Monster

Incipere.

There were not many things that the monster loved, and in this great wide world, he could only think of two. The first was his house, and though the Monsters littered it with sharp sounds of anger and droplets of red, home was still home and no more needed to be said about that. The second was the little girl, and because the Monsters brought her to him, he supposed he’d have to admit that he loved them, too, though in a reluctant, spiteful sort of way.

The little girl was young and had the makings of a typical Monster, with two sets of appendages, one used to run away from him, and the second, well, he wasn’t entirely sure of their purpose. The Monsters often used theirs to strike dark, ugly marks upon the little girl’s skin, and she, in turn, would move hers in front of her face (perhaps they were meant to be her armor, but if that was the case, they were a rather poor shield). Her face contained two blue eyes whose two jobs were to keep her body’s liquid inside and gaze upon him in terror (they were very bad at the former, but had long since perfected the latter), and a mouth placed directly below that released noises varying in volume (sometimes, they were soft and abrupt, but most of the time, they pained him to listen). He had never been very fond of Monsters, but for some peculiar reason, he liked this one, so instead of leaving her to the vicious will of her kind, he protected her from them. However, he could only do so at night; he was terrified of the light, which, in all of life’s sardonic cruelty, was exceedingly ironic, given that the little girl was afraid of the dark.

Every night he left his bed of black obscurity and stood sentry in the little girl’s room. She would look at him and her eyes would perform the job they were much better at. She would then use her walking appendages to quickly carry herself away from him and to the Monsters, releasing some of the louder sounds that made him sad. The monster didn’t like when she left―he couldn’t follow her out of the room―but he never worried too much because soon after she returned, sometimes bearing the marks the Monsters loved giving to her and always breathing heavily with her eyes failing at the job they weren’t particularly skilled at. This sequence only went on for a brief period of time because, though she was young, the little girl was not stupid and quickly learned against leaving her room and seeking comfort from the Monsters. She was forced to lay silently each night and cower beneath her tattered blankets, staring into the darkness until she could no longer battle sleep. He had to admit that for such a young age, she could prolong slumber for quite some time, but he tried not to focus on her too much because, while it was her job was to watch the monster that crept from under her bed and surrounded the darkness of her room, it was his to watch the doorway and keep the real Monsters at bay till morning.

The little girl often sobbed before coming to bed. The monster knew it was he that made her so distressed, and he wanted to tell her that he wasn’t the one she should fear. He wanted to wrap a set of his own useless appendages around her in the way he had never witnessed the Monsters do, but he was not a very bright being. He would not know how to tell her this even if he had a mouth to tell her with, and he didn’t have appendages―or a form of any solid kind, really―to wrap her up with. Oftentimes he could sense her urge to peer over the edge and peek into the empty space beneath her bed, just to see if he was there during the safety of daylight, but the darkness always kept her from her impulses, just like the light kept him from giving in to his. And oh, how he wanted to protect her during the day, but he could only hope she could connect to his fear and understand that he simply couldn’t.

This was the monster’s life, and though it was a very funereal and seemingly endless cycle of protection and disappointment, he could not leave. Where would he go, after all? The monster only ever existed within the little girl’s realm, and he would never abandon her to the horrors of the Monsters outside of his home.

As per usual, the little girl was cowering beneath her threadbare quilts, shivering, though due to cold or fear, the monster could not discern. He was about to leave the solitude of his home when one of the Monsters burst into the room and surrounded the space with piercing sounds of hatred and anger. He shrunk from the Monster, hiding in the darkest corner under the bed as the large creature brought rays and rays of searing light into the room, dissipating his shroud of cover and sending him fleeing for the safety of the dark. When he was sure they were gone, he crept out and searched for the little girl, but in his panic, the Monster had taken her from him, so he waited by the door all night for them to bring her back.

When morning began creeping in through the window and she was not yet returned, the monster began to worry. Suddenly, light flooded into the room once more, singeing away his presence as he escaped back to the eternal black beneath the bed. He was able to come out again when the door slammed shut, allowing nothingness to settle into the air. Much to his delight, the little girl had been returned. He thanked the Monster for bringing her back, but they didn’t acknowledge his gratitude―they never did―as they laid the little girl down on her bed but missed the mattress. As the Monster took its leave once again, he noticed that the little girl’s eyes were leaking. She was shaking with the effort of holding in her sounds, and the monster surrounded her in a sad attempt at comfort. Maybe it worked, for she stayed on the floor for the rest of the dawn, or maybe it was because one of her walking appendages was bent at a funny angle. If he were able to make such a gesture, he would have frowned at it.

In the beginning hours of the morning, the sun began to reach her rays in through the window. He wasn’t sure if the little girl had fallen asleep in those few hours, she had only been still. He wanted to know the things she was seeing through her eyes, he wanted to know the thoughts running through her mind, he wanted to know the amount of pain singing through her tiny body. Mostly, the monster wanted to know these things so he could take them all away and bear the weight of them for her. The monster was reluctant to leave her, but the light was becoming too strong, forcing him into flight.

