His pain monster rides high in the saddle, on his shoulders, playing patty cake on his head, wearing the hair thin on his pate.  The pain monster pushes him into bars, barring his escape after a drink quenches his thirst.  When he’s done, the monster makes him stumble out under its scaled legs.

Sleeping is difficult with the rank stench of digested dreams in the air.  The man tosses and turns, tense in unconsciousness.

The man’s pain monster rides his mount all day with its paws placed directly over the man’s eyes.  He can look to the side and see garbage, sewage, leakage, but never in front.  The pain monster steers him down the path of seeing it all yet seeing nothing.

The man’s name is Alan, but the pain monster calls him “Grimm’s Revenge.” Like a thoroughbred racehorse. “Put $400 on Grimm’s Revenge to commit suicide in the 53^rd year, 10 to 1 odds!” 

Alan doesn’t call the pain monster any name because he doesn’t know it’s there at all.  He just feels something on top of him.  But Alan is a realist — reason tells him these feelings come from the past.  The feelings follow divorce, which followed a bad marriage, which followed a good marriage, which followed being dumb kids.  He can look up to the summit of his life and see the slope that carried him down to the bottom.  He could look in any direction he wants and never see the pain monster.  It’s always out of sight, like shaving cream on the back of the ear.  The people who would have told Alan about the pain monster have been pushed away. 

Julie was with him a few years ago.  She was divorced too, and she had a pain monster.  The four of them double-dated.  Alan didn’t love Julie and vice versa.  They coupled, talked about how everyone else was a moron.  Their kind of happiness.

But the pain monsters couldn’t leave it alone.  They liked the action.  Julie’s pain monster bet Alan’s pain monster that Alan would propose marriage.  Alan’s pain monster greedily accepted and set Alan towards the right path.  Alan saw what he needed to see.  Not the good times he shared with Julie, but those times apart when he grew suspicious.  Not happy pictures on vacation, but all of those bridal pictures in Julie’s magazines.  What was she thinking when she stared at those pictures?

Should he test himself to see if he could do it again?  His ex-wife remarried.  She could do it.  Could he?

Alan never did propose.  But he thought of nothing else. Meanwhile, Julie was irritated, because by this point her pain monster was showing her Alan’s signs of willingness to commit:  a bank brochure about joint accounts, less time spent with his friends, etc.  Stasis drove them apart just as shared discord attracted them.

Alan was alone then.  But was he ever truly alone?  Why, pain monster, what a big gut you have!  Who better to drink with, my friend?  Why, pain monster, what terrible fangs you have!  How do you think I suck your life force, Grimm’s Revenge?  Why, pain monster, what big eyes you have!  All the better to see the world for you!

There is only one thing Alan does now and then to stop this thing, though he has no idea how much it helps him.  Photographs show us the instantaneous moment of happiness, and the good pictures are genuine – nobody needed to be told to smile.  

He still keeps a few shots of his wife when they were so young that they were other people.  They had different skin, and walked and talked like strangers.  And they were happy.

Alan is most fond of a picture taken of himself and Julie in Virginia Beach.  It was their first trip together in Alan’s brand new Mustang convertible.  A new girl and a new car.  Happiness could still come.  

When the drinks finally hit and his eyes relax, the pain monster steers Alan’s gaze away from Julie’s smiling face to the rear end of the Mustang to the axle that snapped, to the backseat where they had that dumb fight, to the transmission that fell apart at 40,000 miles.  Suddenly, he regrets all of it – the vacation, the car, the girl, the life.

And the pain monster wins again without making a sound.