Work Text:
Milo’s best friend Melissa wants to be a monster keeper. Although he bets that once he tells her how horrid they really are, she won’t want to anymore. But she did want to be, and she always talked about it. He sat with her and they flipped through books, some of which had cartoon pictures and were easy to understand, and some which were thick with real pictures and lots of big words. Then they would play at being monster keepers with Melissa’s many, many toy monsters.
So Milo knows exactly what monster keepers are supposed to do. And these keepers are doing it wrong.
Monsters get special rooms or pens (inclosures?) that are big enough for them to run around in, and fit their environment. Well, his room was really big before. But it was empty, and white, and it had nothing in it. And now he’s stuck in a cage, which he hates. And it’s so small, he definitely can’t run around in it.
He rattles the bars. One of the keepers kicks at the cage. “Bad jinx!”
They are feeding him now, which is it’s own problem. He has a bowl, for food, and a jug, for water. He is supposed to move away from the door while they’re filling them, so he can’t try to run or attack the keepers. He tries to argue, but the keeper starts threatening and eventually he just moves. He sits at the back, scrunched up and small, watching as a crumbly lump of… something is placed in his bowl.
Monsters get food which is healthy for them, and which they will enjoy. He doesn’t enjoy that food. It tastes gross, it’s crumbly, and he has to eat it with his hands. There is nothing wrong with the jar of water, exactly, but it will inevitably get warm as it sits there all day. Probably all day. He doesn’t have a clock, so he guesses that he is fed once a day.
And the water will spill (Murphy’s Law, he can be sure of that), and crumbs will get everywhere. And he can’t leave the tiny cage. So it gets messy, and smelly. He hates it. He tries to keep it as clean as possible, but what can he do? He has no space.
The keepers complain about that. “You’d think after it was kept by humans for years, it would be able to keep itself clean.”
“I don’t have any space!” Milo tries to defend himself. It’s safer to stay quiet, but he can’t just sit and be docile and let them treat him like this. He’s a person, and he wants them to realise that. He wants to remind himself of that.
“Shut up, jinx.” Someone else snaps. He shrinks back. He didn’t used to be scared of people, but the keepers are scary.
Alone again. He is so bored. He lies back and looks up the ceiling, through the bars. If his mom was here, she would call it a miracle. “A Murphy, bored?” He mutters it to himself, managing a smile at the thought. Murphys are never bored. If they manage to be bored for five seconds, a meteor appears to fix that.
But Milo spends all day, every day sitting in a cramped cage. He is bored.
He remembers the special word Melissa used for monsters doing fun stuff. Something about being rich? That doesn’t make much sense. He sits for a long time, trying to remember. Eventually, he lands on the word. Enrichment. Why can’t they give him some of that?
In-rich-mint
Is that right? He doesn’t know. He spells it out again anyway, this time out loud. “I, N, R, I, C,H,M,I,N,T.”
He tries spelling some more words. “M-I-L-O, M-U-R-P-H-Y, L-A-W, D-A-N-G-E-R, M-E-L-I-S-S-A, M-O-M, D-A-D, B-A-C-K-P-A-C-K, S-A-R-A…”
“What are you doing?” A keeper. He jumps, he didn’t even realise that they came in.
“Playing.” Milo offers.
“That’s what it considers playing? And it wants us to think that it’s human?” The keepers all titter. “That’s so weird!”
Milo winces. They are teasing and rude, which would never have bothered him before (he certainly got teased at school), but bothers him now. “If you gave me toys, I would play with those.”
“Anything you are given, you use it to try and escape. You can’t be trusted.” The keeper says, in a ‘no-Diogee-you-can’t-scratch-your-healing-wound’ sort of tone, a lecturing tone. He really wants his dog. Diogee would snuggle in his lap and lick his face, and everything would feel better.
“I couldn’t use a cuddly toy to break out.” Milo tries. Something to hug might give him a drop of the comfort that he so desperately needs. Something other than his thin, admittedly not entirely clean blanket.
“You’d find a way. Especially since you’re asking for it, you clearly have some sort of plan.” The keeper taps on the bars. Milo has no plans. Not anymore. He is still hopeful, but he hasn’t concocted a daring escape using a teddy bear. He just wants a toy, a hug, something to do. And the keepers refuse him it.
But they don’t seem angry, so he risks an attempt to satisfy his niggling question. “How do you spell enrichment?”
“Why do you want to know that?”
“I can’t remember. I think you spell it I-N-R-I-C-“
The keeper cuts him off with a bark of laughter. “God, and it’s stupid! Isn’t this thing supposed to have human level intelligence?” She rattles the bars, spooking him. “Just shut up, you’re embarrassing yourself.”
Milo does shut up, shrinking as far away from the keepers as possible. These ones generally don’t hurt him, but they are cruel verbally.
Thats the bit he hates most. It’s worse than the tiny cage, the horrible food, the gross conditions, the boredom. The keepers are horrible. They tease him, insult him, hurt him. Kick at him and hit him, throw him around. He is always in pain, always frightened. And he can’t get away from him.
They don’t treat him like a human. They won’t listen when he tries to explain that he is a human, and his name is Milo, and he isn’t trying to hurt anyone. And that’s bad enough.
But they won’t even treat him like monsters are supposed to be treated.