Cancer’s Requiem: A Free Story from WE ARE ALL MONSTERS

CANCER'S REQUIEM is one of the stories that can be found in my collection WE ARE ALL MONSTERS. You can read it in it's entirety here. 

They lived in that place for years and it, like his life, just went up in flames.

He wanted to cry. But he just stood there with an odd little smile on his face, like the kid in elementary school who got caught shooting spitballs at the teacher.

It had squealed. That hideous creature. It screamed as it burned to ash.

His wife Maria had said it was cancer. But he knew better.

It wasn’t cancer that killed her.

It was that thing, that demon. Its foreboding presence lingered, hovering over them the whole ride back from their ill-fated trip.

It was supposed to be a vacation, a nice week long excursion to the city that ended in catastrophe.

It had started as a sore on her neck. An angry, red, swollen lump just below hairline.

“Don’t scratch it. You’ll make it worse.”

They went to all sorts of shops that day. Later, he’d revisit them in his mind, retreading the places where they were last, just as he always did when he had lost something important, trying to find where she had lost her life.

He re-walked the phantom streets in his mind, night after night lying next to her ever-fading frame, trying to find the exact moment when that damned thing bit her and devoured her from the inside out like an invisible lamprey eel.

They spent her last winter putting things in order. First the furniture. Then her clothes. Then the pots and pans, the books, the cluttered pile of things that was their life together.

He couldn’t sleep.

Not with that thing hovering over her.

Maria clung to her life until her strength ran out. Until that damned thing drained her dry.

Then, it was six weeks of pure hell, of morphine drips and dirty sheets and people telling him it's OK to grieve. But he couldn’t. She was his life. And now she was gone.

Family and friends came, a blur of faces and condolences. The funeral was over all too fast.

All that was left was John. He drank the next three days straight. The love of his life, his anchor, was gone.

Devoured. Chewed up and spat out.

Three nights to the hour after she passed, It came back, for him.

He had fallen asleep on the couch in front of the fireplace, his only companions a half bottle of gin and a knitted comforter.

He woke up, unaware of ever falling asleep.

The only light came from the fading embers in the fireplace. He saw Maria standing behind the couch, her reflection on the TV screen.

“Time for bed John.”

“Sure.”

He yawned and paused.

Her reflection wasn’t right.

She was never that tall and lanky, never that pale.

The floorboards behind him creaked and he whirled, dropping his bottle of gin on the floor.

They stood staring at one another like startled deer in headlights; him standing there, clutching Maria's knitted comforter to him like armor. It stood just feet away. Both of them waiting for the other to make the first move.

It stood on backward bending legs. It had hands with three hideous, rusted, hypodermic needle fingers. He could see its ribs and collar bone, even hip bones. A long neck craned up and back like a question mark. Bald head, milky albino pink eyes stared at him. It didn’t have a nose, just a pair of slits where it should be. Long spindly arms hung down to its feet. The needle fingers lightly scraping the wood floor as it waited for him to move.

John's heart pounded in his ears. His body felt like ice. He was right. All along. It wasn't cancer.

It was a demon.

The TV screeched to life and the picture burst into snow.

The sound made him jump.

Then it was gone, leaving no sign of its presence, as though it had never even been there.

He scratched the back of his neck, telling himself that it was just paranoia that made it itch. It had to be. The thing didn’t get close enough to touch him. It couldn’t have. He checked the back of his neck every morning after that, waiting for the red lump to rise up and signal his imminent death.

It came back three days later.

He was in the front room, tending the fire.

The back screen door whined as it opened and slammed shut.

The floorboards creaked behind him.

He tightened his grip on the heavy metal poker and spun around.

It was closer than he thought. He swung the poker and it batted it away. He tried to push past the thing but it was too fast. It grabbed him, slammed him down and pinned him to the floor.

Its needle fingers wrapped around his throat. The sharp pointed ends were about to push into the back of his neck when Maria rose up over them, wielding the fire poker like the sword of an avenging angel.

