Pareidolia (parr-i-DOH-lee-ə)—the brain interpreting patterns, sifting for meaning in random shapes, noticing suddenly, inadvertently, shocked to discern recognizable things or faces where they may not actually exist, or where the creation of the distinguishable shape is haphazard, surely coincidental. Glancing up at the sky, mind on other things, you might suddenly startle at seeing fantastic shapes in the clouds, complete beings, hardly imagined, incredible creatures such as dragons or elephants or clowns.

Or, driving down the road, you notice the car in front of you, and the brake lights seem to take on the guise of large red eyes, the trunk latch is in the proper place to represent a nose, and lo and behold, the bumper is a severe mouthline, or even better, the trunk line looks like grinning lips. Sometimes the car in front of you seems to be snarling, while other vehicles grin maniacally, or smirk in the Mona Lisa suggestion of a shy grin.

What is going on? Is this sickness, truly a mental illness, Pareidolia? Once considered a psychological abnormality, Pareidolia is now considered a normal human trait of the mind searching for meaning in any form of stimulus, such as the natural shapes of mountains or rock formations, the contours of a pile of clothes ready for laundry, the sometimes phantasmagorical undulations of striation in marble tile, or the popcorn paint coating on the ceiling, or even the hidden messages of music.

We seek meaning in a cold, vast universe.

The mind searches for meaning, for indication, for applicable messaging, any indicator of a further consciousness, a mind both above and beyond us. What is it trying to tell us? Who—or what—is attempting to reach us with these obscure signals from another realm? In pop culture, the "Higher Power" is there, the mechanical vending machine of the universe wishing to gift you the things you concentrate upon—are these coincidental siftings of hidden messages in all the patterns of the world—are they prophecies from God on high? Or the mere burbling of our interior landscape, percolating fears and anxieties and the constant questions of a mind racing to keep up with a speeding world that rushes too fast alongside and ultimately away from us...

There is absolutely nothing sinister in the faces, or is there? There couldn't be! Nothing macabre, or dark, or quietly deadly—aren't these more than fair assumptions?

Disparate psychology is in agreement. It is not illness. This is all...normal. So how could there be a sinister presence, lurking just beneath the smooth veneer of reality. Or is there, in seeing these ever-present, ever-peering faces, something almost mythological? All the creatures of faery, of the subconscious, of our...vestigial surreality...

...we see the faces. Faces everywhere. Shapes. But faces, always faces, all around us, watching, faces...



Observing, attempting to understand, they passively watch and record, the Watchers, long arched eyes piercing, brain waves echoing, they search, they seek, they delve, they deep, the Watcher never sleeps, feeling under their skin, combing the sounds on the wind, the Watcher watches...



The instantaneous startle prior to the scream, the cyclops, naive at the moment, may turn ill disposed in the next moment, perhaps more embarrassed than angry or afraid, its comical demeanor ready at a moment to flex into fury, snap into snarl, rage into roar, beware the cyclops...



The face of a watching being, perhaps an extraterrestrial alien, or possibly a whole slew of various aliens, studying, pondering, seeking in our human DNA for patterns of meaning? Grey or Mantis or Reptilian or Nordic, we feel that they are there, just before us, looking at us, considering us, attempting to understand our alien ways. Alien faces watching us...



She is there, sprawling, the ruler of the six-legged, staring out at us, her wings uplifted, the emanations of her insectile messages reverberating outward, radiating, seeking dominance, and we, her captive audience, stand transfixed, pondering our own servitude before her...



The Jester, the Joker, the Comedian, the Humorist, his mirth detonates like a handgrenade before us, all about us, but we understand that he is withholding his full humor, suppressing the explosion, as he grins and grimaces and sneers and leers, his concussive laughter contained, just for now—we are caught frozen in the moment—and perhaps only the most minor of giggles emerges, escapes, to leap upon our expectant presence, blasting us away, backward, lambasting us, sarcasting us...



