MONSTER

A small child being taken to the babysitter while Mom and Dad worked

is a part of everyday life. A little girl of 5 or 6 needs to be taken

care of. She cannot be left alone. So, you take her to someone who will

watch over her and protect her. And even if the child hates it, you

take her there.......and leave her.

To the little girl, her babysitter is a nice woman. She makes good

sandwiches for lunch. And there are three other children living right next

door to play with. This should be the perfect place for the little girl, but it's

not. There is a problem, a secret, and it could make all the difference in the

little girl's life. The babysitter has a son. He is about 16, 17, maybe even

18 years old. And if the babysitter needs to run to the store, she

leaves him in charge. To the little girl he is the same size as a man.

He's big, and he's scary. And inside he is a monster.

The babysitter's son has pimples on his face and back. Red, angry welts

that are often infected. And on the occasion that the little girl is left alone

with him, he will take off his shirt and force her to scratch his back. It

sickens the little girl. Her small nails burst the pimples and her

fingers become sticky and bloody. It is all she can do to hold down

her vomit. However, she doesn't make a sound, or the Monster just might

turn around and face her.

The little girl stares at the window which shows the empty driveway. She

looks anywhere but at her disgusting hands. She tells herself if she stares

long enough or hard enough she will see the babysitter's car pull in. And all

will be safe again. Finally, that familiar crunch on the gravel is heard. The

son swings into action and puts on his shirt, yelling at the little girl to go

away. He always seems to be mad at her even when she has done as he

asked.

The little girl runs for the bathroom and scrubs her fingers

and hands under the hottest water she can stand. She can never get her

hands clean. They are a mess. Her skin is dried out from the vicious

washing and her knuckles are often cracked open. Looking at them

reminds her of the Monsters disgusting back. And again, she washes

them.

One day the little girl was playing outside with the three

neighbor children. She glances toward the road and sees her

babysitter's car driving away. She gets a sinking feeling in her gut.

She is alone with the Monster. The sound of the back door slamming

causes the little girl to look toward the house. And there was the

babysitter's son, walking toward the children. He did not say a word,

yet the little girl knew.....she knew, this was going to be different.

This was going to be bad.

Terror filled her. And she screamed for the children to run. The three

children ran toward their own house and the little girl started to follow.

Then she remembered she wasn't allowed to go in their house. The little

girl turned and ran as fast as her panic would carry her, straight to the

babysitter's house. She made it to the back door and slammed it shut

behind her. She locked the door. Then the little girl grabbed a chair and

dragged it to the front door. She couldn't reach that lock without a chair.

The little girl had tunnel vision. She could see nothing but the hook and eye

lock. It looked huge. She had the hook in her hand and was fitting it into

the eye when the door was jerked open.

The Monster grabbed the little girl around the waist with such force that

the chair fell backwards and one of her shoes flew off. She saw it laying on

the floor. It was turned sideways. And for some reason it looked absolutely

terrible. The Monster carried the little girl under one arm to his bedroom.

She was screaming and fighting him. He slammed the little girl on the

floor, and she lost all thought. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't scream.

She had no air. The Monster flipped the little girl over and tied her

hands behind her back. As the blood filled her hands she could feel

the cracked knuckles bulging outward. And maybe it was that image that

helped the little girl find her air. She began to scream.

The Monster was shouting something at her, but she couldn't understand

what it was. Monsters don't speak like you and me. They use rage and fear

to make their point. They have their own language. And this thing in front

of the little girl was no longer someone's son, or just a teenage boy. It

was now a Monster through and through.

The Monster put his knee on the little girl's back and pressed down with

all his weight. The little girl saw stars that made cracking noises as they

disappeared. It was the bones in her back giving way under his knee. And

this caused a mighty scream to come from the little girl. The Monster

grabbed a length of rope from under his bed and tied the little girl's feet

together. He cinched it so tight that the skin stretched and rolled

beneath the rope causing her ankles to bleed. He pulled the little

girl's legs backward, forcing her into a U shape and tied the remaining

rope around her neck. The little girl screamed and tried to kick. Any

movement of her legs only tightened the rope around her neck.

