He was a Monster, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at him: muddy, kind eyes and a soft and sparse grey beard. He was the one who brought the turkey out to the table at Thanksgiving and it was always perfect and with just enough crispy skin and the family devoured it over memories and laughter and the sense of familiarity.
Yes, this was Thanksgiving and it happened the same way every year since any of them could remember.
To any passerby, it looked no different than something you’d see at the house next door or the house on the television, but most of them knew – especially her – what pain this man with the kind eyes and the soft beard delivered.
Every year would pass and nothing would change; she wouldn’t say anything about the Monster…what was the point? In hushed conversations and secret phone calls, her observations were confirmed. The shell of the man she knew didn’t change much but his insides did. First his heart, then his mind, and now, she wondered, his spirit? One by one pieces of him broke away and fell like a man of ice walking in the sun for the first time, dripping, cracking, breaking – and completely see through.
She talked to a man named Gary about the Monster and how even when she wasn’t with him, he stayed with her. Was he following her? Was he out to hurt them all? He wanted full control and she wasn’t sure at what cost. She said unspeakable things about him, things someone with the same molecules and atoms and blood should never say, but it was as if she wasn’t talking about him. He was gone, she determined.
Gary sat, plump and attentive, in an old recliner across from where she sat. He let her say her peace and then talked about the monster.
Yes, what the Monster did and what the monster does is inexcusable. The pain from the past, the scars seen and not seen, the anger that rises in her when he is far away or when he is in her own living room sitting right next to her, and even closer, when she carries him around in her heart – it is all justified.
“But,” Gary said, “but.” He shifted forward in his chair and reached into the pocket of his brown pants, retrieving a pair of glasses. “I want you to wear these from now on. You say you want to know what the Monster will do; these glasses will show you. You’ll see everything: who he is, why he is the Monster, and what you can do about it.”
She held the glasses loose in her hand, her wrist ever so slightly bent like the weight of the glasses were too much for her small hand, and like Gary’s simple explanation wasn’t enough.
“Do you trust me?” he said, seeing her reaction.
“I have no other choice,” she said, clasping the pair of tortoiseshell frames and walking out of the room. If her family was to be safe, she knew she had to be the one with the clearest view of the Monster. She had to protect everyone quietly. He could not hurt them anymore.
Shaken by what could be, she set out to find the Monster and figure him out, why he was the way he was. But she could not put on the glasses. She knew it wasn’t time.
But about the monster, she was right. The Monster was following her, waiting outside her house until she came home and because she never locked the door, he’d follow her in. She made dinner; he was there. She took her dogs for a walk; he was there. People would ask about him, how he was these days, and he was right there. Yet they couldn’t see him. The only power the Monster had was to make himself invisible to everyone else but her and disappear right into her very heart.
These were the worst times for her because her heart felt like the Monster took over and she didn’t have a chance. Almost instantly the anger and evil he had transferred into her and if she wasn’t careful, she could become a monster too.
Once when she had enough, when she didn’t allow the Monster in – she screamed at him to go away, far away, forever, and slammed her front door, and she ran into the den where the glasses Gary gave her were tucked away in a drawer. She pulled them out and put them on. She checked herself in the mirror to see how they looked and instantly threw them off her face and frantically brushed her arms off, tearing her sweater, stripping down to almost nothing.
She was a monster, too.
Never before had she seen herself like that; demons and evil covering her every inch, doing anything to break her and take over her. For the most part, she knew she was always fighting something dark, but she assumed it was the Monster, not the demons inside and around her. She fell to her knees, weeping, praying that each one would let her be: fear, jealousy, anger, self-righteousness. Her past, her pain, her anxiety. With heavy wings, each one flew away, leaving her light but weak. She pulled herself up, got dressed, and went out to find the Monster. She circled back to the den, make sure she put the glasses back on.
It took her a while to find the Monster, walking through the chill of the autumn air. Her last encounter with him must have pushed him far, far away. In a barren land she found him hiding in a small cave. He didn’t see her right away, but this was best. Because now that she had the glasses on, she was able to see man she thought was a Monster really wasn’t.
He was just like her.
Those muddy eyes were friendly, but full of pain and tears. Years of crying covered his grey beard in salt, like an ocean leaving its traces behind. He sat slumped in the corner because the weight of the demons he was carrying with him. She thought back to how she looked with all those demons on her and looked at the Monster. He had so many more…hundreds, maybe thousands.
This is what it must be like to see like God sees, she thought, not placing her view as divine, but only seeing what invisible things people carry with them and fight. She walked over to the Monster, ignoring the threats and hissing the demons on him made as she reached in to rest her hand on his shoulder.
He was startled; so startled that the Monster yelled at her, screaming in a voice that wasn’t his, “Get away! Get away!” He hissed at her too, clearly either unaware or resigned to the demons that weighed on him and changed him.
“Get away,” he said to her quietly, with a huff of resignation.
In a great story, she probably should have pulled out a sword to fight or maybe brought an army in, but in this story, she did what the Monster asked and walked away. She no longer saw the Monster as a monster anymore, but saw him for the darkness that covered him, that he was to weak to fight off. She could fight from a distance, offering prayers on his behalf and fighting off her own demons so she could keep a clear mind, but she was not afraid anymore. She was not angry any more. The man she knew that she thought was a Monster was still a man, a broken man who didn’t know any better.
And she would not give up on him, now that she could see that truth.