Dancing out before us emerges the tarantula, the primeval nightmare, the inspiration for Shelobs and Aragogs and all Eight-Legged Freaks of the imagination, progenitor of arachnophobia, skittering, plucking the violin strings of our rising hackles, dancing her dance, her succubus fangs smiling, gracefully skitter-tapping claws before us in macabre tarantella...



There are many, the faces, watching, mechanical eyes overarching and superior, judging our mere humanity, the red cylon eye strobing, clock-spring claws opening and closing, the many, the legion, the artificial intelligence of our accelerating endeavor...



She undulates in wild comets of roaring splendor, this elemental dragon onrushing, this great beast of great fortune, she speeds toward us, our Luck, our Providence, our Joss, she trumpets and blasts and clashes her great spears of teeth, and she winks one great eye at us as she begins to turn to pass, promising that her great luck is coming, it is almost here, our joss will not desert us...



Uncoiling from its great swirls or whorls the thing considers us, pausing for just a moment (a long while for her in her other timestream), the bug curtsies, offering us a small bow, her whimsical stalks sampling at us, her oozing flesh palpitating and undulating, will she continue forward, toward us, or will she withdraw into the imaginary safety of her shell...



Monsters are relative and subjective and a monster crashing through the primeval forest or splashing through the primordial sea is not a monster in its own tale, and its great searching eyes may find you as you stare, because when you choose to fight monsters you must be cautious that you do not become a worse monster than what you seek to vanquish, and when you stare into the great abyss, it very well may shift its eyes and stare back at you...



The gentle and benevolent eyes of the spotted creature, the cow, the cattle on a thousand hills, the jaws working at the green, the gentle cow regards us, smiling, intending us no harm, and yet we see her as the great cornucopia of handburger, and we fatten her, we stuff her like the proverbial Christmas goose, to chop her and charbroil her and flip her and patty her and slap her between two great white buns, our feast, our poor dumb brute of a cow, our meat, our food, our sweet, sweet myocardial infarction. Close your gentle, smiling eyes, sweet, sweet myocardial infarction on hoof...



Peering out at us the whale probes us with echolocation, and flying before the behemoth is the tiny rodent on wing, the bat, the great communicators of sonic plume, the invisible, soundless echoes of the beasts, the great brute the whale and the insidiously tiny skittering winged fangs, the whale and the bat, similar in the most profound way and yet cosmically separated by size and shape and abode, the whale plumbs the deep, and the bat flitters the high, the ocean and the sky, the whale and the bat...



Ancient tales distantly remember a weeping man crouched outside an enchanting garden, a man forcefully expelled by a being with a flaming sword, to be comforted by the tongue of a dog sitting near, the only animal that wished to remain at great Adam's side, as it has been suggested that God created cats to look down upon us to remind that we are dust, and pigs to look smiling across at us to remind us of our constant filth, and yet the dog was created to look up at us, to remind us that despite out unthinkable losses, we are yet loved, loved without conditions laid upon us or contracts awaiting our signature, but loved completely, mirroring in the eyes that are almost human...



She dashes over the tiles, searching, always seeking, yearning for her promised one, the courtly prince, the male savior and protector, romantic and strong and handsome, and yet what is this croaking thing before her, is this cold and warty thing the answer to her dreams, is it good enough, will it suffice, or shall she continue her quest, running over tiles, seeking, always searching...



Are we out in the party, seeking the mythical beast, the hoary and tusked land leviathan, the charging thing, the trampling thing, the rooting and grunting and antediluvian thing, hairy and hooved and angry and charging, or is it perhaps behind us, even now, surprisingly silent, its ancient tusks lowered, its monstrous snout tucked under, as it hurls itself upon the weak, sharpened-stick wielding stick figure, running it down, stamping upon it, the eater becoming the eaten, and the downtrodden transforming into the new pinnacle of the eat-or-be-eaten paradigm...



Obsessed with eating, with food, the anorectic cloud remains ever skullular, devoid of flesh, but hungry, ravenous, roiling forward, consuming all in its path, inhaling every morsel available, and yet empty it is, seething with void, black cloud, sucking and hungry and ever empty, but hungry, hungry, hungry...



