Blue Monster Eyes

Big girls aren’t afraid of monsters.

That’s what Mommy says, with a smile, whenever Takky talks about the monster. Takky isn’t her real name. It’s what the monster calls her, but even though it’s a monster name, she still likes it better than Angel.

Mommy’s smile is so bright it hurts. And stretched. Takky doesn’t think it matches other people’s smiles, but that’s okay. She’s Mommy. She can smile funny if she wants, because she is The Queen Of Everything.

“You’re a big girl, Angel,” Mommy says. “You’re just imagining things. There is no such thing as a monster under the bed.”

So Takky goes back to her room and turns out the lights by throwing a shoe at the switch from her bed, like always.

I’m here to help you, the monster whispers. They’re going to hurt you, don’t you know? They’re bad.

“They’re not,” Takky whispers. Soft, so Mommy and Daddy won’t hear. “They’re good. You’re the bad one.”

I’m here to help you, it repeats, in a whispery form of communication that really can’t be described as speaking. They’ve been lying to you. Let me show you.

It occurs to Takky for the first time to wonder why it doesn’t just drag her out of her bed. She asks.

Because I’m trapped, it says. They’ve trapped me in your fear. I can’t come out in the light.

Takky doesn’t quite get what it’s saying, which annoys her, because even though she’s only eight she usually understands adults. Either other adults are really dumb, or they’re pretending to be dumb so she feels smarter, or the monster is just way smarter than anyone she knows. The middle option is best- it’s something she can fix.

She gets the basics, though. The bed is safe, and with the lights out, the floor is not.

***

The monster talks less and less as she gets older. It seems to be finally realizing that she’s never going to come to it. Never going to give up her safe bed. Never going to forget and put a foot on the floor in the middle of the night when it could grab her.

Takky eventually stops being afraid of it.

Mommy’s smile gets more stretched out every year.

***

“Takky,” Mommy sings as she walks by Takky's room. “Today is your tenth birthday.”

(Two years can feel like an eternity to a child.)

Takky checks that the curtains are open before she climbs out of bed. The monster doesn’t talk anymore. Or skitter out across the floor at night. But Takky never looks under the bed skirt and she knows it’s still there. Habits are difficult to break.

But it’s her birthday, so she gets out of bed.

Happy birthday, Takky. The liquid voice creeps out from under the bed like an oil slick and up into her ears. Takky shakes her head hard. She had almost forgotten the sensation. It isn’t as unpleasant as she remembers, just… different.

“Why are you talking now?” she asks quietly, hunting for her favorite socks. They are green with blue and orange polka dots, and fuzzy, perfect for February birthday girls.

To warn you. It’s your birthday. They’re going to use you today.

“Who are?” Takky asks, even though she knows. The monster always warns her about the same thing.

Sure enough: Your parents. Except they’re not really your parents.

Takky ignores this, pulls on her left sock, and continues looking for the other. “What do you look like?”

It is a question that has haunted her for years. She thinks that seeing the monster will make it better. Or worse. 

Lift the bedskirt and see.

She eyes the bedskirt, one foot in a sock and the other on the cold wood floor, still wearing her pilled Cinderella pajama pants and her Girl Power T-shirt that she sleeps in. The bedskirt has been on the bed for as long as she can remember. It’s a prison holding the monster in.

But not really. The monster said it was light that kept it hidden, not the skirt.

She grabs the finger-pointer-on-a-stick that she got at the book fair last year and huddles over on the floor, reaching out and lifting the bedskirt.

The monster looks back at her.

It is not at all like she imagined.

There is no gaping mouth full of gnashing teeth. There are no beady red eyes or claws or fangs. The monster is- legs.

That’s all Takky can see. All of its legs. Long and black and glistening, like beetle shells, and sinister. She claps her free hand to her mouth and watches them move as it turns. There is a weird logic to the movement, like it should be stumbling and tripping over itself but barely avoids collisions and leg tangles at the last second, over and over again. 

She can’t see a pattern but she knows one is in there somewhere.

Its body is long and hard like its legs- the monster looks kind of like a giant insect. Its head is bulbous but not large, with quivering antennae and two brilliantly blue human eyes.

Takky shivers as the eyes meet hers. If it weren’t for the rest of it, she could be looking at her own eyes in the mirror-

They’re going to eat you, Takky, the monster says, and this time, she hears the urgency in its voice. The honesty.

“You’re not lying, are you?” she whispers, looking at her own eyes in the monster’s face.

No. I have never lied to you.

What are you?

I am you.

Takky pauses. That can’t be right. She talked in its voice. The same weird, oozy, drippy voice. And the monster can’t be her. That’s ridiculous.

But maybe it thinks it is. She nods her head. That makes more sense. It’s like the play-pretend games in the park, when she plays a fairy for so long that she almost believes she is one until Mommy comes to take her home. Of course the monster has pretended to be a girl like Takky. Why would it want to look like a bug?

