My life was shaped very early, as a young child. When I was old enough to boast, and young enough to fear monsters. My life was shaped by a monster.

It was winter on Mulberry St. and snow shaped the ground outside with white drifts like desert dunes frozen and still falling, building and building and finally collapsing from more weight falling from the hourglass roof of our sky. Sister and I watched the chaos progress from the fire-place comfort in our home. Mom was gone that night. Ever since the divorce she had been working nights waiting tables just to feed us. So Sis and I sat alone and wondered at the snow and feared the darkness, huddled together.

"Do you ever wonder," wondered Sis with an air of decomposition, "if the darkness might come alive? Might be alive right now, watching us, hungering for us?" Sis had a dark streak. She was quite likely to say something like that so I was not surprised by it.

"The darkness is simply lack of light," I said philosophically, secretly wanting to divert this conversation. "It is an absence, not a presence. We can measure the quantity of light, but that would be the only way to measure the dark, as a differential."

"I find your attempts at science disheartening," said my sister. And then, abruptly, "Do you think Mom really waits tables every night?"

I frowned for a moment and there in the proximate window glass I saw my face reflected, back dropped by snow and gloom. I looked older than my years defined, and glancing over several inches could see that sister did as well. We were prisoners in some cold hourglass that night. We weren't children already and that fact worried me more than any living darkness possibly could.

"What do you mean, Sis?" I heard myself asking. That was the moment I switched off the light and stepped into the darkness, for I already knew the answer, and was now allowing it to be spoken between us.

"I mean she doesn't dress like a waitress. And she never smells like grease and coffee and ketchup when she comes home. In fact, she smells like..."

"Don't say it, Sis, don't finish that thought. You know as well as I that Mom does what she has to do to provide for us. Ever since that cruel slime our father ran out on us..."

"Don't finish that thought, Bro. You know as well as I that Dad was tormented by a post-traumatic stress disorder he picked up in the war..."

"Police action."

"Thank you. And that his inability to readjust to civilized society was more a product of jungle mania than any lack of love for us."

I nodded gravely, but still I was angry. "It's just that I think he cares more about those MIAs than about his own family. Otherwise why return to the Noolian jungles with nothing but a survival knife and a loincloth in search of them?"

Sis shrugged her tiny shoulders succinctly. She'd always been better than I at accepting life's mysteries. She probably didn't even think the Jungle of Nool Police Action was anything to bat an eyelash at. But I knew differently. I knew that the war wouldn't truly end until everyone who'd lived it passed on into history. And even then our people would still be damaged, and would still wake up at night with cold sweat and hot fever, and would still touch the wall of the Noolian Monument with a trembling hand and a shiver of fear for their own children and the madness that might one day send them off to die alone.

The house was getting cold so I added another log to the fireplace and stabbed the coals with the poker, grateful for the heat. I couldn't help wondering where Mom was, now that Sis had acknowledged the unacknowledgable; was she warm where she was tonight? Was she happy? Was she safe?

I dropped the poker back to its housing with a clank, and that was when I heard the rapping. The rattle and then the rapping, like a tree limb gently tapping, on the surface of our front door.

I looked to Sis and she to me and I saw the sudden fear alarming her face and the thoughts of living darkness living there. She turned to the door with her eyes alone and there we stood for several moments, unable to act for our fears.

It came again: Bang! Bang! Bang! And then a sound, like a jack-in-the-box speaking, a voice, like a clown whistle squeaking. "Let me in! Let me innnnnn!" And then a laugh, shrill yet dry, harsh yet strangely melodious: "Ha ha haaaa ha ha ha!"

Both Sis and I persisted in our inaction, though now our fears had an image, vague and disturbing, some nutcase out in the cold night, outside our house, banging on our door, laughing.

"Let me innnnn! It's coooold out here!"

It was Sis who spoke first and that with a tremulous quaver. "Who do you think it is?"

Instead of replying, the spell now broken, I rushed to the door and made sure it was firmly locked.