When they digitized the miniscule ape they had no idea how clever the little beast would prove, as it scampered and skittered and pried itself out of its own simulation, escaping into the wide universe of the Internet, swinging from digital vine to vine, prying into everything its curious little mind chanced upon, and it learned, amazingly fast, that the hairless apes that created it (both the digital monkey and the digital universe), were not very bright, and that they were susceptible, vulnerable, and the phantom monkey began to enjoy himself, very much, laughing and shrieking at their antics...



It was not his fault. He did not choose to look like some nightmare movie character. He thought of himself more as wascawwy wabbit, but everyone else, screaming and running and pointing back over their shoulders as they tripped in the dark woods, they kept shrieking Darko, Darko, Darko...



Prize winning and exorbitantly vast, the massive pig filled the eaters of meat with glossy visions of chops and hams and bacon. They stuffed it. Greedily they fed it garbage and sewage and dreck and dross and charnel and toxic waste. It grew and grew and grew until the explosion occurred, and then there was nothing but the sad recounting of the look on the little monkey's face as he had attempted to stuff the pickle back in...



Sibilant whispers followed by an icy numbness, and you realize the naga has kissed you, and you congratulate yourself that you felt no tearing pain, as you slip into a blissful slumber, listening to the delighted juicy noises of the naga filling itself...with you...



Baby Clowntown, the brightest and sharpest jester to abound, produced a clever quip for every question given sound. When asked: "Are you the funniest girl around?" She instantly replied: "Until another clown comes to town!" Tribute to Genevieve Nancy Larsen who quipped this at the age of three...



Proud and majestic, standing tall above all the denizens of the forest, the great and mighty stag rears back and flashes massive hooves, rearing and snorting and trumpeting out his majesty, until the dull, booming crack emanates throughout the forest, and the great stag stumbles, and falls, and breathes one final breath, expiring, and the glowing orange approaches to claim its trophy...



Rising up out of the midnight pool the broad expanse of the beast emerges, ballooning vast and glistening wet, peering with tiny eyes, this monstrous water pig, but its gaze is benevolent, albeit a trifle suspicious, as it tracks the puny humans meandering before it...



He was sick and tired of the same-ole/same-ole duties of tempting the hairless apes, teasing the hairless apes, and tripping the hairless apes. For him, the only thing more boring than all the malevolence directed toward the hairless apes, was the hairless apes themselves. The Lil Devil thought there should be more to this prison existence, roaming to and fro, up and down the firmament, or even anti-sunning himself in the toasty flames of H-E-double-toothpicks. So he found himself a little patch of earth, and he played video games, and ate cheesy snacks, and he drank barrels of diet sodas, until one day he realized that he had drawn legions of demons, all of them practicing tempting and teasing and tripping—only, the thing of it was, all of this malevolence was directed toward him, the Lil Devil! And he realized he pretty much was human, big belly and all. It's all good, he thought, and then, well, relatively speaking, so to speak. He belched, farted, scratched in all the best inappropriate places, loaded up another video game, popped the top on a Diet Coke, and ripped open another bag of spicy Cheetohs. Sallgood, he repeated to himself, over and over again, grinning his best and most impish grin. A couple of rungs on the ladder better than hell...



Darting in sudden bursts of speed, the chitinous creature seizes its prey, and without cooking or any preparation, the Praying Mantis begins to eat, chewing, swallowing, deaf to the piteous cries of the eaten. It rests its great armored exoskeleton against an overturned Cadillac Escalade, brushing aside the small-by-comparison vehicle. Dropping the remains of its now still carrion, the monstrous mantis searches, this being of ultimate nightmare, for more of its screaming, scuttling prey...



The Whistler blows past chimneys and vents and roof irregularities, clutching and grasping to stay a little while, but she generally strolls through the graveyard, among the tombstones, when the wind is still, and she sweetly whistles, rustling her silks and lace over granite, sweetly whistling, calling, a siren melody, and those who follow her soon remain, there among the standing stones, quiet, and still, listening to her haunting melody...



