tales for dreamers: fair compensation for hardworking monsters

Scaring people is tiring business. Especially in these times when far too many people pound the sidewalks, even after dark. 

It’s no longer only the rogues and the criminals that sneak about at night, but the sleepless and the deep thinkers, the hard workers and the big-dreamers, who are awake long after the sun has set and stars have burst forth from their hiding places in the sky. 

These are the ones who often resort to a walk around the neighbourhood to soothe their jangled nerves when the rest of the world is fast asleep.

So the monsters are protesting. They refuse to do their job — that of scaring onlookers and passers-by — unless they are compensated fairly. 

By compensation, they do not refer to wages and holidays and other petty concerns that another particular species of workers finds enticing. 

No! All they really want is unmitigated freedom in the pranks they play on whoever dares to cross the front lawn they’re perched upon.

The owner of the house scratches his head at first when the monsters inform him of their demands. 

You can’t get too noisy, he warns them. There are city rules about noise levels and such at nighttime.

The monsters are of the quiet sort, so it’s a condition they readily accept.

Now they run amok in the neighbourhood at night. They jump out at unsuspecting passersby from behind tall hedges. They hang upside down from low branches. They drift like ghosts across the street. 

The only noises are the shouts and shrieks that the unsuspecting victims of their pranks let out, so terrified out of their wits that they can’t quite identify who or what made them jump out of their skin.

The monsters are clever that way. They leave behind no clue to their misdeeds and mischiefs.

But they’re so exhausted from their nighttime adventures they spend all day lolling on the lawn, deflated, feigning childlike innocence. 

The people who pass by them often think these creatures must present an imposing display when they’re inflated and lit up at night. Little do they know!

Last week's image info: The 'new caretakers in charge' guard a home in the Longmoor neighbourhood of Burlington, Ontario. If you don't see them, don't assume they're gone. They have their own ways of keeping an eye on tricksters and pranksters up to no good.