If you stepped into Thomas Onokusa's room, you'd think you'd wandered into a forgotten prop closet from a film studio that dabbled in nightmares. Shelves buckled under the weight of hand-crafted monster heads. Mask molds sat in solemn rows, their unfinished visages grinning in plaster half-formed horror. Scattered across the floor were bundles of twisted wire, thick jars of lacquer, and trays holding eyes—glass, marble, some painted, some stolen from discarded toys.
The room was warm, thick with the smell of glue, dried resin, leather, and paper. On the main desk, a model of a Xenomorph snarled mid-leap beside a lovingly sculpted Gremlin, its ears patched with tape from a break Thomas hadn't had time to fix. Next to that was a scratched-up Godzilla figure that had been repainted at least four times. The creature's spine now glowed violet instead of blue.
One shelf hosted a line of kaiju miniatures standing in fierce battle poses. The opposite wall was devoted entirely to Thomas's own creations: grotesque, beautiful, bizarre.
Posters—all hand-drawn—papered the walls like talismans. Some mimicked famous movie posters from a world this one had never known. One said "Attack of the Meat Thing!" with what looked like a pulsating lump of meat in a wedding veil. Another featured a skeletal astronaut melting inside a shattered helmet. Beneath each poster was Thomas's signature and a crude production logo: Onokusa Studios.
At the foot of his bed, a small bookshelf sagged with picture books. Not just storybooks, but ones with... ambiance. Things like the Babadook pop-up book, which Thomas had painstakingly recreated from memory. The pages flicked open with paper arms that grabbed, twisted, and recoiled. Another shelf held what he swore was a replica of the Necronomicon Ex Mortis—not real human flesh, obviously, but well-weathered leather, engraved with a writhing, screaming face that bulged when touched. He kept it next to a hand-made grimoire from a dream he'd once had, filled with anatomy diagrams of beasts he didn't remember designing.
His bedspread, naturally, featured stitched silhouettes of monsters. One had fifteen legs and a flower for a face. Another looked suspiciously like a werewolf in a tutu.
Thomas sat cross-legged in the middle of this curated chaos, sharpening a small knife as he stared at a lump of resin-soaked clay. His black work apron was stained with dye and glue. His hands were calloused, the fingertips blotched with paint and cuts from wire.
"Eight legs," he muttered. "No. Nine. Real spiders are boring."
He started to shape the clay, fingers pinching and smoothing, pressing and turning it in slow spirals. He worked like a surgeon and a sculptor in one, pausing every few moments to scribble something in the corner of a sketchbook or fish out a reference photo from a pile.
The creation came together like clockwork powered by madness. Wire limbs bent at odd angles, wrapped in gauze and dipped in boiled lacquer. The fangs were carved from a polished piece of wood, long and tusk-like. For the eyes, he embedded black marbles, arranging them in an uneven cluster that looked too alien to be a spider and too insectoid to be anything else.
He fitted the whole thing over a cracked mannequin head, adjusting straps and seams until it seemed to perch like a parasite waiting to hatch. Then came the paint: deep matte black, speckled with iridescent green and red streaks. He added tiny hairs along the joints of each leg, a detail no one would notice—but he'd know.
When it was done, he stared at it for a long time. A spider head the size of a human's, limbs curled like antennae along the cheeks.
He smiled. Not wide. Not manic. Just satisfied.
He scribbled a name on a tag and hung it around one of the fangs: Widow's Halo
He whispered, "For the brave and the bold."
---
Dinner in the Onokusa household was a spectacle, though rarely because of the food.
The table was too small for the number of people seated around it. Two parents, four children including Thomas, and two grandparents made for a noisy, barely functional routine. The only thing that brought silence was the presence of masks.
Thomas's little brother Kenta had chosen The Hound King tonight—a jagged pine-and-wax monstrosity with lopsided horns. He barked through it, chasing their dog in circles until their mother ordered him to remove it.
Their youngest sibling, Ayane, wouldn't take off the squid-faced mask. She kept poking her tongue through one of the tentacle holes and slurping her soup. Their grandfather shook his head but didn't intervene.
Even their father, who had long ago stopped being surprised, looked up from his bowl and asked, "You made that new one today, didn't you? The spider?"
Thomas nodded. "Widow's Halo. Still drying."
His mother sighed. "As long as it doesn't crawl onto your pillow again. That almost gave me a heart attack."
Grandma Onokusa peered over her glasses. "You'll scare off your wife before you even meet her."
Thomas replied without looking up, "That assumes I want one."
His cousin Riku, older, more athletic, and permanently unimpressed, just muttered, "Creepy."
No one noticed Thomas smile.
Halfway through dinner, his younger sister Mari asked, "Hey, Tom? Why's your name so weird?"
The room quieted.
His mom chuckled. "I named him when I was in a daze after labor. I don't remember why. It just... felt right."
Thomas turned the thought over in his mind. The name had always felt foreign, like a word plucked from another tongue. Maybe it was. Maybe it was something else. He let the thought drift.
He knew he didn't belong in this world. Not originally. The memories weren't sharp, but they were there—behind his love of monsters, behind the feel of latex and foam rubber, behind the knowledge that horror wasn't just born, it was built. He remembered cameras. Props. A different kind of noise.
He didn't talk about it. He didn't need to. He had monsters to make.
---
Later that night, he returned to his room. Widow's Halo was perched on its mannequin, glistening under the lamplight.
He placed it on the highest shelf, next to the Hound King and the stitched Leatherface mask. They looked down at him like judges. Or family.
He yawned, wiped his hands on a cloth, and knelt before the shelf.
"You'll need a face someday," he whispered to the mask. "I'll find someone worthy of you."
As he turned to sleep, one lacquered leg twitched.
It was just the glue drying.
Probably.