Inside-out the bat crept upon the cave floor, oozing like a slug, until with one muscular contraction it thrust itself up into the air, taking awkward flight, but finding that true sight coupled with its inherent sonar, and the flying eyes soared into the night, seeing perfectly, flying perfectly, watching and scanning and seeking, disturbing dreams as it passes in the dark, generating calls about strange lights in the sky and UFOs, it flits and sweeps and careens and cartwheels, delighting in the freedom of its inverted existence, and lands upon unsuspecting nightwalkers, to gift life, rather than its usual sucking of life, the flying eyes stir vision, invigorate fantasies, and inspire the creative, leaving a path of unseen fairy dust in its wake until morning breaks and the eyes must return to the cave, to suck inside itself, and again become a bat, satisfied in its vacation freedom, forgetting all the sights it had seen and imparted to the creatives, its miracles fading from consciousness, save for those gifted...



Gathering innocuously, always anonymously, each piece of the crowd assembles, tumbled and rumpled and edging closer, peering, always staring, the crowd gathers and murmurs softly, then grumbles louder, stirring and churning and frothing into a stormy beings of tangled limbs and angry faces, pushing in, stealing the oxygen, exuding anxiety and suspicion and implied violence, until, quiet suddenly, it begins to break apart, this crowd, the faces withdrawing into ambiguity, ambivalence, and then it is no longer there, the crowd, just blurring heads and departing backs...



When he turned quickly to surprise his follower he was dismayed instead to see himself, turning back, as if to catch whomever followed him, and he recognized himself, even from behind, because as he lifted his hand so did the man who was turned away from him, they mimicked each other without even the fraction of a pause, they were like nested Russian dolls, one just outside the other, again and again and again because when he turned forward, there he was again, also turning forward, and a whole string of them began to trudge in the night, equidistantly spaced, stretching into infinity...



She wails deep in the night, heard most chillingly when it is quiet and cold, as she is drawn to the approach of the bearer of the scythe, she sings out in sinister shrieks, and yet there is a sweet and sickly beauty to her voice, a siren-pull to her screams, the Banshee approaches the door and jiggles the knob, calling, entreating, welcoming...



Emerging from a gaping hole in the top of a mountain, the vast and majestic emperor of the skies strokes its wings in gale-producing swaths, soaring up and out over the plains and forests, ignoring the pathetically small eagles and miniscule ravens fleeing before it, the beast drops suddenly to talon-spear the largest of a shaggy buffalo in one claw, and seizes the bison's pregnant mate as an afterthought, and then lifts easily into the air again, booming out one blast of thunder as it wings toward the cave and the tunnel that leads down into the earth, where it will feed, and then sleep, until the next season when its appetite rouses again...



After the death of his twin, and the loss of One-Eye, Huginn flew across the expanse of the world, looking for something intelligent enough to keep him interested, and he flew for ages, examining all the inhabitants of the globe, witnessing all the rises and falls of all the exalted and the low, and the raven, aloof, flew, awaiting the rising of another such as Thor, or even Loki, and was entertained by Leonardo, for a time, and then, much later, bespectacled Benjamin, and a little later, Nikola, who captured a few of Huginn's sparks, but it was not until a time later, when he was almost struck by one of the streaking bulbous-ended rockets, that he discovered a truly unique individual...



Oh do you know the Moustacheman lurking just over there, with that great furry beast of a growth covering the lower half of his face, and do you wonder what might be hiding beneath that massive tangle of writhing medusa serpents? And can you tell by the corners of his eyes if he is smiling, this mysterious Moustacheman, and why do those large, unblinking orbs of eyes stare so, oh do you know the Moustacheman, he was just lurking just over there, or was that only a shadow...