She skewered the damn thing through the head. The poker barely missed hitting him. He stared at her as she wrangled the beast away and shoved into the fireplace.

It squealed an unearthly scream as it started to burn.

“I missed you.”

“I never left,” she said and helped him up. She was cold to the touch. He could see through her, even though her hands were in his. “Hurry. You must go.”

“But-”

She ushered him to the front door.

“I love you. We’ll see each other again. I promise.”

He tried to take her with him but the minute he stepped foot outside the demon sprang out of the fireplace, sending a spray of red hot embers everywhere.

“Run!” she yelled.

He backed off the porch not once taking his eyes off them. His dead wife and her demon, cancer, fought once more in the living room. The very room she had died in.

The house went up in flames as the embers devoured everything around them.

The demon tried to run after him and she tackled it and held it down.

It writhed and screeched in her arms.

Maria looked up at him and smiled the ceiling collapsed, and they disappeared in a wall of flame.

He hand went up to his lips.

Maria had saved his life.

“We’ll be together soon. I promise.”

John smiled and walked away.

Cancer had killed her.

But their love, in return, had changed it to naught but ash.

'The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh' Review

It's a dark night of the soul for Leon Leigh when he returns to his mother's home and has to deal with buried emotions from a traumatic past.

"The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" is one of those independent horror movies that has such an impact on the art of film itself, that everyone should see it, and it should be used to teach film to students. It's really that good.



There is a heavy weight to this movie, and right off the bat it's easy to see that the cinematography is top notch. The director's artistic style creates a moody, brooding atmosphere with set pieces that are discordant, and discomfiting, and a great visual representation of a main character who isn't comfortable in his own skin.

Rosalind Leigh's house itself is the main character of the movie. Instead of just being a backdrop, everything in the house has meaning. The rooms are full of menace, and the house appears to be watching Leon's every move.

There's life-sized statues, and suits of armor that give the audience the impression that the objects themselves are alive and stalking Leon. At one point in the movie, this turns out to be exactly the case, with terrifying results.

Look at this statue! It's brooding, looming presence is felt the moment it appears onscreen. Those big saucer eyes see everything that occurs in the house. I wouldn't want that thing greeting me every time I came home. Yikes! 

Rosalind's cross-stitch needlepoint pieces in particular, are used not only as a symbol for Rosalind, but they also helps establish an otherworldly aura to the house.

Every room is chock-a-block full of knick-knacks, antiques and collectibles; most of which are angels or creepy dolls. The hodgepodge of clutter lends a certain creepiness to the place, especially when Leon realizes that all of the antiques are things that he has sold over the years and that his mother was his best customer. She was so obsessed with being with him that she purchased everything that he touched in an effort to be close to him.

In addition to obsession, Rosalind's life was ruled by superstition, and the strange religious practices of an angel cult.

It is soon revealed by Rosalind that she had purposefully placed strange objects in odd locations around her house in an effort to show Leon that the soul lives beyond death; that she is still there, in that house, waiting for him to contact her.

Needless to say, Rosalind was a very disturbed woman.

After joining a strange angel cult, her husband committed suicide.

The mysterious circumstances surrounding his death are never fully explored. Personally, I think that the cult with it's talk of the soul surviving death, and Rosalind's fractured mind, are what drove Mr. Leigh to kill himself.

"Faith is Fragile"

Rosalind was forced to raise her son on her own. Unable to handle the pressure and stress of raising a son by herself, she turned her frustrations and anger outward and tortured Leon psychologically by playing the "Candles Game."

She would ask him if he believed in God, and every time he said no, she'd blow out a candle and tell him if it got dark, the Angel would turn it's back on him and God would hate him.

It was his mother's mind games that forced Leon to push her away, and left him emotionally scarred.

After he left and cut off all contact with her, Rosalind became obsessed with her son, and felt guilty over the fact that her deep faith in her angel cult is what drove them apart.