Father, rushed vividly though my mind, and just as quickly vanished, for I'd never known my father to laugh, not even with irony, not even without humor. Then another thought came quite unbidden, and it chilled me and startled me, for I knew it was right. This voice in the night....

"Quick, the windows!" I cried to Sally, "While I get the back door and the baseball bat and the serrated kitchen knife, quick, quick!"

Sally was startled from her frozen position but hesitated before the front window, afraid to peer out, afraid of what she might see waiting there by the door. Maybe it was cowardice that had caused me to send her to the window. Maybe I knew that she could take the sight better than I, her with her dark streak and morbid turn of mind. For her it would only be confirmation of her darkest fantasies, while for me it would be proof of the world as it really is. Better the living darkness.

Or maybe I was punishing her. For what she said about Mom, forcing us both to admit what we already knew. And for not caring enough to be angry about Dad -- about what they did to him, both in the jungle and back here at home -- or angry at him for not being strong enough to be with us right now....

I turned away and raced for the kitchen while she hesitated there, about to comply, about to argue, about to open more wounds. I raced to the kitchen and grabbed the baseball bat first and then went to lock the back door.

Too late. Much too late to save us.

He stood twice my height and then some, including the hat, with it's red and white stripes as of a bleeding-pole perched puffily above and more vivid than his sick gray fur, his white whiskered face, his leering eyes, his red bow tie tied tight as a noose, his blue umbrella all dangling and loose, his one foot thrust outward all hip to the side, his other leg rigid, and his snide face singing, singing....

He was from another time. He was the Fat Cat, the big Whig, the maker of law. He was Uncle Sam-I-Am, the Cat in the Hat, and he was rabid. He wanted Sally and me.

"I want you..." said the Cat with a swagger, one finger out pointing. "Why do you stand there like that, so fearsome and mighty with your baseball bat? This is not the Game I've come for, young child of mine, not pastimes or teatimes, not this Cat in the Hat."

I could do nothing. I knew him. By reputation, by fairy tale, by national televised broadcast. I knew what he was.

He capered about me with singsong and litany, jumping and leaping, generally tormenting me. "I am the Cat in the Hat!" he cried. "Don't bother to think about that!" Boom! Boom! "I am the King of the Rats, ha ha! And I just want to playyyyyyyy! Now that I'm in you'll never get me out! Now that I'm in I'm what your life's all about!"

"What do you want with us?" It was Sally's cry. Brave, sweet Sally, from the door to the living room. "Haven't you done enough to our family?"

"Enough?" cried the Cat with a startled expression. He trotted over to where Sally stood, bent and peered into her eyes, then said softly, so softly, "I've just begun, deary. Only just now."

She stood her full three feet from the heel and said in her best Mom's voice, "I want you to leave."

The Cat leered. "But I like to be here. I do NOT wish to go...."

Then he began cavorting. He poked Sally with his umbrella and lifted her toward the ceiling, balancing her in the air. She cried out, screamed with fright, wailing. He balanced the pots, the goldfish bowl on the tip of his umbrella, the microwave, forks, spoons arcing over his hat, the serrated kitchen knife, juggled apples and pears and furniture, bounced baseballs, basketballs, and Sally.

All while I watched helpless. All while I couldn't move for a deeper fear, and a deeper knowing.

"One life, two life, bounce them all," gamboled the Cat merrily, "One life, two life, which one falls? Have I got a GREAT Game to play with you! It's called wreck the household! It's called domestic and foreign policy! It's called taxation," sang the Cat, "resignation," sang that Cat. "It's called freedom, my chickadeeeees!"

I swung the bat at that, I swung it at the Cat, just below his hat, I swung and I swung and I swung and I.....

While Mulberry St. slept its slumber of innocence, while Mom was out waiting tables to support us, my sister and I cowered in housey corners as the walls of our world fell away -- and an upright talking cat with a striped velvet pimp hat lay bleeding on the linoleum kitchen floor.