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Monster watches me from its spot on the floor and stares. It stares at me as if I am an exotic bird that It is afraid to touch and so settled on just watching. I scratch at the walls of the room it caged me in. I pull and bite the chain binding my ankles. I go from screaming at it to begging it to just let me go. It doesn’t listen. It never listens. The Monster is silent until one day it isn’t. It grabs at my shoulders, forces my mouth open and raises the scissors dangling from its hands to my mouth. I stopped eating after that. I also no longer hope that someone will hear my screams for I can’t hear them myself. When I finally feel the hands of my monster wrap around my neck, I feel my lips shape the word ‘why?’ It doesn’t answer. It never answers.
They found my body two weeks later wrapped in silk lying on a bed of sticks and flowers in the Blue Gum forest. My face is done up with make-up and flowers have been entwined into my hair. My eyes are closed; it fabricates the illusion that I am sleeping and not dead. A man with pale skin and sharp features appears and I can’t help but feel my non-existent breath be taken away. He says amazing, educating things and I wish I didn’t have to be dead to appreciate this extraordinary man. When the tall, broad-shouldered man besides pale one suggests that Monster took my tongue so that even in death I would never be able to speak Monster’s name. I wish to tell him that he is wrong, that it fits but it is not right. Pale man says this too. Pale man explains to tall man that Monster loved me and that Monster thought I loved him too. He says that Monster feels great remorse over my death. I don’t want to believe pale man. I don’t want to believe that maybe monster wasn’t always Monster. I don’t want to believe that Monster became monster because of me.
As the investigation continues, they bring a man in with hard hands and cold eyes. They question him about his preferences. He has horrible tendencies that only someone truly evil could have. They find a body underneath his house. A body of a 12 year old girl. She looks like me. Brown skin and hazel eyes. I briefly wonder if she was scared of her monster too. They find some of my belongings in the back of the man with cold eyes’ house. When it dawns on me for the first time that they truly think that cold eyed man who did it I try to throw a stapler at broad shouldered man's face. Not pale man though. He was too nice and spectacularly clever to even think of doing such a thing. Of course it doesn’t work but when has something worked recently in my life? They will prosecute the wrong man for my death and I will be unable to do anything. As I stand in the Superior Court watching the wrong man be sentenced for my death I feel my dead heart break a little bit more.
Sometimes I watch my monster. I visit the place he imprisoned me in and try to fit the pieces together. He has nightmares I later find out. He gasps and screams in his sleep as white frail hands claw at his throat. I suspect it has something to do with the picture hanging off the wall above the mantelpiece. The one with the cold looking woman and the scared little boy standing next to her. When he is awake he creates words with his hands. I like to watch the hands that ended my life doing such a mundane task. He carries the locket I wore around his neck. It hangs off a silver chain tucked beneath his shirt. He holds it as he cries. Whispers silent soothing words to it. I feel a tug at my heart as I notice the scars lining his arms as scars did mine. He appears so frail for someone capable of so much. I feel fondness for him. A fondness I didn’t think I was capable of feeling for my monster. We share so much yet I find it pathetic that only in death do I truly understand him. I entertain the thought that this must be how Stockholm Syndrome victims feel. Feeling affection towards the one who captured you and stored you away like a bird. Somewhere along the track I realize I don’t want Monster to be caught anymore. It wouldn’t change anything anyway.
The first time I saw the boy on the bench in the playground near my house, I felt the need to talk to him. Mama said not to though and so I didn’t. I tried not to go near the boy with the gray patches on his skin. However, one day mama wasn’t with me. I was running away. I had had enough of the way mama would yell at me for not eating my vegetables. Well, I didn’t need vegetables anyways. Mama could eat all the vegetables she wanted but I was taking no part in it. The boy was on the bench again, so feeling particularly daring I went up to him. “You must like painting,” I whispered, as if it were a secret. A look of confusion crossed his face as well as faint amusement. I puff out my chest and say “I mean I like painting too but I’m not covered in....” I gesture to his body “gray…wait why gray!? Grey is so boring”. At this he starts to laugh. Well he looks like he's laughing but no sound is coming out from his mouth. I peer at him with furrowed brows for a while before I plop down next to him. I tell him that I'm going to talk. That he doesn’t have to say anything, just listen. I tell him that he doesn’t look like a big talker but that’s ok because I like quiet people. He listens to me complain about mama, nods in understanding, makes faces at certain moments and smiles when I laugh at his expression. I voice he should smile more, he writes that he’ll try in the dirt with a stick. I weave flowers in his hair as he does mine. I feel that he’d make a good friend and tell him as much. When I feel my eyes start to droop I say that I should get back to mama, he does a quick nod of agreement. When I leave I call out to him that he should get back to his mama too. He just laughs. I will never see the lonely boy on the bench again. That makes me feel sad.
It’s funny how something that could mean so little to you, could mean so much to someone else.