I Became A Monster by Janis Robertson
Short Story Series | Every month Girl In Trouble presents short fiction for your troublemaking pleasure.
The first time I became a monster, it was an old college friend. A friend who had never been an actual friend. A friend I had hoped never to see again but here she was, in the middle of the crowded grocery store.
I was on break from work. My job was to go to meetings and fill out spreadsheets and generally be a quiet, invisible employee. It did not pay well and our business integration consultation software was a lousy product. I was doing my shopping on my break because, by the end of the day, all I would want to do is eat snacks for dinner and escape deep into the fugue state of my phone. That would not happen today.
As I stood, debating on the best way to hide from my friend, a small earthquake started in my belly. With it came the feeling that nothing I had ever stood on was solid. No piece of earth, no scientific fact, no moral belief. They were all shaking, vibrating, until my entire existence was being rattled back and forth, changing and churning, turning me into something else.
Kaylee was blocking the line to the register but she didn't care. “Emily, it’s you!!” she squealed, throwing her arms around me. She stepped back, her face contorted into exaggerated shock. "Gawd Emily, I can't believe it. You really look great! Like, you’ve got an inner glow or something. Like a little pixie inside you, making you all glowy and... confident. Look at you, so confident!"
The thing was, she was right. Something had changed in me. The lines of worry from lying awake at night, regretting most of my decisions, had softened. The hunch at the base of my neck from scrolling on my phone, spying on the lives of others, had straightened. My shoulders were relaxed and my eyes clear. I was a new version of myself. Sleek, refined. I was taller, with my chin held high enough to look down at everyone else.
"Em," I heard myself say.
“Em?” Kaylee asked.
“It’s Em now. Emily is gone.” I was talking but those were not my words, as if another puppet master had taken hold of my body.
No! I tried to scream. That's not me. I'm me. I'm Emily. But no words came out. My lips weren't even moving.
“Em? Oh, that’s cool! I like that. It fits you, totally.” Kaylee paused for me to reply but I only stood there, looking unbothered and cool. “So?! What have you been up to? It’s been forever."
An awareness seeped over me. I was watching this happen from a very faraway place that was also deep inside. It was way above and way below. It was loud and soft and hard and hushed. I had somehow become locked away inside my own thoughts.
"I mean, I haven’t seen you since… Cancun.” Kaylee said.
Deep and away, I shrank. The Cancun trip. We had planned our graduation trip for months. A last chance to be college students before we set forth into adulthood. At the time, it had seemed so important.
Em didn’t shrink. “You haven’t seen me since you and Jenny and Jessa and Janie got so drunk you invited those frat dudes from San Diego back to our room and they stole a housekeeping cart and pushed it into the pool and the management called the police.”
Kaylee laughed, uneasy. “We were so crazy. Can you imagine?” She touched Em's arm looking for some commiseration.
Em remained steely. “And then I had to call your father to get you out of jail and he yelled at me for an hour and told me I was trash and he’d never let his daughter see me again.”
Kaylee backed off, ever so slightly.
“Then I spent the morning in line at the bank and the afternoon in line at the police station but you had already been released and had gone straight to the airport without telling me. And then I never saw you again.”
Kaylee’s lips pursed. Deep and away, my stomach was in knots. Ten years ago, if I would have said anything like this to Kaylee, she would have eviscerated me in front of Jenny and Jessa and Janie. She would have kept me in constant fear that I'd be cut from the friend group completely. Which would have been a mercy. Instead, I'd be manipulated into proving my value through acts of groveling service designed to both demoralize and humiliate me.
“You know,” Kaylee leaned in, careful not to touch Em this time. “That night turned my life around. I completely changed my attitude and ever since then, life is… I’m just so grateful! Love my job, my fiance just proposed. It was so cute, I’ve got to show you a photo. And we’ve got this great apartment, fabulous apartment, a unicorn apartment, I swear!”
She was the one groveling now. Em let her blather on, a ramble of influencer-worthy blandness. She knew what Kaylee was trying to prove.
“How wonderful for you,” Em said in the coldest, baddest, flattest way you could imagine. Deep and away, I actually giggled a little. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”
I -- or rather Em -- dismissed her with a wave and left the store. Kaylee was frozen, confused.
No, not confused. Awed.
In the parking lot, Em waited in a shadowed corner. When Kaylee emerged, Em followed her to her car and sank my teeth into her thin little neck.
Oh, don't worry. She was fine. Eventually.
As Em slept somewhere inside of me that night, I hid in my closet, shaking and weeping. Em was a monster, a flesh-eating, blood-drinking monster. A monster that could take control of me. A monster that was me. My collection of busted-up, old clothes muffled my cries which were interrupted by hours of numb shock. In the morning, I crept out of the closet, careful not to wake the monster. It was still deep asleep and I knew I might not have much time.
In a haze, I left my apartment and began to walk. I should have driven to my doctor's office but I was afraid to be in charge of a moving vehicle. I walked and walked until, suddenly, I was sitting in a glass-walled office, wearing a dove-grey tailored suit and there was something sticky on my cheek. When I wiped at it, my hand came away with a dark, red smear. It was then I understood the strange taste in my mouth was blood.
