Monsters

Monsters
James Patrick Kelly
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/
When Henry looked in his dad's old mirror, he couldn't see the monster.
He touched his reflection. Nothing. No shock, no secret thrill, not even
a tingle. Usually his nipples tightened or the insides of his knees would
get crinkly and if he were in a certain mood he'd crawl back under the
covers and think very hard about women in black strapless bras. But
this morning -- zero. He stared at a fattish naked white man with
thinning hair and yellow teeth. A face as interesting as lint. He wished
for a long purple tongue or a disfiguring scar that forked down his
cheek, except he didn't want any pain. Not for himself, anyway. Henry
hated looking so vanilla. There was nothing terrifying about him except
the bad thoughts, which he told no one, not even God. But this morning
the monster was cagey. It wanted to get loose and he was tired of
holding it back. Something was going to happen. He decided not to
shave.
The gray dacron shirt and shiny blue polyester pants hanging on the
line over the bathtub had dripped dry overnight. His nylon underwear
was dry too, but the orlon socks were still damp so he draped them over
the towel bar. Henry wore synthetics because they wouldn't shrink or
wrinkle and he could wash them in the sink. Some days, after
wallowing in other people's mung, he boiled his clothes. He liked his
showers hot too; he stood in the rusty old clawfooted tub for almost
half and hour until his skin bloomed like a rose. The water beat all the
thoughts out of his head; nothing wormy had ever happened in the tub.
He opened his mouth, let it fill with hot water and spat at the wall.
He owned just five shirts: gray, white, beige, blue and blue-striped; and

three pairs of pants: blue, gray and black. As he tried to decide what to
wear to work, he had a bad thought. Not a thought exactly -- he flashed
an image of himself bending toward a TV minicam, hands locked
behind him as he was pushed into a police car. Blue or blue-striped
would show up best on the Six O'Clock News.
He petted the shirts. Maybe he was already crazy, but it seemed to him
that if he wore blue today, it might set off the chain reaction of choices
the creature was always trying to start. He pulled the white shirt from
its hanger.
Henry ate only two kinds of breakfast cereal, Cheerios and Rice Chex.
Over the years he had tried to simplify his life; routines were a defense
against bad thoughts. That's why he always watched the Weather
Channel when he ate Cheerios. He liked the satellite pictures of storms
sweeping across the country because he thought that was what weather
must look like to God. He didn't understand how people could think
weather was boring; obviously they hadn't seen it get loose.
After breakfast he tried to slip past the shrine and out the front door,
but he couldn't. The monster was stirring even though he had chosen
the white shirt. He dug the key out of his pocket, opened the shrine and
turned on the light. He was in the apartment's only closet, seven feet by
four. Henry bolted the door behind him.
The walls were shaggy with pictures he'd ripped out of magazines but
he didn't look at them. Not yet. He pressed the play button on the boom
box and the Rolling Stones bongoed into "Sympathy for the Devil." He
knelt at the oak chest which served as the altar. Inside was a plastic box.
Inside the box, cradled in pink velvet, was the Beretta.
He had bought the 92SB because of its honest lines. A little bulky in
the grip, the salesman had said, but only because inside was a fifteen
shot double-column magazine. It was cool as a snake to the touch,
thirty-five hard ounces of steel, anodized aluminum and black plastic.
He wrapped his right hand around the grip and felt the gentle bite of the
serrations on the front and rear of the frame. He stood, supported his
right hand with his left, extended his arms and howled along with

Jagger. "Ow!"
Schwartzenegger trembled in his sights; even cyborgs feared the thing
lurking inside Henry West. "Now!" The pistol had a thrilling heft; it
was more real than he was. "Wham!" he cried, then let his arms drop.
Manson gave him a shaggy grimace of approval. Madonna shook her
tits. The monster was stretching; its claw slid up his throat.
He spun then and ruined Robert Englund, wham, David Duke, wham,
and Mike Tyson, wham, wham, wham. Metallica gave him sweaty