Well, we’re going to need some content warnings this week. With a prompt like this, what would you expect?
- Character: Monk
- Object: Candy
- Genre/Tone: Horror
To tell the truth, I’m not a fan of gore or slasher-movie horror. I’m more into the creepy existential and cosmic horror that Lovecraft made popular and that’s carried on today in books like T. Kingfisher’s The Hollow Places. But when you have a timed exercise, you sometimes surprise yourself with what comes out, and what came out of me was… the violent destruction of a human body. If that kind of thing triggers you, please check out Megan’s less gory and more creepy story based on the same prompts.
Also, I have to admit that I know little to nothing about Buddhist monasteries. I hope I didn’t get anything too terribly wrong. I just wanted to avoid the tropes of western monks, and use a little of what I remembered from my classes on Hinduism and Buddhism. But I’m sure I’m misremembering a lot, and I certainly made up a bunch.
Please let me know what you think in the comments. And if you try the exercise yourself, post your story (or a link to it) in the comments!
Brother Ren stirred the cauldron full of sugar and cream, reciting his mantra and trying to ignore the scent of the caramel mixture and the rumbling of his stomach which that scent prompted. Yes, those western monks, the Trappists, were known for making candy, but he still couldn’t wrap his mind around his own ascetic order of Buddhists following the practice. Still, the monastery needed to pay its bills somehow, and even beggars were expected to offer some value in return for their patrons’ donations these days.
Ren had joined the monastery to escape the so-called necessities of the world, the burdens of property and personal relationships. Instead, he’d found a community that seemed as obsessed with the maintenance and public appearance of the monastic institution as it was with the rituals and meditations that led to transcendance. He still felt called to be a monk, but he also wondered how much a betrayal of principle one monastery could endure. What would the blessed ones think? What would the spirits of the monks who had passed before think?
Rolling up his sleeves, he prepared the sheet where the caramel would cool into the taffy that would be offered to donors and patrons. Thinking it would make this mundane activity more spiritual, he invoked the blessed ones and bodhisattvas as he lifted the cauldron, but in trying to remember the proper chant he forgot to put on his oven mitts. The shock of the metal burning his hands changed his “om” into an “ow!” and he entirely lost his concentration. He dropped the cauldron back onto the stovetop, where it rocked back and forth. Instinctively, he tried to catch the sweet-filled barrel before it toppled, but it simply rolled along his arm and spilled hot caramel all over his robes, leaving red blisters in its wake.
Ren collapsed to the floor, his voice lost now as pain flooded his body. His vision went bright red and all sense of the kitchen left him. But in the midst of it, a tiny corner of his mind continued its chant, and drew back like an observer to feel the burning and blistering of his flesh from a distance; to recognize the shame and fear which arose in his heart from outside. And in all these, he saw an offering for the purity of the monastery, and his lips at last formed the names of the blessed ones.
In the red light that had blotted out his vision, forms of white light appeared. A voice like the crash of a waterfall sounded in his ears: “You have been found acceptable.” And another voice like the roar of a fire said, “The monastery will be purified.”
As flames from the stovetop flickered along the spilt candy mixture and spread to the countertops, the floor, and the walls, Ren floated above it all. He watched his body bubble and burn along with the kitchen, watched the flames spread to the rest of the monastery buildings, leaping from one structure to another and sending up an incense of black smoke into the heavens. He rose along that column of smoke, and every moment expected to be released into the coolness of the open sky himself. But he only grew hotter and sootier, until he became the very blackness of the night sky and the very fire of the sun itself. Perhaps in the next life, he might find true virtue rather than mere usefulness.