They Who Feed on Shadows - Episode 7
Worry Machine
They Who Feed On Shadows - Episode 7: Worry Machine
Note: This essay is nonfiction based on true events and contains depictions of obsessive compulsive disorder and generalized psychosis. Names and locations have been changed to protect the innocent. Some details have been reconstructed for clarity and narrative flow.
People have always told me that I need to write my story. They say this as if it’s an obvious choice, like getting a cat a litter box.
Our cats grew up in the Westvale barn and shit in the forest under the stars. They were taken to the vet once, spayed or neutered, given their shots, and tossed back into the racoon-infested wild with nothing at their disposal but shelter, water, and a metric shit-ton of Meow Mix. Choice had nothing to do with it. Our barn was the cats’ destiny.
Similarly, writing of one’s human soul is one of those esoteric endeavors where you must let the universe guide you. You know when, and if, the time is right. So I apologize for the delay, but just as I’d rather not write until I’m ready, I’d rather be thrown ass-first into a garden of spiked dildos than have a litter box in my home today.
Zen and the art of kitten domesticity have yet to enlighten me.
And this is why they say there is no truth, only perception. One must embrace the universal axiom that change is the only constant, while acknowledging that you, too, are endlessly evolving with eternity in real-time. No person is exempt from the crucible.
I’m writing the ending first. This will be the final essay quoting from the lonesome archives of Dale and Sylvia. For better or worse, they represent the black hole of conclusion from which only love - or perhaps just a very resilient coyote - escapes.
The Manufactured Crisis
By 2008, Dale Colgrave had found the perfect pry-bar to dismantle the floorboards of our family home.
He didn’t just invade; he created a weather system of catastrophe that only he could forecast. He turned Sylvia’s obsessive-compulsive mind into a Worry Machine. If the motor wasn’t fed a fresh disaster every week, it would begin to eat itself. My mother had a natural appetite for fear. Fear of other women. Fear of money. Fear of accidents, genetic disorders, driving with the windows down and a fear of smoking cigarettes. Dale capitalized upon this hunger. He fed it diesel fuel, battery acid, serial numbers and the apocalypse a six inch snowstorm can be.
I found a letter Sylvia sent to her office manager, Clara. It is a document produced by a mind being professionally unzipped. It wasn’t written, so much as dictated by the ghosts Dale had invited into the trashed parlor set up behind my mother’s eyes.
December 2008. This is an exact transcription of what was written, underscores, quotes and all.
Serial # 73769 (J5)
Clara -
Dale C called again tonight very concerned about “bad weather coming.” He says we are supposed to get snow flurries tomorrow, Friday, maybe Sat. - But Mon. & Tues. we are supposed to get at least 6 inches of snow. He says his much bigger tractor would have a hard time plowing 6 inches of snow off all at once, so if Wes does it on the tractor, he thinks it will require 2 - 3 plowings in the cold.
He’s going to try to come down here Sunday mid-afternoon, to get the snow plow on the truck. I told him Wes doesn’t trust the truck, but Dale wants it “ready to go” anyway.
He gave me a whole list of things to get seen about, some of which have to do with the truck, some with the tractor, and some with the generator. Some of them I know I’ve already mentioned to you, but here’s the list. I’ll copy this note for Ray too, so he can help Wes.
Wes needs to be sure there’s plenty of diesel for the tractor, several of the 5 gallon cans - done
Likewise, if the truck needs gasoline, Dale would like it to have gas in it - done?
He’s worried about the truck not having been driven since William was last home and drove it up to the west end of the house, and says he’d be grateful if the battery charger could be attached to its battery to make sure the electrolytes haven’t settled to the bottom with the truck battery frozen, so it can be warmed up and working when he gets down here (mid-afternoon, if he can) Sunday, so he’ll be able to put in hydraulic fluid and attach the snow plow to the truck - done
He asked again if I have the serial # of the engine on the generator. If Wes got that and you gave it to me already, I’m sorry - I remember leaving you a note about it, but if you gave me the # I lost it - done
I explained why my new phone upstairs won’t work (light off in the office) and he wants me to get “another power strip and a 9 foot cord,” so he can plug the phone in my office into one of the outlets where they can stay charged all the time and stay connected to the light switch (which he says they can do without having to switch the lamps off manually if I can get him the power strip to plug in behind my office couch Sunday afternoon. - done
Did we find the big, orange plastic barrels from H2O District #1? Although Dale says he’ll try to find an old barrel of his to bring down which has already had oil in it, b/c he says if possible the orange barrels should be kept clean for H2O in case the water goes off - ??
