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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: My friends and I used to challenge each other to the “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words Challenge.” We would upload several intriguing photos to Google Drive, and then we had to pick someone else’s photo to write a 1,000-word (or longer) story. This exercise helps with paying attention to scenic detail and finding potential stories in everything. It’s also a fun challenge to issue to your friends!
I cannot let my demon harm my daughter.
Everyone has a demon. Demons can manifest in many ways—misfortune, illness, even a bad hair day. Most people call this “karma.” But I see the truth. I can see them. Though I can’t hear or understand their words, I can see every one of them. Each demon takes a unique form, depending on the gravity of the deed. A minor wrongdoing might birth a demon the size of a rabbit. A greater transgression might create a falcon or eagle.
A little over a year ago, I created my most dangerous demon. It took the form of a sleek black lion with glowing red eyes—a true King of the Pride. I had done something terrible—truly awful—and now I lived with the weight of this demon.
It was a nightmare to have a demon with such a heavy presence, but I also was raising my baby girl on my own, which intensified my fear of him. My wife had passed not long after the demon appeared, leaving me alone with our daughter, Zhen.
Oddly, my worst demon showed little interest in me. Instead, it became fixated on Zhen. It lingered near her, watching her with a hunger I could never understand, though it never tried to harm her. But the fear never left me—the fear that one day it would grow too powerful, that it would take my daughter from me.
“Zhen? Where are you, sweetheart?” I called out, scanning the house.
I worried constantly. Being my daughter, I discerned she could see the demons too. I had hoped she hadn’t inherited this cursed gift, but she had been playing with it from the moment my lion demon appeared. She called it “Leo” as soon as she could talk, and often spoke to him more than me. Her teachers thought she had an imaginary friend, unaware of the dangerous truth I dreaded.
“Hi, Daddy!” she squealed as I entered the room. She was seated at her small coloring table, crayons scattered across the surface. “Leo and I were just coloring!”
I glanced down at her latest drawing—three stick figures. One of them was me, the other Zhen, and the last, unmistakably, was Leo—a black lion with red eyes. I forced a smile. “That’s great, honey,” I said, wondering what her teacher would think when she started drawing demonic creatures.
“We’ve got to get you ready for school,” I added.
Zhen giggled, hopping up and grabbing her favorite black dress with white lace from the closet. It reminded her of the one her mother wore in a photo we kept downstairs. A sad frown started on my face, and I turned to leave, allowing Zhen to dress herself. She was quite the independent 5-year-old when it came to clothes.
As I turned to leave the room, a low growl rumbled behind me. I whipped around, banging my head on the door frame. Zhen wasn’t scared, but she did look upset. She was already dressed, but her eyes were unmistakably sad.
“What’s wrong, Zhen?” I asked, rubbing my head and glancing uneasily at Leo. He had moved, his muscles tense as though ready to pounce.
Zhen held up two ribbons in her tiny hands. “You forgot to put my hair up,” she whispered.
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry. Let me fix that,” I said, reaching for the ribbons, but she pulled them back, frowning.
“Leo says you don’t want to,” she said softly. “He says you don’t care about me like you don’t care about him.”
I knelt beside her, heart aching as I looked into her teary eyes. “Of course, I care about you, Zhen. Silly Daddy just forgot. Let me put your ribbons in, okay?”
She hesitated but finally handed them over. I quickly tied her hair into two neat pigtails, trying to calm my racing thoughts.
“All done,” I said, forcing cheer into my voice. “Let’s head down and grab some breakfast.”
Zhen giggled and skipped ahead, with Leo trailing behind. I watched the lion warily. At least at school, he couldn’t follow her; he was bound to me, after all.
In the kitchen, Zhen sat on the floor next to Leo, whispering into his ear. The sight made my stomach churn. “Sweetie, come sit at the table,” I suggested, trying to sound calm.
“Why don’t you ask Leo to sit at the table, too?” she asked, her brow furrowed in frustration.
The question caught me off guard. “Leo doesn’t need to sit at the table. He doesn’t eat like we do,” I reasoned.
“But he wants to sit with us!” she insisted, crossing her arms.
“He doesn’t belong at the table,” I replied, harsher than intended.
Zhen’s face reddened in anger. “You hate Leo!” she shouted.
“I don’t hate him,” I tried to explain, but she cut me off.
“Yes, you do! Leo says you hate him!” she cried.
“Leo can’t talk!” I snapped, my voice rising. I rarely raised my voice at Zhen, but the demon made me uneasy.
“He can talk!” she insisted, tears streaming down her face.
I rubbed my temples, feeling the weight of the conversation pressing down on me. How do you reason with a five-year-old when her imaginary friend is a demon?
“Sweetie, Leo doesn’t speak. He growls like a lion,” I said softly, trying to calm her down.
Zhen fell silent, her face set in concentration as she stared at the lion. After a moment, she turned back to me, her voice quiet. “You really can’t hear him, Daddy?”
I froze. “Zhen… what are you talking about? Leo doesn’t speak.”
Her gaze didn’t waver. “Leo told me something. He said you think he’s a demon.”
I stared at her, shocked. I had never told her what these creatures were. She shouldn’t have known.
“How… how do you know that?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“Leo said he was made when you did something bad,” she replied, her tiny voice filled with certainty.
My heart sank. She understood, in her own way, what I had been hiding. Only one question remained.
“Do you know what I did, Zhen?”
