Monsters Pt. I
This isn’t a playground.
It was a place where his shoes squeaked on yellowing linoleum flooring.
You can’t just go wandering around.
Empty, echoing halls were lined with closed doors. All of them closed. Some of them labeled Authorized Personnel Only. The one hall with the big double doors had those symbols on it. Three crescents over a circle. Biohazard.
Stay in my office and don’t touch anything.
It smelled like a hospital but not quite. Hospitals had the smell of life and death struggling with one another. A human smell. But this place smelled like the hospital but without the human smells. Like pure sanitizer and fresh plastic and that subtle burning smell of fluorescent lights. And that was the only sound too. The soft hiss of fluorescent lights and the occasional closing of a door and the occasional squeak of shoes on linoleum.
It was spooky that lack of humanity and Owen couldn’t bear not exploring it.
I’ll only be gone a while. Sit there and work on your homework.
He wasn’t sitting and he wouldn’t be doing his homework. Not on this rare day. The one and only day he had ever been allowed to see the place where his mother worked. He would probably never get another opportunity to enter the building much less explore the lab without parental or adult supervision.
So he walked as quietly as he could. It only helped the squeaking some.
He walked and walked until he was lost in the labyrinth of nondescript halls and closed doors. Some of the doors had long rectangular windows like the doors at his school had. He stood on his tiptoes to peer inside them. They were all dark or had paper covering the windows.
He could see ahead that the hallway was a dead end. One final door and then nothing. It had a window and he could see the light was on in the room. Owen crept closer fearful of what he might see inside. His mind swirled with possibilities of twisted and terrible monsters kept at bay by locked doors for studying and experiments.
He pressed his hands to the door and rose on his tip toes. Someone was in there. A flash of green eyes looking right at him. He ducked back down and threw himself into the hall corner pressing flat against the wall to hide from whatever’s eyes he had looked into.
From behind the wall he could hear the sound of scraping. Something like metal being dragged across the floor. Then it stopped. Something bumped into the door. Trembling he leaned to the side and rolled his eyes up towards the window. Those green eyes again. Like nothing he had seen before. Electric and hungry. Such hungry eyes full of a need he had never witnessed before. He’d never seen desperation before.
He bolted from the wall and started down the hall. He heard the door latch open behind him and a small voice rang out over the sound of his shoes squeaking - “Wait.” A girl’s voice. Timid but crystalline.
He stopped in his tracks and whirled around to face the speaker.
She was standing in the open doorway in a white hospital gown. Skinny tanned legs ended in bare feet that made no sound as she backed towards the safety of her room. She shied away from him pushing at the chair she had brought up to the door to stand on and peak back at him.
He briefly went over the rules his mother had set out for him as he walked back towards that room and the shy girl that watched him fearfully. He hadn’t broke any of them except for wandering around. He already had his excuse ready. He had sought the toilet and got lost. Easy. She had told him not to touch anything. So far he had only touched doors. She didn’t say he was forbidden from speaking to anyone he encountered.
“Hi.” He said standing now at the doorway. He peered inside the sparsely furnished room. A small cot, a plain desk and chair, some white computer paper in a stack on the desk and a 24 box of crayons. There were a pair of blue slippers lined neatly by the wall. Two pictures - drawings in crayon - produced by her probably that were taped to the wall.
The girl was now hidden half behind the door and seemed ready to close it on him.
“I won’t hurt you.” He promised, cocking his head at her. “I’m Owen. My mom works here.”
That made the girl shy even more behind the door. He could no longer see her. Except the tips of her fingers which held the door protectively in front of her body.
“May I come in?” He asked crossing the threshold anyways. He walked right up to the drawings to examine them. They were pretty poor in his estimation. Stick figures only and an underutilization of color. They were both the same stick figure. Self-portraits, he figured, if the boxy white dress and cropped black hair and green eyes were any sign.
He glanced behind him and found the girl watching him attentively from behind the door. So he turned back towards the pictures and made a show of evaluating them carefully. He made a skeptical kind of hum in his chest. He had heard adults at the art museum his parents sometimes dragged him too making such noises when they looked at paintings.
“Not bad.” He concluded and turned back towards her smiling.
“What’s that?” She asked her finger pointing at him.
Owen looked around himself, down at his shoes, and behind his shoulder. “What?”
“That.” She moved from behind the door for the first time letting it go. It swung closed. Quietly latching the children away.
“Me? I already told you, I’m Owen.”
“No. That.” She moved so close that her finger poked his chest.
Owen stared down at his t-shirt with a graphic image of a monster on it. “Oh. That. It’s the Leviathan.” She showed no sign of comprehension. “It’s like a sea monster dragon thingy. Isn’t it cool?”
She frowned at the serpentine monster depicted with a voracious open mouth full of deadly sharp teeth. “Scary.” She concluded.
“It’s just fake.”
“Fake?”
“It’s not real. It’s make-believe.”
“Make-believe?”
“Yeah. From some old stories. Cool old legends. Do you like monster stories?”
She shrugged. Her eyes skirted away from him. “I don’t like monsters.” She fidgeted nervously wringing her hands.
“Not all monsters are bad.” He suggested gently, cocking his head to catch her eyes.
She seemed hopeful that he was telling the truth.
“Look.” He took hold of the chair and dragged it over to the desk and perched himself on it. Owen poured the crayons out from the box using his hands as walls to stop the ones that threatened to roll away. When the colors were still he picked up a piece of paper and began drawing. “I’ll draw you a nice monster. This one is from a story my mom read me about a little boy who accidentally turned himself into a monster because some boys at school were mean to the girl he liked. He pushed the boys and hit them. He was so mad he transformed into a monster and the whole playground turned into a crazy jungle full of scary creatures. The girl ran away into the jungle and got lost because she was scared of him. He eventually found the girl and made her be not afraid anymore and then everything turned back to normal. My mom told me the story is about how sometimes we have to act like monsters when we are trying to do good and defeat something bad. But she said we have to always be careful how we act so we don’t become monsters that can’t stop being monsters. Not all monsters are bad. And not all bad monsters are all bad. Some of them were good once and lost their way. She said it is a met-a-phor? But I don't know what that is.”
