They Who Feed on Shadows - Episode 7

Worry Machine

They Who Feed on Shadows - Episode 7: The 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 raccoon-infested wild with nothing at their disposal but shelter, water, and a metric fuck-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 our home today.

Zen and the art of kitten domesticity have yet to enlighten me.

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 Worry Machine

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 machine 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 and genetic disorders, fear of driving with the windows down, fear of losing control. Dale fed that appetite diesel fuel, battery acid, serial numbers, power blackouts and twisted scenarios of Armageddon.

Before we get to the letter below, I must provide some necessary context.

The farm truck — an F-150 my brother purchased — was running fine. That is, until Dale Colgrave volunteered to “tune it.” After he tuned it, the truck sat inoperable.

We used to get real snow in the 1970s and 80s. Feet of snow. Numerous systems were in place at the farm to handle a six-inch storm, which you will see elevated here to the level of an extinction-level meteorological event. No Monroe family plow truck had ever broken down in thirty-seven years. Not until 2008.

Wes and Ray were our groundskeeper and his brother, both of them living out at the property in those days. Wes was one of the first people to call out Dale Colgrave as a gold digger. He used to stand by the garage door, smoke cigarettes, give Dale the most magnificently condescending side-eye, all while petting the dog and whistling a jolly tune. A 61-year-old amputee and Navy vet who loved sunsets, landscape painting, and calling things what they were. Wes saw everything.

Clara was my mother’s office manager, a devout Pentecostal Christian and a lovely human being — the best office manager Sylvia ever had. The paragraphs she has notated with a question mark are the places where she had, to put it plainly, no goddamn idea what my mother was talking about.

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

The total dissolution of professional identity grinds like a massive, rusted flywheel suddenly starved of oil. It cannot stop its own spinning. It whines with the clairvoyant echo of a worry machine being fueled by a predator and greased by a victim. This is a board-certified physician with forty-four years of experience writing “Serial # 73769” at the top of a personal note to her staff, because a former patient has sent her on a mechanical wild goose chase involving a pull-start generator from 1979 that is not designed to be integrated with a home’s electrical system in the first place.

Let’s break it down.

1. The Weaponization of Weather

Six inches of snow, presented as an extinction-level event. Right out of the gates, Dale constructs a siege mentality in which he alone stands between the Monroe estate and catastrophe. This is preposterous on its face — and doubly preposterous because he had already rendered inoperable the singular piece of equipment needed to address the allegedly imminent disaster. A disaster he invented.

2. The Tuning Sabotage

Sylvia’s words reveal a Machiavellian tactic as old as the con itself: create the problem, then sell your mark the solution. Dale “tunes” a perfectly functional truck until it won’t start. My mother then produces a frantic manifesto of requirements to restore the very equipment Dale destroyed — even though it doesn’t work, because he broke it, but he wants it ready anyway.

A 2009 tow truck visit to the mechanic would later reveal that one of the brake lines had been cut, and diesel fuel poured into the gasoline tank and cycled through the engine.

Wes, who called it like he saw it, said he didn’t trust the truck because he didn’t want to get blamed for sabotaging it. Leaning into that kind of daylight reality was the last thing you wanted to do in my mother’s house. Sylvia used it as an excuse to declare Wes mentally ill and possibly brain-damaged from “the war,” and thus unreliable.

She crushed Wes beneath an avalanche of propaganda. She described Dale Colgrave to me as “a blessing.”

3. Serialized Micromanagement

A board-certified psychiatrist transcribing generator serial numbers and battery electrolyte levels for a former patient is not the behavior of a brilliant mind. It is the behavior of a mind that has been colonized by a virus. By the winter of 2008, Sylvia was no longer processing her own thoughts. She had become a stenographer for Dale’s escalating demands, her professional judgment replaced by the granular, grinding logic of his manufactured conspiracies.

I was worried. My brother was furious. Clara was concerned. Marsha the housekeeper was frantic. None of them wanted trouble. They wanted their jobs. The only person not worried was Dale Colgrave, standing behind Sylvia on her speakerphone, breathing lies into her tremulous receiver, Fox News running in the background and a frozen dinner beeping in a nearby, dirty microwave.

4. The Fears For Us Narrative

Her most coercive line is the final one: “He... fears for us.”

By framing Dale’s control as protection, Sylvia justifies his intrusion into every facet of the estate’s operation and coaches her staff to accept his dominance, even though they already recognized him for what he was. She could feel the pushback in the eyes of those around her. She microwaved their skepticism with her wine and Sprite and served it back as concern for their welfare.

Sylvia and Dale had begun to disassociate in unison, like intoxicated European starlings spiraling nestward at dusk. The blinding light of his “pure heart” was, in her eyes, unassailable. This was the pedestal she had cobbled together for him to stand on. He was waiting patiently in the rafters for the perfect moment to turn it into an altar.

5. The Dead Sea Scrolls Non-Sequitur

Everyone knew Clara was a devout Pentecostal Christian. Tucking a thank-you for information on the Dead Sea Scrolls into a manifesto 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. This seemingly casual biblical reference illuminates the bizarre pseudo-intellectual hive mind Sylvia and Dale had developed to bypass every moral boundary that remained between them and the outside world. It was the flash of light when you realize your doctor is no longer wearing pants but wants to keep examining you anyway.

The truck 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 scraping across the chalkboard of the passing seasons.

He wasn’t her protector. He was her grifter. And the first domino was getting ready to fall.

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 allowed Jane to 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