She looked down at her hands. “Leo won’t say. He says you have to tell me.”
I took a deep breath, steeling myself to share the painful truth with my daughter.
“Zhen, when you were born, it was under difficult circumstances,” I began. “Your mother and I were in a dangerous place, and some people there tried to take you away from us. One man threatened us with something dangerous, demanding we hand you over. We refused and fought back. In the struggle, I… I brought the man down. But your mother was also hurt really badly. She went to heaven that night.”
Tears welled up in my eyes as I relived the traumatic event. The wrestling of weapons. The panic when I finally held the gun. The intensifying fear as the man doubled back and held a knife to my wife. The screaming of my wife to take the shot. The echoing of the shot down the small alley. And the blood… so much blood.
I was trembling, but when I looked up, Zhen looked at Leo, her expression a mix of confusion and concern.
“Leo appeared that night,” I continued shakily. “He is here to remind me of that day. He is not an innocent lion, Zhen; he is a demon seeking to make me pay for doing a bad thing.”
Zhen looked at Leo, then back at me. “But Daddy… Leo says he’s not a demon.”
Now was my turn to look at Zhen in confusion. I looked at Leo, but he looked just as menacing as ever.
“He says he’s an animal created from something called guilt,” Zhen explained. “He says that if you let go of the guilt, he can change to good!”
I stared at her, astonished. “How do you know that?”
“Mrs. Fluffington told me,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“Your imaginary bunny friend?” I asked, puzzled.
“She’s not an imaginary friend, Daddy,” Zhen explained. “She was one of your first creations. Can’t you see her?”
I was stunned. I had a rabbit demon follow me around when I was little. Could it be that my acceptance of guilt transformed my past demons into something benign? Was it really that simple? I looked at Leo, who had been silently observing.
“Zhen… tell me what you see,” I replied. “Who is in this room?”
Zhen looked between Leo and me, confusion on her face. “Well, Mrs. Fluffington is on my lap. Kitty-pants is rubbing up against your legs. And silly Mr. Monkey is swinging around. And… well, can’t you see them all, Daddy?”
I shook my head. “I only see Leo.”
Zhen contorted her face in what looked like pain. I went to check on her but then had to grab the table as a migraine split across my head. When I looked up again, I was confused. There were dozens of demons milling about! I panicked initially, worried for Zhen, but as I watched her pet a small white bunny, my thoughts were swirling about.
“Mrs. Fluffington… was my old demon?” I asked breathlessly.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. All of my demons – the ones that faded away – they hadn’t faded at all! They were all glowing brilliantly white and meandering around the house. Some wandered over to Leo and Zhen. A tiny, white kitten weaved its way between my legs, and I almost tripped as I felt a cool breeze pass by where the kitten had been.
Despite the return of all my past demons… they didn’t seem menacing anymore. They appeared, well, friendly. Then, my head burned again, causing me to close my eyes in agony and grip the table for support. When I was finally able to open my eyes, the white creatures had vanished, and only the black, menacing form of Leo was present. I sat at the kitchen table and looked back at Zhen in disbelief.
“Do you see the white spirits all the time, Zhen?” I asked quietly.
“Oh, yes,” Zhen replied. “They are all very nice and fun to play with! I’m glad you could see them too, Daddy, even though it was just for a tiny bit. That really hurt my head.” Zhen rubbed her temples, and I stared at her in disbelief. My 5-year-old daughter let me see the white spirits?
She looked at Leo, then back in my direction. “So, Daddy… if Leo is dark because you feel guilty, but you did everything you could for me on the night Mommy was hurt… maybe Leo doesn’t need to be dark anymore?”
Her words hung in the air, and I froze. Could it be that simple? I turned my head to look at Leo’s face. I was scared of him all this time… and he just wanted to be free. Free of me just as I wanted to be free of the guilt of that night.
Zhen glanced over at Leo, who stared back at her with those glowing red eyes. “Leo says he’s tired too. He says he’s only here because you won’t let go.”
I swallowed hard. Let go? How could I let go of the guilt? The guilt was the only thing keeping me tied to the memory of my wife. If I let go… what did that mean for her? For me?
“Daddy?” Zhen’s voice was soft, pulling me back to the present. “It’s okay. Mommy’s happy in heaven, and I’m here with you. You don’t have to be sad anymore.”
I looked into her big brown eyes, full of innocence and understanding beyond her years. She didn’t need me to carry this guilt anymore. She needed me to be her dad, not a man haunted by the past. I looked upon her face and dress, both of which reminded me of my wife. I didn’t need the guilt to keep me tied to my wife anymore… I had Zhen there, and I could teach her everything I wanted her to know about her mother.
I reached out to Zhen with trembling hands, pulling her into a tight embrace. As I held her, I felt something shift in the room. The air lightened, and the weight on my chest seemed to ease. I dared to look over at Leo.
The black lion, once fierce and domineering, seemed smaller, almost frail. His red eyes dimmed, and for the first time, he looked at peace. He blinked at me, almost as if giving a final nod, and then he was gone. Just… gone.
I held Zhen tighter, tears still streaming down my face, but they weren’t just tears of sorrow anymore. There was relief. Maybe even a bit of hope.
Zhen pulled back slightly, looking up at me with a smile. “See, Daddy? Leo’s okay now.”
I nodded, my heart full of emotion. “Yeah, sweetheart. I think he is.”
And for the first time in a long time, I believed it.
B.R. Quinn 