To Love a Monster
by Victorya
T |
he Great Slaughter happened when I was a baby. There’s no better name for it I guess; that’s what it was. That’s what my father called it. He was always appalled at what we’d done, we being humanity.
“Bleeding heart liberal!” my mother would scream when he got into the sadness of it all. “Remind me again why the hell I married you.” And then she’d throw something and it would shatter and we’d all scurry, we being my brother, father, and me. My father would try to calm her down sometimes. I like to remember him as trying, before he walked out the door to go watch a movie or something, leaving Johnny and me to bear our mother’s wrath.
The gist of the Great Slaughter, as I learned later in school, was that all of a sudden cephalopods fell like rain. We’d heard of it raining cats and dogs, but never some squid-like things. They weren’t really squid, weren’t octopi— didn’t really even need to live in water. They landed on cars and slammed through roofs and broke branches off of trees as they barreled from the sky and everyone, well, they pretty much freaked. And it happened in the span of an hour.
Then it happened again a week later.
People went out with shovels to bash in the brains of those things. They got into their cars and ran the cephalopods over, smooshing them into the asphalt and pavement. Everything was covered with cephalopod guts.
Scientists urged people to stop, to capture them as ‘specimens’ and the like. The cephalopods were studied and believed to be of alien origin. They had no biological similarities to our cephalopods save for the outward appearance. They had beaks on the underside, which was a soft peach or white, three big round eyes with pupils that responded to light, and from five to nine tentacle-like appendages that were used for movement and to feed themselves. The scientists found out they really liked marshmallows.
I have no idea how they found that out, but that’s what I learned in my fifth grade science class. “Cephies (as they are now commonly called) have an omnivorous diet consisting mainly of small rodents, insects, and vegetables and are known to have a fondness for marshmallows.” That’s what the Science of Life book said.
Cephies. I’ve known of them since forever. After the initial fear and slaughter ended people found out they were useful. They didn’t grow big, like large cats is all. They became a staple in any country household, even better than cats at keeping the rats away. Cephies were intelligent too, not enough to threaten humans (so says the Science of Life) but enough that they could be easily trained.
Shelters overflow with them.
But my mother didn’t believe in Cephies. “They ain’t right,” she said. “We should be killing them all. They’re some beacon or other such shit. Just lulling us in, then the mother ship will come and we’ll be the pets, you see.” If she caught my dad rolling his eyes when she said that, it would be another rough night.
Of course, our mom, she just wasn’t much for loving anything, be it alien or her own family. I just don’t think she knew how. She couldn’t hug without pinching, demanded kisses and our devotion in return for the basic necessities of life. My father took it in stride until his strides took him away. I like to think he wanted to take my brother and I with him. Wasn’t I daddy’s little girl? He never said I was, not really. He said my hair was too long once. “Eugenia,” he said, drawing me close to him. I stared up at his red stubble of a beard. “Eugenia, we really have to do something about that rat’s nest of a do you’ve got going. You really need a haircut, don’t you?” And I hugged him and he acted surprised. My dad also told me to respect life. He said I needed to find meaning in things. He said I needed to believe that there was good in the world, and that in the end everything always turned out for the best.
My brother was older than me. He was twelve to my ten. He knew more than I did. “Dad never loved us,” he told me one night as we sat under blankets eating bagels we had secreted away from the kitchen. Once again we had been denied dinner for not showing our mother how much we loved her. “We probably aren’t even his.”
That night I woke up to a towering figure roaring into my room. It grabbed me by my hair that was too long and pulled me out of bed. As I bounced across the floor I hit something soft, something warm – my brother. He was screaming and crying and fighting to get out of what turned out to be my mother’s other hand. She dragged us through the house and threw us in the shower. The more we tried to get out the more she hit us to get us back in there as she doused us with Clorox and turned on the cold water. We couldn’t cry out because the bleach would get in our mouths. It burned through our eyelids. I couldn’t see, but could feel the warmth of blood dripping. I wasn’t sure if it was mine or my brother’s as we lay there huddled against each other for warmth.
