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Manners maketh man. A common enough expression, if a tad archaic for the average conversation these days. If it's true, however—and there is no reason to dispute it—then what maketh a monster?
Perhaps it is the extra appendages, sinuous and scaled, curling around a wrist, an ankle, a throat. A loving snare, to be certain, but a snare all the same.
But consider the vampire, its form close enough to human, entirely unremarkable until it has already made its rather bloody first impression.
If not that, then perhaps it is the teeth? Piercing, chewing, gnawing, relentless in their pursuit of pleasure, of contentment, of satisfaction. They leave you cold and they leave you warm, missing something and gaining another entirely. To devour is an act of love, after all, and to allow yourself that vulnerability as your wrist, your throat, your heart is torn out and free is a greater gift than any man might fully comprehend.
But there are plenty of monsters whose teeth are only for smiling, who never quite come close enough to touch. They do not bite you even when you beg for it, even when they grow large and sharp with the wanting and the haunting.
The eyes... Surely it must be the eyes? Wide and searching, narrow and calculating, yellow and red and inflamed and all-seeing, flaying you open with nothing more than the knowledge of what you are—and what you aren't. To know and to be known... It is a terrifying ecstasy.
But there are others who are sightless, who walk as confidently through the darkness as man wishes he could in the light. There are those who hunt with tongues tasting the air and nostrils flared, and they will find you no matter what.
There is a certain comfort in that.
But what else is there? Their size, the way they loom over you, their prey, even when you stand at the same height? Their physical presence, smothering all else until they have become the sun you orbit, impossible to tear away from?
But there are small monsters and invisible monsters, ones who work twice as hard to twist your attention to them, and it would hardly be fair to ignore them.
So we come around to the hands, ones that take and take and with that taking form the implements of mutual destruction. To wrap, to squeeze, to choke... These are not wholly monstrous actions, but in them, they tip their hand.
But we are back at the beginning once more. Not all monsters have hands to hold, after all.
In the end, what maketh a monster is simple.
It is whatever doesn't maketh man.