Christopher Golden - The Monster’s Corner - Stories Through Inhuman Eyes

“No,” he said. “The other one.”

After they’d kissed, Kerry watched him go into his building. He looked surprised, and disconcerted, and cautiously happy, as he had for most of the last week. Just before he disappeared into the elevator, he winked. She winked back.

Then she turned to look across the busy street, at the woman who looked exactly like her, who was still holding her camera and staring at her, still openmouthed. The plane-bedraggled Kerry. The can’t-say-yes Kerry, the Kerry who seemed intent on pushing happiness beyond her own reach, the Kerry who demanded perfection from the world and was unable to understand that contentment is a matter of choice. The Kerry who’d made her own bed, by leaving enough room for someone else to slip into her place, an alternative who’d been waiting a long, long time.

Kerry hoped that other Kerry had enough clothes in her shoulder bag to last a while, because the flat she thought she was returning to had been vacated two days after she flew to America, its contents thrown away or given to charity or moved into Richard’s place in Islington. There would be changes to be made there, too, in time. Richard wasn’t perfect. He would never be. But he’d get closer. Under her guidance. With her love. Nobody gets perfect, ever. But they can get enough.

Kerry raised her hand and waved. She tried not to smile as she did so, or to feel too pleased with herself, but found it impossible. The woman on the other side of the street deserved this, after all. She ought to be happy, really. She’d wanted something different.

She’d got it now.

[AUTHOR’S PREFATORY NOTES: Did you know that, according to Roman scholar and writer Marcus Terentius Varro (116 B.C–27 B.C.), the word monstrum was not derived, as Cicero insisted, from the verb monstro, “to show” (comparable to the English “to demonstrate”), but, rather, came from moneo: “warning.” Isn’t that interesting, and somewhat ironic in a ham-fisted sort of way, considering the circumstances under which you’re reading this? I certainly thought so. And I did not know that until I inherited this job that I neither asked for nor wanted. More on that later.

[A few other tidbits you might find useful before we get to the bulk of this. I had to argue like you wouldn’t believe to get them to agree to add the “Faux” before “Manifesto.” What they dictated to me isn’t so much a manifesto as it is a collection of (albeit deadly serious) grievances and gripes, as well as little-known or conveniently forgotten historical facts, definitions, and more than a few parables. They’d originally wanted to call this their (I kid you not) “Monsterfesto,” and I — still not appreciating the gravity of the situation — immediately laughed and said, “That is so lame !” It cost me one of my cats. They didn’t just zap him into another dimension or have some banal beastie saunter in and gobble him down in a single gulp, no; they gave him instantaneous doses of full-blown end-stage feline leukemia and AIDS and made me sit there and watch him die. It took two and a half days. He kept trying to crawl to the water bowl. They would not let me move him closer so he could at least get a cool drink. They wouldn’t even let me hold him so he could die in the arms of someone who loved him. All I could do was watch as he struggled toward the water and wheezed and then coughed up, excreted, and pissed blood, all the time looking at me with frightened, confused, and ever-yellowing eyes as he made this soft mewling sound that after about twelve hours began to sound like “… help …” to my ears. When at last Ruben finally died — that was his name, by the way, Ruben — it was in a series of sputtering little agonies punctuated by painful seizures that I thought would never end. And if you found that hard to read, imagine how I felt having to sit there and watch it happen, completely powerless to ease even an iota of his suffering.

[And do you know why I was powerless to do anything? Because if I had tried to do something, they would have done the same thing to the rest of my family, one at a time, and I would have been the sole member of the audience to their excruciatingly torturous deaths, and I’ve got plenty of memories to give me nightmares for the rest of my life; have had plenty since I was a kid. Not looking to add to that particular collection, thank you very much. I don’t have much of a family left, and what family I still do have rely on government-issued food cards to buy their monthly groceries and still have to skip breakfast and eat macaroni and cheese for dinner three times a week while worrying over which utility bills can be skipped until next month, all the time praying to a God they have less and less faith actually exists that no one gets sick. So I had no choice but to watch Ruben die, and I had no choice but to accept this assignment and become their go-between.

[Here are the terms to which we finally agreed: 1) Unless I felt strongly that some clarification needed to be made, I was to transcribe everything precisely as dictated to me, more or less; any variation, even in punctuation, would result in their doing a Ruben on one of my remaining family members (this threat, though unspoken, remained the constant epilogue to every clause of our agreement); 2) If I did feel strongly that some clarification needed to be made, I had to make my argument in a courteous and respectful manner, but give them final say on whether or not it remained in the manuscript; so if in some section things seem rather abrupt or a bit helter-skelter, not my fault; 3) I had to agree to include at least three personal accounts of encounters with beings of their kind, regardless of how silly they sounded or uncomfortable they made me (or potential readers) feel; and 4) Upon reaching the end of this project, even if I still hated them for what they did to Ruben and threatened to do to what little family remains to me, I must make it sound as if I have sympathy, understanding, and compassion for them; fine by me, I can lie on paper with the best of them … just as long as I don’t have to claim any form of affection for them. They’re here, they’re not going anywhere, they don’t give a tinker’s damn if you believe in them or not (it won’t stop them from going Ruben on your ass), and … oh, yeah, by the way: They are not happy with us.

[ So very not happy with us. The title of this piece should have given you a subtle hint as to the depth and breadth of their unhappiness with us.

[I would, however, completely out of context for reasons that are my own but that I hope you’ll eventually pick up on, like to paraphrase a line from the film version of The Exorcist for the benefit of my own conscience: I may mix some lies in with the truth, and truth with the lies.

[As to the matter at hand … it’s after midnight; time to let it all hang out.]

A

is for Abomination; it is also for Aberration, Abhorrent, Abortion, Atrocity, Awfulness, and several other words beginning with the first letter of the alphabet in many different languages, all of which — whether you can spell or pronounce them or not — amount to the same thing: Omigod, look at that ugly fuckin’ thing, somebody kill it quick! Many of these beings (which have feelings that are easily hurt, believe it or not) struggle up through Stygian depths yet to be imagined, let alone discovered, by paleoseismologists (who’d be the group to first find the traces) to get here; others cross time, space, dimensions, and take dangerous shortcuts through the multiverse in their attempts to make friendly contact. And what do they get for this? At the very least, they get called all sorts of hurtful names. One of them explained it to me in these terms: “Imagine driving way out of town to your family’s home for Christmas. You’re driving through a blizzard — we’re talking real Second Ice Age, Big Freeze stuff here, right? A drive that should have only taken thirty minutes takes you damn near three hours, but you finally get there. You’re exhausted, you’re starving, your bladder’s the size of a soccer ball, but the sight of the warm holiday lights within your family’s home makes it all worthwhile. You head up to the door, your arms filled with all these great, terrific, really killer boffo presents, and you let yourself inside, all smiles and Christmas greetings for everyone, filled with the spirit of the season — I mean, it may as well be the final scene of It’s a Wonderful Life. First thing that happens — your grandmother takes one look at you, her eyes roll back in her head, and she drops dead from the terror. Then the children as one scream in horror, shit their pants, and run for the basement. Your mother grabs a carving knife the size of a machete, Dad fires up the flamethrower he’s had in the downstairs closet since his two tours in Vietnam, and your sister starts hosing the room with a TEC-9. Now, don’t you think that would put a bit of a damper on your disposition? Hmmm …? ”