Once the audience has had time to really absorb the spooky ambiance of the house, and learn why there are statues and things that are just not right on display everywhere, the creepiness factor slowly begins to amp up as strange, unsettling things start to happen. At first, it's subtle, but soon, you will find yourself wondering,  is this real, or is Leon hallucinating while his mind tries to come to terms with his dead mother's abuse?

Personally, I think that it's both.

What makes "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" so great, aside from the fact that it is so beautifully directed,  is that it has countless layers to it.

On the surface it's a movie about a man coming to terms with child abuse. But beneath that, it's a movie about a cult that ruined a family, and a woman's faith that turns out to be all too real.

Whether or not it is Rosalind's will that brings about the manifestation of the demon Loneliness, called in the movie the creature or the wild animal that came from the woods, it's clear that it is a physical representation of the regret, and bitter anger that Leon feels towards his mother.

The demon Loneliness brings to mind the creature from the famous painting "The Nightmare" by Henry Fuseli. In the painting, the foul beast sits on the dreamer's chest and suffocates them, much like Rosalind's loneliness and regret suffocated her so much that it drove her to commit suicide.

The supernatural occurrences are very suspenseful and tense, to the point of being cringe worthy at times, because you really don't want to see what is chasing after Leon. But since watching and sight are themes of the movie, you are forced to open your eyes and watch with him, terrified of what you will see when the camera finally reveals it.

Fun Fact: I thought that it was a clever way to incorporate angelic themes, since Angels that are on Earth, the Grigori, are called The Watchers. 

Ultimately, "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" is a wonderfully scary character study of an abusive mother-son relationship, wherein the mother uses religion to control her child. It may not seem like much at the start, because the movie is so quiet and brooding, but by the end, you will find yourself not wanting to watch this movie in the dark by yourself because it's so terrifying and suspenseful. By far, "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" is a fantastic independent horror film that doesn't get the attention, or credit, that it deserves. I highly recommend that you watch this movie and see it's terrifying beauty for yourself.

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Watch the trailer of "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" below!



If you don't want to read spoilers, stop reading here.

OK, the rest of you still with us?

Good.

There is a lot of debate over what happens at the end of the film. Here's my interpretation. 

Leon suffered a mental breakdown where he literally thought that he was being haunted by an angel statue, and terrorized by the demon Loneliness while going over the belongings that he inherited from his mother. When he refuses to believe in God, the Angel, the survival of souls after death, and the demon Loneliness, it abruptly stops being real. His disbelief takes away the demon's power. It also denies Rosalind's ghost the closure she so desperately needed.

Leon hated his mother so much, that he disowned her, and the more she wanted him back in her life, the further it pushed him away. This final act of denial, of refusing to acknowledge Rosalind's faith and her ghost, robs Rosalind of the last shred of hope she had left. Leon manages to fight through his own emotional turmoil and comes to terms with an abusive childhood, and leaves the house unscathed.

Rosalind's sad, lonely ghost is now stuck in her house, driven by her own guilt and remorse to repeat the events that occurred after her death for all eternity. Rosalind's testament of her love for her son Leon, (the antiques, and then the house itself) is denied and sold off.

It's a happy ending for Leon, as he finally manages to move on and put his childhood traumas behind him. It's a sad ending for Rosalind because she never receives the closure, and forgiveness from Leon, that she so desperately needed.

The Title "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" Explained
The title has two layers. At the surface, it's a movie about the death of Rosalind Leigh and the house that she left to her only son in her will. Beneath the surface, it's about Rosalind's dying wishes, and her testament to her faith, and her love for her son.

Rosalind Leigh's last will was her yearning to be acknowledged and loved by her son. Her testament of her love for her son was the house full of things that Leon sold over the years that she bought.

Rosalind Leigh's last will and testament were destroyed when Leon refused to forgive her of her sins and return her love and turned his back on the house that he grew up in. If the will had been a piece of paper, Leon would've torn it up and set it on fire, and then walked away before the paper had been completely turned to ash. See, the title is a metaphor. And now you know.