This was another fairy tale – an attempt to understand the devastating impact of domestic violence on children.

The Monster

Once upon a time there was a little boy, who lived with his mummy, his daddy and his baby sister in a house in a quiet street. The little boy was mostly happy. He had a big garden with a swing and a sandpit and sometimes his friends came and played. His mummy read him stories of a night and his daddy played games with him. He even had come to quite to like his baby sister although he couldn’t really see what use she was. Some things puzzled the little boy. He didn’t understand why his mummy cried sometimes and always said she had something in her eyes. It gave him funny feeling in his tummy when she cried and he wondered if he had done something wrong. The little boy had a scary secret though. Sometimes a Monster came to their house. He knew it was a secret because he had once tried to tell his kindergarten teacher and she had talked to mummy and after that his teacher had said he had a ‘big imagination’ and mummy told him not to talk about things like that at kindergarten. That was another time when he got the funny tummy feeling.

The Monster never came when Daddy was there. The little boy thought the Monster must watch the house because he always came on the nights that Daddy was late and he and his baby sister had to go to bed early and not come out of their room no matter what. The little boy knew his Daddy was big and strong – he could throw the little boy up in the air and catch him and lift heavy things. The little boy knew that if Daddy was there when the Monster came he would chase him away.

But the Monster never came when Daddy was there. The Monster screamed and yelled and things would break and his mother would cry and sometimes scream. Sometimes next day she would have a bruises on her arms or a sore back and he would have to help her more with the baby and sometimes he had to miss school. The little boy knew that his daddy felt bad when the Monster had come because sometimes he would hear him crying when he got home and sometimes he would send mummy flowers the next day and he had once heard him saying sorry over and over again. The little boy didn’t understand why his mummy didn’t ring his daddy when the Monster came the way she had when the little boy fell over and cut his head one day.
Once the little boy ran out of his room when he heard the Monster shouting. His mummy grabbed him and quickly put him back to bed and told him an angry voice not at all like her usual voice to stay there.

The little boy had a very funny feeling in his tummy that night and he cried even though Daddy had told him he was a big boy and big boys don’t cry. Because it was that night that the little boy learnt the scariest thing about the Monster. The Monster looked a bit like his Daddy. Not a lot like him. Daddy had a laughing face and a big voice but not a shouting one. The Monster’s face was red and twisted in a scary way and his voice was loud and shouting and he said words that the little boy knew weren’t allowed to be said unless you wanted to be in Big Trouble. Daddy smelt like the stuff he put on his face when he shaved and like soap and sometimes like just Daddy. The Monster had a different smell somehow like Grandma’s house when she made the Christmas cake but not quite the same. But he did look a bit like Daddy and that was the scariest thing of all.

After that night the little boy stayed in his room when the Monster came. Sometimes the shouting went on for a long time. But the little boy did not go to sleep. Mostly his baby sister slept through the shouting but he was worried she might wake up and be scared so he mostly sat next to her cot and he listened, listened, listened longing for his Daddy to come and make the Monster go away. And the feeling in his tummy was so bad that he thought he might be sick and sometimes it didn’t go away for days.

One night the Monster came earlier than usual and the baby sister was awake. When the shouting started to get louder the baby sister began to cry and he heard his Mummy crying too. The little boy had just learnt to use the phone and he thought he could maybe ring his Daddy and get him to come. He ran out of his door and to the phone in the hall.
As he grabbed it he saw the Monster coming towards him and he screamed in horror. He heard his mummy crying out ‘no!’ and then the Monster had him and he remembered nothing for a long time.

When the little boy woke up he wasn’t at home in his own bed. He was very scared and his head hurt and he cried even though he was a big boy. But soon a nurse came and explained about hospital and the stitches in his head and that his mummy would be here soon. Strangers came and asked him questions but he knew not to talk to strangers so he didn’t tell them anything. When his mummy came she was very glad to see him and hugged him and told him she was sorry. He didn’t understand at all but he was afraid to ask too many questions. He didn’t want to remember the Monster.

The little boy was afraid that the Monster had killed his daddy. He had to talk to a stranger and tell about the night he got hurt but the stranger didn’t understand about the Monster and kept asking about Daddy and didn’t seem to believe that Daddy had not been there.

The little boy did not like it when he and his mum and baby sister went to live in a big house with other Mums and their children. He didn’t like the noise and having to sleep all in the same room and he cried at night for his Daddy and his house. He was happy when they moved back to their old house but Daddy was still not there and the boy became more and more sure that the Monster had killed him. But mummy told him that soon he would be having something called access with his daddy and the little boy felt happy but his mummy was crying so he did not know what to say. He stayed awake at night a lot watching for the Monster even though his mum told him he was safe now.

One night he was sleeping and when he woke up he heard shouting and loud scary voices and he knew the Monster was back.
He got out of bed and went to check on his baby sister but she wasn’t in her cot and he knew Mummy must have come and picked her up earlier. The shouting got louder and he wanted to run away and then there were loud banging noises like on TV and he crouched in the corner of the room and hoped his little sister wasn’t too scared by the Monster. His tummy felt so funny that he was sick on the floor but he still stayed where he was even when all the noise stopped. It was quiet for a long time and then he heard sirens and more shouting and lights flashed outside his window and someone said Very Bad words. When the door opened he screamed but a Policeman was there and a Police Lady and they picked him up and took him out of the house and the Policeman was crying he thought and that made him very very scared.

That night they stayed at a stranger’s house but he didn’t talk to the stranger and he waited for his mummy to come all next day but it wasn’t mummy who came. Far away Grandma came who lived somewhere called Interstate and usually only came at Christmas. Far away Grandma was crying when she saw him and she told him that Mummy and his baby sister had gone to live in heaven but when he asked about Daddy she said ‘don’t mention that monster’s name’. And the little boy was very confused.

And Grandma said that he would come to live with her in Interstate. The little boy knew he would never be able to ask her about Daddy or about whether it was the little boy’s fault that the Monster came back and that his Mummy and little sister had been made dead. And he decided he would be very quiet and very good and he would stay awake as much as he could and watch for Monsters. And when he grew up he would be careful not to trust anyone, for Monsters could look like someone you loved and if you weren’t careful they could take away everything you cared about in one night.