He wants me to call John Marley and ask him if he knows an electrician who would know how (& where) to plug the generator into the house’s electrical system - done
He also wants to know where the outside electrical power source is for the house, and wonders if the generator should be plugged into the electrical system there. I will ask William about this. Dale says maybe my generator could be kept in the barn and with a long heavy extension cord, could be plugged into the outside source - ?
So items #5, 6, 7 & 8 are not for Wes & Ray. But I do need someone to get the serial # off the generator for me, for him.
He’s a worry-wart, but I truly appreciate his trying to think ahead for me & help me be as ready as possible for the potential crises around here. If more of his cows have calves in this cold weather he may not even be able to come down here Sunday. But just in case, I want to be as ready as possible to help him help (all of us, really) out
I told him you got the info on the Dead Sea Scrolls & he said to tell you thanks.
Also, he repeated at the end of our conversation to advise Wes to be sure he has plenty of fuel (diesel & gas, I guess) on hand. Tell Wes Dale doesn’t mean to intrude (he said, “Wes’s probably already thought of all of this”), but is just used to trying to keep farm machinery running in cold weather, & fears for us. Thanks SB
Anatomy of a Hive Mind
It’s six inches of snow or an extinction level event.
Dale “fears for us.”
With those words, the total dissolution of professional integrity crashes into reality like a massive, rusted flywheel chafing its engine block. The wheel cannot stop its own spinning. It’s out of control and whines with the clairvoyant echo of a bleeding turbine being gassed by a predator.
Everyone knew Clara was a devout Pentecostal Christian. Tucking a thank-you for information on the Dead Sea Scrolls into a manifest about diesel fuel and battery acid is a Non-Sequitur of biblical proportions. Between the faith and the doctor, the lines of propriety had been righteously annihilated and common sense was forced to wear a dunce hat and sit in the corner apologizing to itself.
This seemingly innocent and totally premeditated biblical reference highlights the bizarre, pseudo-intellectual hive-mind consciousness Sylvia and Dale had birthed to utterly bypass the moral boundaries of a normal doctor-patient relationship. It was a flash in the pan moment where you realized the physician is no longer wearing her own pants. She had become the stenographer for a man who smelled like woodsmoke and recycled antifreeze - a dude who convinced a woman with a medical degree that ancient scrolls held the key to their future survival in Marston County.
The Sacrifice
Sylvia’s words reveal a classic Machiavellian tactic: create a problem - sell your mark a solution. Mother conveniently forgot that Dale had “tuned” our Ford over the summer of 2008, after which it wouldn’t start. A perfectly functional truck mysteriously became inoperable. Five months later, my mom produces a frantic list of requirements to fix the equipment Dale broke, even though it doesn’t work, because he broke it, but he wants it ready anyway.
Never expend your energy attempting to extract reason from a psychopath. Just walk away. You’re as likely to get an oak tree to tell you which direction the wind is going to blow.
A 2009 tow truck visit to the mechanic would later reveal that one of the brake lines had been cut on the F-150, and diesel fuel poured in the gas tank and cycled through the gasoline engine.
Wes - our official groundskeeper - a 61 year old amputee and Navy veteran with a love for cigarettes, sunsets, dogs and landscape painting, would ultimately be blamed for cutting the brake lines on the truck and putting diesel in the tank of the Ford. My mother would use this as an excuse to say that Wes was mentally ill and possibly brain damaged from “the war,” and had thus become unreliable.
Wes called it like he saw it. He said he didn’t trust the truck because he didn’t want to get blamed for sabotaging it. And leaning into reality like that is the last thing you want to do when living under my mother’s roof.
Sylvia ate reality for dinner. She microwaved the confusion and hysteria with her wine and Sprite. She crushed Wes’s life beneath an avalanche of propaganda.
She described Dale Colgrave to me as “a blessing.”
The two of them disassociated in unison, like European starlings spiraling nestward at dusk. The blinding light of his “pure heart” was, to her, unassailable. This was the hero’s pedestal she cobbled together for him to preach upon.
Meanwhile, something far darker than winter was coming. The truck she was so frantic to fuel would soon be skewered by the sunshine and unmowed tallgrass of 2009. And if you turned your head just right at dusk, you could hear Dale’s fingernails making a deliberate, delicate sound as they scraped across the chalkboard of passing seasons.
He wasn’t her protector. He was her grifter. He had been waiting in the rafters for the perfect moment to turn her pedestal into an altar.
The first domino was almost ready to be sacrificed.
To Be Continued…
PS - In the interest of fairness and nonfiction, I must confess that since first writing, shelving, and returning to this essay - I have relented and agreed to let Jane put a litter box in the utility room for our adopted outdoor cat, Joan of Arc. It got down to -5 fahrenheit here in Foxhollow and it just didn’t seem right to leave Joan out in the snow. Long live perception.
Jude Monroe
2/18/26