Railing Codex

还差一个真正的妖怪。
整个故事还没有出现真正的妖怪。她很焦虑。这只怪物耽误了整个夏天的写作。我想，最重要的原因是，她不知道妖怪应该具备何种特征。
有些故事里，妖怪作恶非常纯粹，因为它们没有可恶的道德，因此不晓得自己在犯罪（这倒跟我很像，她想）；有些故事里，妖怪很丑，但有些故事里，妖精又美得掏人心窝（做个美人倒是不坏）；再来，妖怪好像常常不懂得情爱（人就不同，孟婆好像在摆烂，喝下汤的人，谁也没有忘记前世情缘，但孟婆又好像不打算精进她的技术）。
好像跟我很像。她想。
所以，要么是一个丑陋的怪物总是因不懂得爱而作恶（伏地魔吗？），要么是一个漂亮的怪物因为不懂得爱而作恶（那不是聊斋里的妖精吗？）。
等等，如果是我呢？
被摆烂的孟婆推了一把，妖怪踉跄地穿上人的皮肤，不知自己的美丑，也不知世间的善恶，因而常常犯错，只好躲去山里，等到夜晚，才出来抓人拥抱。但它太过热情，被人惧怕，最终，被人传说成了怪物。
下一世，我一定不做人。太孤独了，它想。

There needs to be a real monster.
The story lacks a true monster, and this absence gnaws at her, making her anxious and stalling her writing progress all summer. The crux of the problem, I believe, is her inability to visualize such a creature’s essence.
In some tales, monsters possess an extremely pure motivation behind their malevolence—an absence of moral judgment and unawareness of their own transgressions (which she can relate to very much, she thinks); other stories paint monsters as hideous beasts, while some depict them as breathtakingly beautiful, capable of bewitching onlookers (not a bad thing to be bewitchingly beautiful); moreover, monsters typically lack the capacity for affection and love (setting them apart from humans who, it seems, never forget their past lives’ romances perhaps because Meng Po, the goddess of forgetfulness, has grown lax in her duties, skimping on the potency of her memory-erasing soup for those who are supposed to drink it. Not that the goddess shows any interest in honing her skills.)
“I can relate to that,” she ponders.
The options, then, are limited. A monster commits evil because it cannot fathom love. It either looks grotesque (like Lord Voldemort?) or alluring (like the enchanting creatures in Pu Songling’s Liaozhai, “Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio”?).
Wait—what if I’m the monster? 
Pushed forward by the lethargic Meng Po, the monster staggers into the world, dressing itself in human skins. It remains oblivious to its own appearance and struggles to grasp human concepts of good and evil. It retreats to the mountains because it is too mistake-prone, emerging only under the cover of darkness to snatch unsuspecting victims for its desperate embrace. It is feared because its feelings are too intense. And thus, it enters folklore as a monster.
“In my next life,” it resolves, “I won’t be human again. It’s far too lonely.”