Angular

While drawing weird monsters at the library one morning, I created a very angular man — his body a long, narrow triangle, his head another triangle. He wasn’t one of my favorites but when I saw angular as a prompt for Inktober, I decided to use a similar form for the mother of Exploding Brain Boy.

But then a strange thing happened. She was eaten by a monster, swallowed up whole by this sharp, pointed beast:

And here, the story of the dysfunctional Ink family — what else could I name them? — took an unexpected turn. Quite simply, the mother was not eaten by an imaginary monster, so what did happen to her? It seems she’s suddenly disappeared.

Maybe my husband and I watch too many true crime shows, but one thing I know is that the spouse is always a prime suspect, so I’m blaming Cruel Stepfather. This disturbing scenario may have also been influenced by Death Sentence – The Inside Story of the John List Murders. I first heard about List when I researched info on stepfathers. I finished reading the book late last night, so maybe it’s not surprising that my imagination went directly to murder this morning.

Actually, what I thought I was doing was exorcising the angle demons that have long afflicted my drawing. I hate angles. I despise angles. I detest angles.

Did I mention that I don’t like angles very much?

I wanted to make a doodle monster using all straight lines, creating a funny-looking fellow that I could laugh at. Maybe that would be a good way, I thought, to get rid of the problems I have with angles.

But then I realized the implications. This nightmarish doodle monster was alive and well, but alas! What’s happened to mother?

Did you know…?

According to research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, women are at far greater risk than men of being victims of intimate-partner violence and homicide. FBI statistics from 2011 show that 82.6 percent of women murdered were killed by someone they knew. And when it comes to women above the age of 18 killed by an intimate partner, most [79.2 percent] were killed by a current partner and 14.3 percent were killed by a former partner. “In 2015, there were 500 wives murdered by their husbands nation-wide. Add another 500 for the girlfriends,” says Giacalone, a former NYPD sergeant who has worked on hundreds of murder, suicide and missing-person cases.

From – The Twisted Reasons Why Some Husbands Kill Their Wives

For what it’s worth, I browsed through the remaining Inktober prompts, but nowhere did I see any hint of Exploding Brain Boy’s missing mother. I refuse to believe she was devoured by Monsterus angularis.

I guess the moral of the story at this point is that there are a lot of real monsters in the world.