2023 marked a change in the Study Design for Units 1 and 2 VCE English. Within the new framework, students completed a Personal Response SAC based on their exposure to a range of mentor texts on the theme of ‘Home’. Thanks to Evie for sharing her outstanding submission!

There’s a Monster in my Home - short story by Evie DG.

Foreign, best described as strange and unfamiliar, could not do justice in describing the monster. It bemused our greatest heroes and beat all our greatest weapons. Our Mothers and Fathers frantically prayed to higher power, as their control was crushed under the weight of the monster. Eyes young and old, also searched frantically, looking up for the helping hand, that no longer was attached to the arm of our Fathers and Mothers. The monster roamed the streets, the air, every surface, in the outside. “Run”, they said, “Run inside your home. Safe, secured, sheltered, the monster will not find you.”

So we did. Our homes – so personal, so connected – gave us the sanctuary we needed to stay safe from the monster, and the unanswered worries residing inside us.

The movie The Wedding Singer is a staple in my household. In a nutshell, the movie was the familiar hug, that was a guaranteed feel-good. That background movie, that Friday night movie, the classic pick-me-up remedy. My mum would tell me how much she loved that movie growing up alone in her twenties. She would come home from work, put on that movie in her apartment, and make herself dinner. Each night, and she never got sick of it, and still hasn’t. She passed on her love for that movie to us, so we all got to experience that feeling.

I loved my home. It accommodated all I needed and knew me perhaps better than myself. It knew how to fade the blue and calm the red. Its great complexity had power to give me good and bad experiences too. Although as counterintuitive as it seems, the thorns in my bouquet of roses were there on purpose, pricking me every so often so I could appreciate the flower all the more. I didn’t mind that. I loved my home. My room, the kitchen, my backyard, my house, all gave the same feeling. That feeling of familiarity that my mum needed and craved so much, when finding her feet in her twenties alone. I needed to find my feet too. Instead, I found myself tiptoeing unintentionally, scared to rest my heels, scared of my new reality. I retreated to the familiarity of my home to let the world outside me rest, so that when I return, I am no longer scared. So “Run” they said, and I did to my house, and I put on The Wedding Singer, turning up the volume just enough to quiet the noise of the outside.

The monster couldn’t be tamed as the new world turned over, overshadowing our Mothers and Fathers, whose power diminished under its light. It roamed at nights now too. “Run” they said, “Run inside, and don’t go out after dark.” This became our new normalcy and I got to know my house, my room, to a new degree, perhaps as much as it knew me. Every quality, quirk, all its thoughts. Spending day after day in my house I thought was a good thing. I loved my home. Spending the same day in my house, day after day, because I wasn’t allowed to go out, I wasn’t allowed at school. Was that a bad thing? Where was the point where too much of a good thing, became a bad thing? I soon got to learn. I got to understand where fulfillment became under featureless. Where untroubled became uninspired. The same four walls I knew all my life, changed colours, changed me. The four walls hugging me, telling me it’s okay, felt like a smother now. I wasn’t okay.

The monster began to dominate my life and tether me to my bed. The memories of my house stirred as they became watered down by the confinement. Like a sickness infecting its host, the monster although outside, occupied the bubble I now lived in. Spread to all I had. I was inside. Why was I inside again? It had been so long. Isolated. Inside. To stay protected from the monster. It had been two years and I had never even seen it. But I felt it. Because home didn’t feel like home. I longed for the connection I once had with my house and my room, and my mind. The unprecedented course of events made for a ripple in my life, unsettling every routine and familiarity I owned. The single stone I throw into the quiet water creates a gentle ripple; a disturbance before it settles back to calm. I waited for my calm, instead I lost my hopes for waiting.

Inside still? What was so bad about this monster? I wanted to meet it face to face and see what was so bad, why it was so influential on my life, why I couldn’t see my family, my grandma, couldn’t go back to normal. I miss her.