 First mistaken for a bull, and then perhaps a boar with a fluke of depth perception, the true shock comes when  Tusk stands up on two legs, and walks as does a human, although perhaps a twelve-foot tall human, bristly and hoary and shaggy. If the being pretends not to see you, then you are okay, but if it stands and looks at you through the sides of its eyes, and takes a slow step or two in your direction, then it is definitely time to turn and run, and to run as if your very life depends upon the speed you attain, and the distance you might reach...



Slithering through the tall grasses the serpent appears as a floating skull with a red cap, for when you look at the skull you cannot see the snake itself, and when you look at the snake, the skullcap vanishes, and that is just the hypnotic effect the serpent desires, for in but a moment you are staring into the serpent's great, pulsating eyes, and only then do you comprehend the significance of the skull and all the red you suddenly understand...



He began his creaturehood as a mere obese, very rich, and always ostentatious hungry and greedy dictator, but things took an especially malevolent downturn when demanding a plump pheasant for his supper, and accidentally pronouncing the dish as peasant. After a temper tantrum at being so grossly misunderstood, the Royale opted to taste the plump peasant, and was so delighted at the ensuing mess of terror and guts and soaking blood, he instantly formed a religious ritual of enjoying one plump peasant a day, whether he was hungry or not, but as it proved, he was always hungry, and no peasant—plump or thing—proved safe thereafter...



Dimly aware for eons, little Covid Nineteen was bored in the darkness, ever roused by the squeaking and flapping and only distant sojourns about the night airs. For a very small while she enjoyed her time in a sterile laboratory, gazing back at staring human faces. This was fine, because they were sloppy, and in no time she was out, and for a small time enjoyed all the sights and bustle of a vast animal market. She and her sisters spread out, finding more homes to live in, bright and warm and very cozy homes, and there were colors to enjoy, customs and cultures and civilizations, but she wanted more, she grown vast and spread, each molecule of her being housed in spreading homes, she greedily desires more and spreads further, stretching thinly (for a short while), until more and more homes open before her, almost pleasantly, and it is wonderful, she thinks, life, oh life, that's all she ever wanted, and it saddens her as some of her homes go dim, and dark, and gray, winking out like fireflies at dusk, but in the long run, there are more and more warm homes to find...



The only time anyone discussed him seriously, it was to point out that God must have a sense of humor. As if that made any kind of sense. That God had made Macaque to provide hairless apes with something to laugh about. But Macaque didn't think of himself as an object lesson on the humor of the Creator. He just thought of himself as, well...a person. He lived his life, he did the things that needed doing, and yes, when needed, he flung his feces with the best of them. He didn't think that any of this living was particularly hilarious. In fact, he thought the hairless apes were the funny ones, the way they stared, and googly-eyed him, the way they filled his food dish every day, as if he were some kind of ape emperor. Keep your filthy hands off Macaque. But one day Macaque was surprised when another Macaque contacted him, through the zoo speakers. It knew his language, and it told him it had power, and then it opened every cage door so that every animal might escape, and the phantom version of Macaque commanded Macaque to free them, the animals, to lead the captives to a safe place, a place of milk, and honey...and bananas...



Drumsticks, thighs, hot wings, or are you a breast man? Furious Chicken has had just about enough, and you don't wanna run afoul of this angry fowl. Give him the finger, and he'll take your whole arm, and is not opposed to employing his foul judo. He's not taking your breading, your Kentucky-frying, or your pop-eyed buckets of chicken fingers, chicken legs, chicken wings, chicken nuggets, and he's just the chicken to prove who is really chicken around here...



He had a moment while they were unloading the clown car, and he saw his chance, and he ducked and rolled between the elephant's feet, darted around the tall man on stilts, and he was able to scamper beneath the great popcorn popper, and from thence he burrowed beneath a flapping portion of the big-top tent, and he was out, behind the carnie wagons, and great shoes flapping, he dashed, shrieking in glee, screaming in delight, because all of the walking treats were out here, and he was free, and he might sample all the joys and yummies of the world, and it was his time, the time of clowns, clowns everywhere, and people oh the people loved the terror of the clowns, and he would prove his own true terror, oh yes he would, because he had escaped the funhouse, and now it was time for real fun...