You won’t hurt me. Will you?

No. I’ve never wanted to hurt you.

Come out.

I can’t.

I can help you.

Takky reaches out, takes a deep breath, and extends her hand under the bed.

The monster slowly, slowly, puts its own sharp-edged foot forward, and places it in her palm.

It’s cool and hard, and not slimy at all, like she was half expecting.

Come out.

I can help you.

Takky draws the monster, one leg at a time, out from under her bed.

It stands in her room. It’s not all that tall. The same height as Takky, actually, a fact which pleases her to no end. (Ten-year-olds, after all, consider it quite an accomplishment to be taller than another child.)

She stands facing the monster, looking at her blue eyes in its black and mouthless face.

What are you?

She isn’t really expecting a different answer.

I’m your strength.

Why did you stay under the bed all the time? Doesn’t the light hurt you?

It was never the light. It was always our fear.

Our fear.

Takky takes the monster’s hand and turns to look at the mirror.

They stand there, side by side, identical eyes looking out of such different bodies. Takky gets a sudden urge to turn and hug the monster.

It’s not an easy hug. There are too many legs in the way, and its body is hard- not at all like the soft way Mommy and Daddy’s bodies curve to fit hers when she hugs them. But it feels just as right.

Takky closes her eyes.

The monster dissolves, not slowly but all at once, spreading over her skin and sinking, sinking. She thinks that its blackness will stain her skin but it doesn’t. It sinks into her and fades like the Crayola marker drawings she did on the back fence, slipping away until it’s gone.

Takky breathes. The monster was right. It was her all along. She can feel it inside her now- a small shape hiding deep inside, echoing her movements. She can feel its anger, its fear, and suddenly she knows why it was always so afraid of Mommy and Daddy.

Mommy with her stretched-out smile and shivered eyes.

Daddy with his looming shoulders and his voice that makes her teeth ache.

But they’re Mommy and Daddy. They wouldn’t hurt her.

Suffused with the monster’s doubt and trying to hide it, Takky goes downstairs and climbs into her place at the kitchen table, looking for Mommy and the skillet they always use for Birthday Pancakes With Chocolate Chips. But there is no skillet and no pancake mix, and Mommy is smiling a more stretched-out smile than ever. It seems to take up half her face.

Takky smiles back and takes a drink of water, while inside her, the monster-figure grows.

“Mommy,” she says. “Where are the pancakes?”

“We’re doing something a little different today, dear,” Mommy says vaguely. Takky sees that, for some reason, there is a tarp spread across the floor on the other side of the kitchen island, between the sink and the oven. It crinkles when Mommy steps across it to pick up something sharp from the sink.

“David,” Mommy calls, her dark, dark eyes never leaving Takky’s. “David, come down, it’s time. Our meal is finally old enough.”

Meal.

Old enough.

Inside Takky, the monster howls. She can hear it, and it’s the little voice in the back of her head that she ignores. Go go run they’re going to eat you run run-

Takky keeps her face smiling and her blue monster eyes blank, but the she thinks it’s true. She’s ten now. She saw on TV that predators like young prey best, because it’s softer and sweeter, but not too young, or they’re too small to be worth it.

“Mommy, what’s for breakfast?” Takky asks. She has to know.

“You,” Mommy says, her smile stretching and stretching until her face splits open. Takky flips off the chair and scrambles backwards as Mommy’s eyes go away and her spine cracks and in the space of a few seconds, she doesn’t look very human anymore. She’s too tall and too angled and her arms have too many elbows and and her nails are too sharp and long, like claws.

That’s when Takky knows that Mommy is the real monster.

Her monster is huge inside her now, flailing its many legs, looking out of its eyes in Takky’s face with anger, fear, panic.

Takky steps forward as Mommy shrugs out of her human skin and grabs the knife out of Mommy’s hand and shoves the shining blade into Mommy’s chest.

Mommy lets out an unearthly shriek that Takky’s monster echoes, except Mommy is shrieking in pain and rage and the Takky-monster is shrieking with relief. Takky feels the monster growing still and pulls out the knife and stabs it back in, and again, feeling the monster’s strength surging in her arms.

Mommy falls to the floor in a pool of black blood.

Takky looks upstairs. She can hear Daddy-monster scrambling around, roaring with rage, his voice now a hundred times worse than it was before. Her teeth hurt and her bones ache.

Clutching the knife, Takky runs outside and into the snowy woods around their cabin.

The Takky-monster is full-size now, living just inside her skin. Takky can feel that it’s as big as she is now. That the monster’s edges are indistinguishable from her own. Somehow she and the monster are the same thing, and she looks down at the black liquid on the blade of the knife and on her hand and spattered down her front, and smiles.

She is ten years old. She’s a big girl. She’s not afraid of monsters anymore.

Because I am one.