But then it happened. I finally step outside... and there the monster in the flesh, stands in front of me, a fingertip away. I finally meet it. Heavy breaths. A single sweat pools on my forehead pre-emptively, my mind telling my body to prepare to run. But I don’t. I wait for brutality, but it never happens. My expectations of screams and fears dissipated after my breaths slowed. This was it? Where are my scars though? My fear turned black with anger, as the monster, a small creature, left me unscratched. “Scratch me!” I screamed at the being.

“Why? Why am I hiding if you won’t hurt me. I’m inside. I’m losing myself. Do you not value my sacrifice?” I blurt angry words, meaningless to the monster. I feel my cheeks warm as the anger spreads.

“You have robbed me. I sacrificed the girl I once knew, robbed her of her laughter and her colour.” My eyes hold back small tears while I realise, I’m outside. I look at the new world around me struggling to recognise it, recognise myself. I swallow hard trying not to decipher what I have to show for a slow two years. I remember the girl, painting a beautiful picture while The Wedding Singer hummed softly in the background. Her paintbrushes sit idle now, waiting for the spark of passion but the paint dried too long ago. The phone stays mum, awaiting the phone call from Grandma. I missed her. Missed my chance to say goodbye. Going outside doesn’t feel like returning because I can’t remember how things were.

The tears now free from my eyes, roll down my cheek. “Where are my scratches?” I sobbed but was only met with the slow shake of the head by the monster. I craved evidence of my damage but instead I felt it in my mind. I felt it in the low pit of my stomach when I’m reminded of those memories, and my childhood, supposedly the ‘best years of my life.’ I felt it in my hands when they start shake and when my eyes dart to the floor. I felt it in my throat, when the fear grips me too tight, all too familiar when I ran to retreat to my home. Now outside, my breath choked, I want to run, and go home. But it doesn’t feel familiar, and I’m not sure I can still go home, if it doesn’t feel like home.

Thanks to Home - Poem by Evie DG.

Age two, my childhood home, built from the ground up by my parents, gave me home,

The first house in my court, once solitary, now embraced by many houses,

Lilydale gave me home, and I never said thank you,

Age seven, the roads became familiar from the strong backbone of Lilydale,

keeping my family and house firmly planted in our suburb,

The houses around me became faces and names giving me memories and nostalgia,

And I never said thank you,

Up and down Switchback, we approach the top, and the Noble Estate greets me,

It’s foundation perched on the top of the hill, aligned with Sunset Drive,

It’s adorned outside catches the 5 o’clock sunset on all three stories,

Whether it was its intrigue; the gate keeping me afar,

Or its obvious eccentrics, that caused my attraction,

My only wish was this was my house,

My imagination resided in this house,

filling the inside with whatever rooms I wanted,

Carried away with the comfort I felt when this was my home,

I lose myself in the thought that this will be my house one day,

Driving through the familiar roads I look out my window,

and wait to find the house still waiting for me,

We pass the house briefly and I don’t dare to blink,

in case I miss my chance to gain a view of every angle,

My mind yearned for something I could not have,

But my house – warm and welcoming – stared at me,

Begging for eye contact and acknowledgement from the little girl it homed,

Straining for its much needed thank you that it never got,

My dreams as a child had no limits, all colour and pure,

My mind weaved intricate fantasies about this house,

Longing for a feeling of escapism through a house I knew nothing about,

The neglect for my own home never stung until I was older,

The same comforts I once felt embrace me,

have now let go shedding me of my sanctuary and security,

I grieve the loss of the house that was never mine,

As I grieve the loss of the life I was getting used to,

and I now watch my childhood and blissful ignorance fade,

Whilst I cherish my house now slipping through my fingers,

I now realise my house is not forever,

As is the days of my youth,

So I grieve all at once and bid my younger self farewell,

“Until we meet again in the small bittersweet moments”,

My head too heavy with sense of bereavement,

Too heavy with emotion, I needed a place to rest,

Too heavy to conjure the same daydream that quiets the noise,

I feel my control slip away and it begins to fall,

On my dizzying descent I could not save myself,

I landed softly, caught and clutched,

By my house itself,

“Thank you”

R U Ok Day