It's funny how quickly a person can learn about physics when you are

starving for air. Move your legs, no air.....hold them still, and you

can get the smallest amount possible to your lungs. By now the little

girl was only whimpering as there wasn't enough air for an actual

scream. The Monster didn't like the whimpering. He wanted her to be

silent. He got one or two socks from his drawer and pried the little

girl's mouth open. He shoved them in her mouth while staring at her

terrified eyes. The Monster liked this. The harder he shoved on the

socks, the farther they went down the little girl's throat, and the

bigger her eyes got. The Monster smiled. The little girl struggled

against the ropes, trying to avoid the awful socks being pushed down

her throat. She knew instinctively if she vomited, she would die. She

tried turning her head side to side to get away. She kicked her legs.

And the rope attached from her legs to her neck tightened. And it was

this action that may have saved the little girl's life.

The rope around her neck was so tight the Monster couldn't force the

socks down her windpipe. The little girl heard a loud roar in her ears.

Nothing else could be heard, just the roar. She saw spots floating across the

Monsters face. And then blackness rolled in on the sides of her eyes.

She could not see, she heard nothing, she felt nothing.

Sometime later there was an awful taste in the little girl's mouth. It

seemed to come from far away. It was coppery and thick. And it was getting

stronger. It made the little girl want to gag. And with that involuntary

reaction came a jolt of white-hot pain. The little girl's eyes flew

open. Her throat was on fire. It felt as if her neck was way too big.

The little girl looked around and realized she was laying on the floor

of the old tool shed behind the babysitter's house. Panic set in and

she struggled to get up. The rope around her neck tightened and she

could taste more copper. She knew then she was tasting blood.

The little girl knew from the shadows that a lot of time had passed. She

began to cry. No one was going to find her. She was going to die on

this dirty floor. Already her tears had closed off one nostril and she

was struggling for air. She couldn't hold her legs up anymore. She let

them rest against the length of rope and felt it tighten around her

torn throat. The pain was unbearable and for a few moments the little

girl fought, causing herself even more damage. During this last

struggle the little girl had rolled onto her side. She was now wedged

up against an old dresser. And the little girl used this dresser to

hold her legs up. Momentary relief. Her back and legs had been twisted

for so long. She lay on her side and felt the tears slide down her

cheek and felt the snot drip from her nose. With each drip it was a

little slice of heaven. She could breathe. She could breathe. She

could breathe. She kept repeating this to herself over and over. Until

darkness took her once again.

Then a crashing noise and a bright light directly in her eyes brought the

little girl back. She heard screams and cuss words. And she saw a knee

right close to her face as someone knelt down beside her. She thought it

was the Monster coming back. This time he would kill her. And she didn't

care. She felt grateful that it was going to end. She stared out the open

door of the tool shed and focused on the pretty grass and sunlight, waiting

for the Monster to play his next game.

The little girl saw a hand coming toward her face and then recognized the

anguished voice of her Mother. Her babysitter was there too. And the

babysitter repeated over and over, "He told me you picked her up early."

She couldn't seem to stop saying it. And their faces scared the little girl.

She had never seen anyone look like that before. She had never seen horror

reflected on a person's face. She felt relief, and also guilt because she knew

it was because of her they looked that way.

The little girl's body recovered from that day. It took a while but all the

bruises and cuts and swelling went away. She looked like a normal little 5

year old. But the little girl knew the truth. The innocent child she had been

had died on that dusty floor. She had been transformed into someone else.

Some thing else. She spent her days looking into the faces of people

she met, looking for any traces of the monsters within. She had been

told the Monster was gone. Locked away someplace where he could never

harm her.

The rest of her childhood and her adult life were spent

caught in the grip of claustrophobia. She feared confinement and hated

crowds. Too many people and you can't study their faces. You just might

miss seeing a monster. And she was looking for them. Perhaps this

attitude is what led her to her profession. Or maybe her path had been

laid out long ago in that tool shed. She chose to spend 20+ years

working in the very definition of confinement. And around many, many

monsters. She studied them. She recognized them when no one else

could. And there is power in that.

She began to pay close attention to

the rosters and the data bases. She was looking for a name. Week in

and week out she combed through the intel, trying to find a pimple

faced boy monster, now grown into a man. She wanted to find him. It

consumed her day and night. Her happiest times were when she

visualized what she would do to him. She was no longer a helpless

little girl. She had thoughts and dreams of torture. And of murder.

And she had learned from the best right? Surely, he could appreciate

this blood thirsty drive. But this time it wouldn't be her who was a

victim.

~Burgess~