I cannot quote and will not try to find, as my tome of Pins exceeds two Boards and over 4000 saves—that called attention to a phenomenon that I was, at least, already partially aware of, but that had never been brought to the forefront of my mind.

It went along the lines of this: the OP in memory languished over the mistreatment of women in fandoms. (Fandom, for those unfamiliar with the term, essentially refers to a general community of people who are a fan of something—sports, television/movies, music genres, artists, etc.) They argued that female fans of anything were never, and most likely will never be, taken seriously by the general public, and as such, the objects of their appreciation and enjoyment will forever be degraded. Examples included: One Direction (a band we’ve all made fun of at some point when we were in elementary school) who had a predominantly female fan base, and the Beatles, whose fame originated from the devotion of mainly female fans, and who only started to become mainstream after the increased support of men. Any boy band, really, could work as an example, the OP said. (I would personally like to add K-Pop boy bands to the mix, as well).

This post was one that added to arguments I had already heard, and am still hearing, all over social media. That women—young girls—are mocked and dismissed simply for liking things. But this added to that claim another aspect; that the things we like themselves will be held in contempt, as well as us, personally. As if female adoration of a genre, group, etc. lessens its value, even if they are the same things that are adored and respected by men. None of these ideas are new ones, in fact, one could say that they are quite banal simply from how long they have been voiced, and by how many voices. (Because how many times have we been told, “Oh so you’re one of those girls who like [insert literally anything].”) But upon reading that post (from how long ago? Three, four years? The post itself probably being older) I came to a very solid conclusion. It goes as such:

I, a woman, a lover of anime and k-pop, fashion and classical literature, will, despite having to inevitably experience mockery and ridicule, rolled eyes and dismissive head nods, will not fall victim to it. Never, for as long as I love what I love.

I, a woman, can and will like whatever the fuck I like.