Little MonsterBy Madeline Weih-Wadman
I live under his bed. My head rests next to a worn cardboard box of old soccer trophies and foul smelling cleats and my feet press against the stuffed tiger his mom gave him for his fifth birthday. He told her to get rid of all his toys and she listened. Except the tiger. She can’t give up the tiger. I worry that one lonely evening (when he misses the feeling of being five and believing, whole heartedly and with foolish joy, that his stuffed animals have hearts and souls and minds), he’ll lay down next to his bed and shimmy underneath in search of little Stripes, only to come face-to-face with his seventh grade crush.
I have lived here since then. Since seventh grade, when we were both twelve years old. I piss into the ancient, forgotten shag rug and I eat mouldy ham and swiss sandwiches from the tupperware he tosses aside, forgets, and grows too embarrassed to retrieve. It has been five years. He is seventeen; he now discusses prom and college admissions and whether a scholarship is worth it if it means he has to play a sport he doesn’t even like. He is seventeen. I am still twelve. He’s yet to have a girl in his room, and he masturbates more and more frequently because of it. I think he’s desperate. Soon he will know that I am as well. Wait! You can’t listen to someone masturbate without their consent! Yes, I can. Shut up. I do it every night (he’s a horny motherfucker). I feel sorry for his mom. The house is rather small, and her bedroom is separated from his by only a shared bathroom, and yet he watches porn without headphones. The volume is low, but it’s disrespectful nonetheless. What do I like about him? Let me think. I like the brown of his eyes, those big muddy puddles of heart-melting honesty. I like how happy his pets always are to see him. They say that animals are good readers of character, and both his dog and cat adore him. I like that he cries when he gets a grade below a C, or shouts at his mom in frustration, or jerks off to exceptionally violent porn. I touch myself when he touches himself. Every time, even when I’m not in the mood, even when my skin is an ice block and every sensation the scalding of water poured straight from a boiled kettle. I want to be his girlfriend, his wife, the mother of his babies. Therefore, I must teach my libido to match his. Perfectly. It’s not so bad. Most days, I want it too. So badly. So badly I would kill; his mother, his dog, his best friend. His grandma who comes to visit once a month from her McMansion in distant suburbia. His childhood hamster who is long dead and buried in the backyard under the begonia tree. I would dig her up just to kill her again if it meant I could have him in me. Yes, most days, I am a frothing animal by the time his lights and his phone volume go down. If I didn’t know how harmless I was, I would be scared for him. But I’m no monster. Just a little girl beneath his bed. A little girl who wants to clamber up his duvet like a sleep paralysis demon and sit so heavily on his neck that his beautiful, full lips go bruise-blue. So heavily that I feel his throbbing pulse thumping into my swelling, rotten crotch. I am not sitting atop him, though. I am shaped like a gingerbread man under his sleeping home. I can only close my eyes and feel his hands on my body, two hands, ten hands, five clones of this boy who has long, soft fingers that effortlessly tear off my underwear and pull my hair (at the roots; he knows what he’s doing) and push their way into my mouth until my uvula senses smooth, clipped nails and rings out to warn me of the intrusion, not knowing that it’s more than welcome. Like a python to cattle, my throat will take his entire fist, forearm, and shoulder in sweet submission. I will swallow him whole. Naked and whole. Sometimes it's hard to hear, but I can usually make out the noises emanating from his phone speaker. He likes a lot of different stuff. Stepsister, bondage, petite, voyeurism. I think of all the ways I can cookie cut myself to fit these parameters. I don’t eat much, so I’m already small, stunted by the discarded childhood items that take up every inch of free space under the bed. I’ll tell him that my father (his stepfather, in this fantasy) locked me on the fire escape and he’ll climb out to help, and he’ll find my wrists and ankles bound with his used footie pyjamas from 2005. We’ll fuck right there on the fire escape, and I’ll moan loud enough for the neighbours to hear, and he’ll call me a whore and a slut, and I’ll agree, but I will know deep down that I am even less than that. I am a toy. I am nothing. Sure, there are other girls out there. Prettier ones, smarter ones, girls with passion and drive and unique, defined senses of humour. But I would bet my own life that there is not a girl in the world who would bend to his whims more so than myself. I could list all the things that I would do, if he simply asked me to, but I think I’ve made it plenty clear. And there’s not enough time in the world to finish that list, anyway. The night before his sixteenth birthday, when he cried as he finished into a cosy cabin sock from the bookstore down the street, I wanted to go to him. I almost did. There was a melancholy in the particles that bounced off my sallow cheeks and I feel he put it there for me, a beckoning, a call for help. I was no longer human then. I could be his guardian angel if only I had the courage to depart my prison, to join him above the bed. I may have developed a slight case of agoraphobia (I think that’s the one where you’re afraid to go outside). But it’s not safe out there in the world, out where I can break bones and contract diseases and get bullied for things beyond my control. His bed frame is steady, and constant, and warm. When I truly need to leave, I will leave. Yes. The day I leave will be the day he loses his virginity; then, I will crawl on spindly appendages out from underneath this bed. Either because I will be the girl he loses it to, or because I will kill the girl he loses it to. I don’t know yet who it might be, but I imagine her as blonde. Stupid, blonde, skinny girl with fairy dust as freckles and the twinkling tinkle of a wind chime as a laugh. Makes me sick. I will put both hands around her narrow neck and squeeze as though I am popping the eyes out of a road-killed squirrel. It will take a lot of effort; all of my muscles have atrophied from years of staying still as a doll (all but the ones in the pointer and middle fingers of my right hand). But I will persevere, and eventually, she will grow limp and cold in my arms, and then I will kiss her, because I’ve never kissed a girl before. I’ve never kissed anyone before. I wonder if her lips will taste like his. Will, will, will. Someday I will do these things. I am sick of someday. What will I do now? Now, I listen to his panting, his mewling, my throat hungering for the feel of him. I grip each side of our bed and shake it frantically. I am his mother and he is my baby and this is his crib and I rock him until he’s thrown off the bed and onto the floor and he can see me, he can see me! I am smiling sickly wide and sticky tears are smearing, bloody, down my cheeks and here he is, my boy. My boy. Madeline Weih-Wadman is a student and writer based in Vancouver, BC. She attended Vancouver Film School’s screenwriting program and is currently pursuing a BFA in creative writing from UBC. Her genres of choice are coming-of-age and body horror, and she focuses on the subjects of girlhood, motherhood, queerness, climate change, and death.
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