Once he turned his attention back to the little girl, he could just barely make out that she was looking at him. Oh dear, her eyes were failing both jobs now. Liquid poured freely from her eyes as she silently cried, staring at him in the darkness. He felt selfish for finding joy in that moment, for though the little girl was distressed, her gaze held no fear. The monster sympathized with her, would have wept for her had he a pair of eyes to cry with, but it was the first thing he had taken for himself.

It was then the little girl’s sobs quieted, and a commotion could be heard coming from outside the window. From his place in the receding shadows, he could see a Monster standing on the porch of the house beside them. He had no recollection of them, but the little girl’s attention became focused directly on the window. Now that there was enough light, the monster could see an alarming shade of red around one of her eyes, surrounding the orb so that he could no longer see its blue color. Carefully, the little girl pushed herself up off the floor, crying out when she bore weight down on her crippled leg. Still, she pressed on, and the monster watched as she pain her way towards the window.

Finally, she reached her goal. Slowly, she used her useless appendages to hold herself up, barely tall enough to gaze out the window. Curious, the monster peered down as she raised one shaking limb, slowly pulling together five tiny attachments to tap on the glass. It was then the monster understood―the little girl was reaching out for help. Though he knew Monsters were no good beings, he couldn’t help but marvel in how brave she was. How cowardice he was. He had only ever wanted to protect her, and when she really needed him, all he could do was observe helplessly from the shadows as the little girl, rendered too weak by her struggle to reach the window, tried and failed the catch the attention of a Monster.

The monster had no voice to call out with, no form to aid her plea for help, and he was enslaved by his impervious fear of the light. But even still, the little girl needed help. He might not have been able to grant her it himself, but the monster had been giving and giving and giving to this beloved little girl for as long as he could remember―he couldn’t not give all that he had. Love was funny in the way that he could not have cared less about that fact. All he had ever cared about resided in the space around him, and he wasn’t able to make a difference on any of it. The unfairness of the situation threatened to suffocate him, but he could not even feel the resentment of failure in the satisfying and explosive way that Monsters could. There were so many things he wanted to do, so many things he couldn’t, and the light was too bright, too overwhelming, too much of a risk. What more did he have to give…?

It is very important to note that though he was a monster, he was absolutely nothing like a Monster. He had only ever known the ones who hurt the little girl and violated his home with pain and sadness, but wasn’t that enough reason to hate them? But throughout his years, he had been blinded by his love to the fact that the little girl was a Monster, too, and if he were to standardize the actions two cruel, heartless ones, then the little girl should be equally horrible as well. The monster knew this to be a lie, so maybe, just maybe, the new Monster standing outside the house next to the little girl’s could offer the help the monster would never be able to give. However, if the little girl had any hope of receiving help from the Monster, they would first need to see her, and perhaps the monster could do something about that.

Fear was a rather strange notion to him. In substance, the monster had no body, no mind, no subconscious thought to be afraid of anything, but if there were two things he knew, they were, first, that he loved the little girl, and if he was capable of that, then surely, he was capable of feeling other things. Second, he knew that, as much as he loved the girl, he feared the light, and he had never before been able to differentiate which dominated his principles. His love for the little girl would never falter; she would always be his to protect and cherish in place of the evil Monsters. He was not a brave creature, but he could do one good for the little girl. The thing about fear that he couldn’t possibly have known, though, was that bravery was an equally perplexing thing. The monster was forced to decide what he dreaded most: his fear of the light, or losing the little girl. He knew the answer, and now, he understood that his fears would be the very reason for his bravery, for if one is not at first afraid, then what reason do they have to be brave?

Slowly, the monster stretched across the room, eventually coming to surround the little girl. Then, he began drawing the light into his shadows. The brightness burned and pained him, but even so, he flooded his hiding place with light. The monster knew that darkness was not hope, that it could not provide the security and care to the girl that he desperately wanted to give but had none of, but perhaps he could bring into it into something that could. He didn’t know if his efforts would be enough, but just the slightest change, just the little glimmer of brightness, could potentially make all the difference, and that’s all he needed.

Then, the impossible happened.

The Monster’s head turned as the corner of their eye caught a flicker of light. They were met with the sight of the little girl as she clung to the edges of the window, her face a sad, desperate cry for help. They could see the red color bleeding from one of her eyes, and in their face was horror. The monster witnessed the exchange from a darkened corner of the bedroom, and mourned that he could not do more. It was no matter, though; someone saw her, and the little girl was not alone. (It was enough.) As she crumpled to the floor once more, the Monster from the window leapt into action, pulling something from the pocket of their garments and racing back into their house. (Please, please, let it be enough.)

