Monster

by David Salazar

The universe is very much like a genie, in the way it will hear your pleas and misconstrue them in the worst ways possible. 

I prayed to deities I didn't believe in, asking for my body to change. For puberty to take twenty steps in the opposite direction, toward the path I wanted. I asked for my mother to be okay with me, with what I needed to do to be happy. I pled for a new body, something that wouldn't make me stand in the shower with the lights turned off, wouldn't make me wrap myself under layers and layers of clothing until I couldn't make out the lines of what was below. 

The universe listened. It listened to my pleas and twisted them around into a monstrosity that still, somehow, feels better than what I was given at first. 

When I first saw the change—angry purple scales between my thighs—I nearly screamed in terror. I didn't understand what was happening; I wanted to ask for help, to beg my mother to do something. But then I thought about it, about the hospital. About the way I'd get called the name I was given at birth, the name I tried to dispel from my body like a curse, the name you all know me by. The way they'd stare at the creature in between my thighs with rancour and disgust, the same way I look at it every day. 

I wanted to be something different and I was given something different. But I didn't ask to be a monster. 

As the transformation went on, the only things that were left of me that were still purely my skin were my hands, my feet, my neck, and my face. All the ones I couldn't hide with ease—all the ones I could still parade around, look at me, I am normal, I am not preying on you, not in the bathroom, not in the forest, nowhere. But with metamorphosis came hunger. 

I knew I had to kill something. It was asphyxiating, this feeling of needing to sink my teeth somewhere, anywhere. I tried to do something other than what I wanted to do; I killed a raccoon I saw scavenging through our trash when I left my house at night. I was carrying a knife, knowing that I was going to kill some creature to satisfy the need deep inside me. A raccoon was a perfect choice—a friend told me about how they are actually very clean. It wasn’t drooling excessively either, so I was safe from rabies. It was surprisingly easy to sink the knife into its soft flesh; it retaliated, of course, nails digging into my scales, but it wasn’t long before it was dead. I wasn’t hungry, and that was even before biting into it. I tried to, really, but I threw up immediately. As bestial as I am, I am not used to the sensation of fur along with meat. 

I thought for a long time, in between killing small animals, and going to school. I skipped gym so I wouldn’t have to undress next to everyone. I was already freakish, I didn’t need to take out the ish. My mother’s hatred for me grew stronger. As the ones who know me here are aware, she raised me alone. She brought that up constantly—how not having a father figure made me want to be a boy. They always say that when there’s the right case for it, don’t they? She didn’t raise a boy, she said, she raised her daughter. The name I was born with was enunciated more than said, every syllable expressed carefully.

I am not trying to excuse myself to all of you. I know that I am an abomination; I will be charged for what I've done, put in solitary because the other prisoners can't stomach looking at me. Even the serial killers can't look at a thing like this for too long. But I became something else with the transformation. I wanted to be a boy—and a boy I am, even if my body doesn't match my insides, even if it'll never match my insides—and instead I was given... this. 

With my mother’s opinion on such a thing, I would have never gotten the body I wished for, anyway. This is what I have to settle for, and I don't mind it that much. I will never be the man I wanted to be, and if I tried, I would be a freak—now I just look the part even more. The jury doesn't quite want to look at me, now, do they? 

I know she didn't deserve to die. I know that even if I had to put up with her hatred for me every day, she didn't deserve to die. She could tell me I'd never be a man and that I was going through a phase and it still wouldn't mean that she deserved to die. But I was... starving. I was nauseous, I was delirious and wanted it to stop. The small animals and the food at the dinner table couldn't sate me. I knew what I had to do, and I tried to avoid it. But we can't avoid our destiny forever. 

I knew it would come to this, you know? I knew she would say something and it would make the last string of self-control I had in me snap. It was a dress—she bought me one when she went shopping, saying I could use it to go to prom. It was bright, bright pink. That bubblegum pink that is so excessive it hurts the eyes. One moment I was scowling and the next, I had my fangs on her throat. I can’t remember the details. I just know I finally wasn’t nauseous with hunger.

I am sorry for the grief I've given my mother’s family. First for being a freak, second, for being a killer. You can erase me out of your history, delete the Facebook posts. I don't mind, really, I don't. Let me be forgotten so when the years roll on, a kid in this town will tell his friends about that girl who became a monster. 

Tried as an adult, huh? I guess that's what I get. Will I be given the chair? Or will I rot behind the cells? You don't know how long this thing I am will live. I don't know, either. Will the scientists come to this town following the whispers of a creature, asking to see it? Poke and prod and try to get answers as to what I am? 

I almost hope this thing I've turned into doesn't live too long, that it breaks at the seams and reveals something soothing. Something people can stand to look at. 

A boy, maybe. I would love to turn into a boy.

David Salazar (he/xe/she) is a teenage writer from Chile. He describes himself as a butch bigender bisexual and is autistic and mentally ill. When not writing, you can find him being bad at videogames and infodumping about his latest TV show of choice. You can find him on Twitter at @smalllredboy.