The blank page turned into a colorful furry monster with sharp teeth and a big smile. It was surrounded by multi-colored trees and plants and a few other critters. When he was finished, Owen held it up for her. “Ta-da!”
She was silent eyes wide enraptured with the image and the story he had explained.
“Here. You can keep it.” He pushed it towards her.
She shook her head, hiding her hands behind her back. “No.”
“It’s not too scary is it?”
She shook her head. “I’m not allowed.”
“Allowed to have the picture?”
She nodded gazing in shame at her bare toes. “They’ll take it.”
“Who will?”
“My big brother.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
He took a step closer towards her. He reached for her arm tucked behind her back to take her hand. “Is he a monster?”
She nodded. The bottom of her eyes sparkled with tears that welled up threatening to spill down her face. “A bad one.”
“I know what we can do!” He released her hand and moved to her wall of pictures. He pulled down one and carefully peeled the tape from it. He set the picture respectfully on the bed. “We’ll put the tape on this one.” He explained as he fixed his picture with tape. “And we’ll put it under here.” Owen crawled under the desk and pinned the picture to the underside of the desk. “See?”
The girl fell to her knees and crawled under the desk next to him. She stared up at the picture where he had fixed it for her.
“They’ll never know.” He whispered.
She nodded and dared a cautious smile.
“What’s your name?”
“J- J - Julianna.” She whispered stumbling over her own name. Like she hadn’t said it or heard it said in a long time. Like an unpracticed rudiment on a long-neglected instrument.
“Ooooh fancy.” He praised her teasingly. “Juliannaaa.” He tested out the vowels. "Sounds like the fancy name for some hoity-toity queen of a distant land." His hand made a dramatic arc in front of him and he snickered before nudging her with his elbow.
She wasn’t encouraged but stared blankly at the floor.
“Why are you here?”
She shrugged.
“Are you sick?”
Her eyes flashed, angry. “No.” That was the strongest her voice had sounded since she called to him to wait.
“Then why?”
She folded her arms over her chest and huffed before shrugging again.
“I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
“I -” She started and stopped again hands falling away from her defeated.
“What?”
Her hand disappeared into the shadow cast by the desk they sat under. From it she pulled out a plastic unicorn figurine with a rainbow mane and tail and a glittering gold horn.
“Whoa!” Owen exclaimed loudly staring wide eyed at the figurine she held.
“Shhh!” She hushed him pressing a skinny index finger to his lips. She glanced fearfully towards the doorway as if a monster might appear at any moment.
“How did you do that?” He whispered taking the figure from her.
She shrugged.
“So wait - are you - in here because you can do magic?”
Her eyes skirted away from him again. Then her head jerked towards the door and her eyes went wide. “He’s coming.” She whispered.
“What? Who?”
“Big brother!” She had grabbed his arm and her fingers pressed painfully into his skin. “Hide.” She whispered.
“What?”
“Hide!” She pointed towards the bed. “Now!”
The sound of clicking footsteps was now audible to him. Somehow she had heard it or sensed it before he did. Owen scrambled from under the desk and crawled under the bed shoving himself as far back against the wall and into the shadows as possible.
The door opened and Julianna crawled frantically from under her desk to face who ever had entered the room. From his vantage point Owen could only see a pair of shining black business shoes and Julianna’s small bare feet.
“What were you doing under there?” A man demanded.
Julianna only squeaked and stepped away from him.
“Answer me when I ask you a question.”
“I - I - I -” she stuttered. “I spilled my crayons.”
“You spilled your crayons.” His voice though velvety smooth sounded black. Like the absence of light. Like hopelessness.
“Y - yes.” She whispered.
Owen could see her legs trembling.
“Careless.” He spat at her. “You can’t take care of even a simple box of crayons.”
“No - I was -”
He stepped away moving towards the desk. Owen pressed harder against the wall. Holding his breath as much as he could stand it.
A hand reached for a simple round wastebasket. Owen couldn’t see what happened next but he saw it in his mind. The man swept the crayons into the trash along with the stack of paper.
“No!” Julianna shrieked.
“You have lost your coloring privileges.”
“No!” She sobbed and moved towards the man but was knocked down with an awful sounding smack. She was there on the floor, holding her face, curling into a ball as the man crossed the room to the wall where her other picture hung. Owen started to move towards Julianna but she shook her head at him mouthing ‘No.’ He froze hearing the sound of paper being torn. The man took down her other picture and ripped them both.
“Come on. Time to work.” He said.
Julianna didn’t move. She held herself, trembling. She stared at the boy hiding under her bed and mouthed ‘no’ at him again. Telling him to stay put.
“I said move.”
A hand grabbed Julianna’s arm and hauled her to her feet. She cried in protest as she was dragged from the room. The door closed. The sound of clicking footsteps faded.
Owen stayed under the bed for a long time listening. After a while his hand began to ache. He was gripping the unicorn tight in his hand and the horn had pressed a small purpling dent into his palm. Owen crept out from under the bed. He tucked the unicorn as best as he could into his pants pocket and sidled from the room. Once out into the hall he bolted running blindly and crying until he ran into an adult wearing a long white lab coat.
The man took him to his mother.
Owen tearfully delivered his lie about getting lost seeking the bathroom.
His mother took him home.
Owen never returned to that place again.
Bitch, I'm limited edition.
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