The monster continued as he had always done, and he watched over the little girl. Not much time had passed before his home was suddenly flooded with piercing sirens and flashing lights of blue and red―Monsters. These ones were foreign, noisy, and had a sort of forlorn, heavyweight tension lodged between them. He could hear heavy footsteps and loud, angry shouting, but could not see beyond the closed door of his home. He hoped that whatever the new Monster’s arrival meant, some part of that would include saving the little girl. If she was safe and he was left with the Monsters, all would be okay.

One of the new Monsters came through the door, but they did not have heavy footsteps or loud, commanding sounds. Their diversity intrigued him; no other had entered his home that wasn’t the Monsters he knew or the little girl. The large creature bent down, whispering comforting noises like ’okay’ and ’help’ and ’safe.’ The little girl was lifted by the Monster’s useless appendages and held close in a way the other Monsters never did (in a way the monster had always wanted but would never be able to). The monster did not have eyes to fail him, but oh, how he wished he did, for while the little girl could regularly shed her sadness in the form of liquid anguish, he had no way of releasing his mourning and thus was doomed to drown in his own sorrow. He pleaded with the Monster to take care of the little girl, and he swore she sent him a timid smile as her singular gaze bore into the darkness where he resided. He caught it gingerly as they walked out.

He didn’t keep track of the days after that, merely floated through his existence in a bleak turmoil of a mess of emotions he could never fully access. He did not imagine the little girl would ever come back, and so was elated when the familiar creak of the door alerted him to the arrival of a Monster. The little girl came in, accompanied by a nice-looking Monster. Before that night, he had not known that such a thing existed, but he was happy that the little girl had found herself an abundance of them. She wobbled on four legs, and extra set of strange silver, mechanical contraptions protruding from beneath her useless appendages and seemingly aiding her step. There was a ring of white surrounding her head, covering the blue eye that had been damaged. Her remaining one was dry, and he wondered if it was the second one’s presence that rendered them both incapable of withholding her liquid pain and sadness, for her remaining eye was failing at the job it tended to be better at. The monster’s house had been stripped clean, so he wasn’t quite sure why she had returned. He supposed that though there weren’t many things the little girl could call her own, the room itself had been her home just as much as it was his.

(The monster did not know much in the way of Monster customs, and so did not know how to say ‘hello.’ Perhaps this was to his advantage, as that meant he also did not know how to say ‘goodbye.’)

The pair didn’t stay for very long. The little girl began to walk out with the other Monster, and she still had not looked at him. He wished he had sounds to release, but he did not, and because he did not want the little girl to leave quite yet, he gathered up what little courage remained in him and stretched out one more time, just a tiny bit, into the light. The action distressed him once more, and he could only leave the cover of shadows for a moment or two. It must have been enough, for she turned back, setting her remaining eye to the darkness beneath the bed. The little girl was still wobbling on four legs, but she saw him staring back at her and paused. It must be that the absence of one enhanced her eye’s abilities. If this was so, he hoped the other one remained astray; dry-eyed and fearless was a good look for the little girl. He waved, and the monster watched as she raised one of her useless appendages, grinning and waving at him before she turned and hobbled out, leaving the room and the monster behind. For the third time, a Monster took the little girl away from him, but this time, he knew that it was the last. He supposed that it was a good thing his prognosis would prove correct, for the room was never the little girl’s home in the way it was the monster’s, and he was glad she would never return. As much as he loved her, he realized that little girls must eventually leave behind their monsters for good.

It was not a ‘thank you’ the monster desired after all the years he spent watching over her. He loved the little girl and protection came free, and he never dared to hope for her love in return. He knew that he was not capable of receiving the sentiment, after all, who could love a creature devised solely to be afraid of? A figment of a young imagination running amok? No, the monster knew better than to hope for love, but what he did allow himself to desire was the one thing the little girl had left him with. The monster held on to the little girl’s final gaze, a gift in and of itself, for in it held no fear. The acknowledgement that he had been there all along, that he was not the monster to fear―was not even a monster to begin with―was all he had ever wanted. With that gaze, a tiny seed had been planted in her mind with the potential to one day flower the speculation that, though he was thought into existence with the given purpose of terrifying the little girl, perhaps he had instead morphed into a symbol of companionship throughout her many years of quiet suffering. For the longest time, he held onto the belief that the little girl nurtured the seed and eventually grew up to believe in it.

Company was a novelty the monster never experienced again, but he would always remember the moment he was able to truly do something for the little girl. She had reached out for help, and even though the monster had not been able to give it himself, by some miracle, he had been able to reach out as well and gain it for her. The monster never reached out again, for he had no more need to, and when, many years later, he receded into the darkness, he folded in upon himself and did not return. Wherever she was, the little girl was no longer in need of a monster beneath her bed, nor any monsters ever again, and so, his purpose was served. He had no mouth to smile with―instead, he filled his thoughts with memories of the little girl, and it was more than enough.

Fin.