I had no memory of how I had gotten there. No awareness of what had happened in the intervening time. No idea of how much time had passed. I could see a name on the transparent door. The backwards letter spelled out Em Vaulito. This was my office.
I got up and ran.
It took six hours to be seen at the emergency room. In the tiny, curtained room, a very condescending doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with me. He wheeled his little stool over to me and sighed with deep exasperation, as if I were the reason for a broken health-care system. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he told me it was just a panic attack. "You should talk to your GP about medication. People like you find can find it very helpful. Go ahead and get dressed now.”
Pulling my silk blouse over my head, my hands shook. It had been so cold in the exam room, I hadn't realized why I was trembling. The earthquake in my belly was rising again. I spun and lunged for the red emergency call button.
Then I was in a business class seat, a flight attendant handing me a glass of champagne and apologizing profusely for some mix-up that I had apparently been very upset about.
There was no salty-sweet-slippery taste on my tongue this time. The monster was sleeping. She was exhausted and something else too... weak. Moving slowly in case I disturbed her, I looked through the Celine travel bag at my feet. How long had I been gone? My phone was in a side pocket. The monster had changed the code and deleted the face ID, but the date on the lock screen made my stomach drop. It had been four months since my trip to the emergency room.
I felt her stir. I felt her hunger.
I dumped the rest of the bag out on the empty seat next to me. Laptop and iPad, also locked. A pouch of expensive skincare, the smell of luxury seeping out. A set of athleisure wear, identical to what I was wearing. Headphones, other electronics, and at the bottom, a spiral-bound set of papers. It was a business proposal.
I thumbed through it gingerly, afraid of what I might find. Bold typeface and an excessive amount of stock photos were dotted by little text.
For a long time, my dream had been to escape my horrid job and create a community of artists. A place where they could gather and create and support each other making art. I'd spent years trying to figure out how to make it happen. The monster had taken my dream and regurgitated it as a lifestyle brand. An exclusive community for those that wanted to brush shoulders with the world's biggest names in fashion, music, film... and art.
I hated it but I also knew I wanted it so badly. I wanted to have access to people who the world respected. I wanted to be wealthy enough that flying business class was an inconvenience. In four months, the monster had become everything I had never admitted I wanted. A surge of hunger ran through me so great, it folded me up as if trying to wring any last sustenance from my system. It wasn't for food. It was for success. For possessions and experiences and people that equaled success. There was a need to take. Take more to get more.
The flight attendant was tidying the bathrooms. It wasn't me who sprang to my feet and, in a few long strides, had the attendant pushed into the tiny washroom but it was me who made it stop.
Deep and away, I was yelling that this wasn't right. This was a human being. We didn't want this. Finally, in desperation, I shouted that we would be caught. Don't do it here, not now. Wait, there would be opportunities later. The airport would be crawling with people who wouldn't be missed if they never made it to their destination. The monster wilted and I took control. Now I saw with my own eyes the fear on the attendant's face. I turned and retched into the toilet, dry heaving until bile came up. In between the choking and gagging, I sputtered out an apology, claiming it was an emergency. The attendant slid from the bathroom and I didn't see her again for the rest of the flight.
I stayed in control, feeling the monster's strength dwindle. I kept my seatbelt fastened tight and watched the flight map, refusing to let my eyes close for more than a blink. When I landed at Charles de Gaulle, I stopped at the first bakery in the terminal and bought a dozen eclairs. In a dirty corner of the baggage claim, I stuffed them into my mouth until a security guard pointedly asked if the food on the plane had been that bad.
I didn't know which bags were mine so I didn't bother. I found a concierge and asked for a clean, cheap hotel room. When I pushed the monster's black credit card across the table, the agent raised an eyebrow and asked if I wouldn't be more comfortable at the Cheval Blanc. I wanted to say no... but maybe this would be the one thing I got out of this mess. I'd probably spend the next few months or years or the rest of my life, heavily medicated in a facility that would accept my paltry health insurance. Just a few nights in a nice room. I'd lock myself in and book a flight home and enjoy my last hours of freedom.
By the time I made it to the lobby, I was very much Emily again. Emily who did not fit in at an exclusive hotel. Somehow the clothes I was wearing had faded and stretched in all the wrong places, the fabric felt cheap. The band of my pants cut into my stomach, bloated from the eclairs. The clerk at the check-in desk looked over my frizzy hair and greasy skin and set his mouth in a thin line. "We have no reservation under that name."
I begged him to check again. Behind me, a couple in their twenties were snickering. They had perfect teeth and silky coal-dark hair cut into one of those Gen Z styles. They were radiant. They were the law of attraction. You couldn’t stop looking at them and they knew it.
The second time I became a monster, it was white hot heat. It was all the blood rushing to my head, my heart going ice cold. It was laser focus on one thing and one thing only, the rest of the world became jelly. The second time I became a monster, it was a thing of beauty.
I love the idea of coming to terms with your inner monster!
Losing time is such a scary concept. FOUR MONTHS as the monster!!