She had found out about the bagels.
The next morning our mother came into the bathroom where Johnny and I sat still huddled, shivering, almost blue with cold. “You Silly Billy’s,” she said, tousling our hair. Strands of my brown locks mixed with the water and snaked down my limbs. “Why are you still here? Come on, get dressed. I made pancakes. Peanut butter, your favorite.
We didn’t go to school that day. She took us to the movies instead. Then we went to McDonald’s and she got us each a Happy Meal even though we were too old.
The next day we went back to school. When my teacher asked me where I was I said like Johnny told me, that I was sick and my mother forgot to write a note. My teacher eyed me suspiciously, like she likes to do, and during recess she took me aside to talk to me.
“Eugenia,” she said, “you know sometimes when kids are in trouble they can talk to their teachers. We realize why kids do stuff, like wear long sleeve shirts even on hot days, that they do it to hide stuff.” I did have bruises and cuts on my arms, not that I’d tell her. I told her that I was fine and could I go play now and when she said yes I ran all the way to the back fence of the playground to count the links in the chain like I liked and I found a Cephie.
It was small, maybe the size of a tiny mouse. The sun glinted off its big purple eyes, its pink skin was all dry and dull. At first I thought it was dead but when I crept closer I heard a noise like a purr. I didn’t know Cephies purred. I touched it, and it wasn’t slimy or anything. Then I wondered if it was sickly out there all alone and then I wondered if I could help and then I picked it up and it kind of snuggled against my hand, trying to wrap tiny tentacles around my fingers and I slipped it into my pocket.
Then I went to the water faucet and splashed water on my hand and slipped my hand in my pocket and felt for the little Cephie and hoped water was enough to save it.
All the rest of the school day I couldn’t think about the way the Europeans sailed around the world or how the multiplication tables worked or even which colors you need to make orange, and art was my favorite class. All I could think about was the little Cephie in my pocket and slipping out to splash water on it as much as teacher would allow.
I named it Charles.
When I got home I was scared my mother would find Charles and squish him. But, she wasn’t home yet and Johnny wasn’t home yet either so I let myself in with the butter knife Johnny hid in the backyard for the times our mother forgot to be home before us. It slid easily down the window in the back so we could open it and crawl in. I was careful not to hurt Charles as I climbed through the window.
Charles was my secretest of secrets. I’d bring him down to the creek behind the house whenever I could get away and talk to him about everything. I told him of Sally at school, the girl my brother liked who told me that I was a little ragamuffin and who was my brother to think she could ever like someone like him. I told Charles how mad I got when I saw the look on my brother’s face when she told him the same thing. I told Charles of my dad and how I like to think he tried and was still trying. That he was going to help Johnny and me. And sometimes I’d start to cry and tell him through sobs how my dad had to be right, that there had to be something better, there had to be a reason I had a father who ran away and a mother who couldn’t love me no matter how hard I tried. That’s when Charles would hum the loudest and look at me with those big purple eyes of his and wrap himself around my fingers and, as he grew, around my wrist.
Once, he reached a tentacle out to my face as I cried and I wasn’t the least bit scared. He was my Charles. He just wanted to catch a tear. He was humming a pretty song but when he caught my tear he skipped a note. That’s the first time that happened.
Charles grew bigger fast and it got harder to sneak him out. But we still went down to the creek or I’d take him to the big field near my house where dad used to take Johnny and me to play Frisbee and eat ice cream while it melted down our cones and stickied our fingers. Charles liked the field; he’d run around and catch stuff. Bugs mostly. I liked watching his tentacles move as he grabbed at the crickets and flies. When he was done running he’d come over to me and nibble on the grass, taking it up in his tentacles and putting it in his beak like I’d seen the elephants do on the filmstrip at school.
My Charles was smart too. Sometimes I’d do my homework out there, lying in the grass as the sun heated my neck and my back. Charles would play with my hair, gentle like, taking a lock in his tentacles and throwing it up for the breeze to catch. I’d read my books out loud and taught him all about what the Science of Life said about Cephies, and I know he understood me. I taught him my math tables, and he taught me how to sing and we’d both be out there in the sun singing.
My teacher took me aside one recess and asked how things were at home because she saw me smile more and I said no better no worse can I go play now?
Around four in the morning, I think it was four, my eyes were gummed and screaming woke me up. I was dragged out of bed by my arm and into the car before I knew what happened. I fell asleep in the back seat, not even wondering what was wrong I was so tired. The screams and bumps were just natural to me. The ride ended at the hospital.
We were there well into the day as my mother explained again and again about my brother’s fall down the stairs and that’s how he broke his arm and the bruises had to be from that too.
We were there when her story changed into him falling off his bike because some bullies dared him to jump at night and he shouldn’t have done it now, should he?
We were there well into the afternoon as my mother explained to the social worker just how hard it is to control such willful children being a single parent and all thanks to a no-good husband who walked out. A nurse took me aside. She was nice and clean and smelled like hospital. She took me to the cafeteria and bought me a grilled cheese sandwich and asked me questions. I already knew the answers to these questions. “I love my mom, she does her best, we just get into a lot of accidents because we’re active,” I said between bites. The cheese was still gooey; I liked it that way. I dipped the chips in the side of the sandwich to scoop out the cheese, its vibrant orange enticing me. The nurse smiled and asked if I had a pet. I wanted to talk about Charles, about how we sing together, about how when I try to do my homework and he wants to play he takes my pencil away, about how he can hide right on the ceiling in my closet. Instead I said no, can I go be with my brother now please? And she bought me two cookies – one for me and one for Johnny and gave me a card to call if I ever wanted to talk more.
Johnny, he started acting different after that night. I guess he learned something I didn’t. He started rocking our mom in the rocking chair when she was tired. He started singing to her, “Someone’s rocking my dreamboat,” in his crackling tired voice and she’d laugh and smile and reach up a hand to grab his. He started telling her that she was the bestest mommy in the world. He actually said it, bestest.
“Just do it too,” he told me only once. “Please. Please Eugenia, it’s the only way.”
But I couldn’t love a monster, even if in pretend. Now when I cried to Charles, I had more to talk about. About how my brother wouldn’t help me sneak bagels anymore and told on me when I did, even if it was to give him one and crawl under the blankets like we used to. And Charles, he’d look up at me with those big purple eyes and he’d sing. He took to snuggling closer to me, not just on my finger or wrist. He was as big as a cat and he’d crawl on my chest and I’d hug him and cry and he’d reach up a tentacle and his song would miss notes with each tear that fell. He didn’t hide in his box anymore, mainly under the bed or the roof of the closet and he’d sneak out at night and sleep with me, humming his Cephie lullabies in my ear as his tentacles played with my hair. I think he spoke to me at night too, in his language of comfort.
When Johnny called me into his room I felt that maybe he’d relearned what I knew, that pretending a monster’s your mom doesn’t mean it is, that moms know how to hug their kids in such a way that the child believes the world is good. That moms love their kids even if they leave spots on the dishes and moms don’t break all the dishes instead. I hoped I had my Johnny back.
“Do you love mom?” he asked me. I didn’t answer. “Do you love her?” he pressed.
I eyed my brother very carefully.
“Listen,” he sighed, coming closer. “Just tell me if you love her. I need to know. You love me, right?”
I was silent.
“You don’t love me?”
Tears began to fill my eyes. I didn’t know what to do or say. I wanted him back, but had no idea why he was asking me these questions.
“You don’t love me?” he asked again, his face pleading.
“Of course I love you, you’re my brother!” I blurted out.
My brother smiled, a real smile, one I hadn’t seen in a while. “So, do you love mom?” he asked again.
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