‘Mummy?’ the boy asked hesitantly, ‘Mummy, please tell me a story.’
He had picked out the shortest story he had because he knew that his Mummy didn’t like reading stories very much. His hands shook as he handed her the little picture book. Thankfully she accepted it and he got a rare smile as well. She looked like an angel when she smiled, her brown hair lit up like a halo with the warm lamp just behind her. It made him smile so much his cheeks hurt.
She patted the seat next to her and the boy climbed up, snuggling closer. He was really pushing it then but felt so lucky just to hear a story. She put her arm around him.
‘Sure Jamie, I’ll tell you a story.’
The boy froze as she put the book down and clenched her hand around his arm.
He was really in for it now.
‘Once upon a time there lived a man and woman in a land not too far away.
They lived in a town that was in the middle of a great big forest that was deep as the deepest ocean. Everyone in the town always looked angry and sad because of the monsters in the forest, who peered out from the darkness of the trees with too-bright eyes and impish smiles.
Hundreds of years ago the settling people of the town had chased them into the shadows with swords and arrows of iron, which made the creatures sick, searing and burning their skin, because only monsters couldn’t touch iron.”
Jamie clenched his fists so his Mummy wouldn’t see the little burns on his fingertips. They were taking a while to heal, and stung a lot, making it really hard for him to hold stuff. There was a knock at the door, and it creaked open. His Daddy was standing in the doorway, and his eyes were making the thunderclouds that came from the bitter water.
‘Hi honey.’ His Mummy said. ‘I’m just telling Jamie a story. Come, sit with us.’
His Daddy smiled, but it wasn’t a nice smile. It was a cruel, mean smile and he came to sit by the boy. Jamie was trapped.
‘Now, where were we? Ah yes... the monsters in the trees were cruel and twisted, and after a few years spent licking their wounds, crawled back to do bad things to the town. Blighting the crops, curdling the milk and burning some of the newer buildings were only the beginnings of their cruelty. Many people who remembered stories of the old ways began to put up wards in their windows made of rowan and iron, but of course other people were too sensible for silly superstition, the man and woman included.
They were about to have a baby you see and thought rational beliefs and behaviours would serve them well. But the monsters in the woods liked to twist rationality around them and their evil knew no bounds. It was two months after the first barn at the edge of town burnt to the ground and the cold and darkness really began to set in that the man and woman brought their first child into their world. A son. He had his Mother’s deep brown hair and his Father’s sparkling emerald eyes, even so early. They loved him, more than anything or anyone. But within two short weeks he was missing.
The police were useless and searched for days but the only evidence they had was the smell of rotting pine needles that was left in the air. The man and woman waited and waited, and for three days there was nothing. Then, on the third day, when the man was sleeping downstairs and the woman was wandering upstairs, she heard a baby begin to cry. She rushed into her sons’ room and there he was, in the cradle screaming and screaming with his face bright cherry red and hair three inches longer. She cried in delight and snatched him up, calling for her husband to join her.’
Mummy paused and took a sip of her tea. Just the smell of the tea made Jamie feel happy, almost able to forget the story.
‘At first everything seemed normal. They did notice however, the small fires that started whenever the boy grew angry, how his screams sounded wrong like there were two voices instead of one. How fast his hair grew, and teeth cut, along with the inconsolable pulling at his ears as if they ached. How he hated the smell of iron and steel and would scream loud enough for the walls to shake if they ever tried to feed him with a metal spoon. He was behaving like a little monster, but after an experience like he had it was almost to be expected. So for two years they put up with the new strangeness in their son, and it was only when the boy’s hair began to shine strangely in certain lights and the green eyes that had passed down through both their families dulled to an ugly blue, that they finally realised something was more than wrong.’
Jamie looked down at the one rusty spot on the carpet where Daddy had once spilt his drink as he got up to run across the room. He didn’t like this story.
‘It changed the man and woman, robbing them of their happiness. The boy looked less and less like their son every day... until the stormy night when the enchantment that kept him looking human finally broke. His ears grew long and pointed, and two little bat wings sprouted out of his back like weeds. The monsters in the woods had kidnapped their little boy and sent a monster to torture and break the hearts of the man and woman instead. But they were not going to give the monsters the satisfaction. Do you know what they did Jamie?’
Jamie didn’t say anything, just kept looking down. He wanted to cry. A lump was forming in his throat. But that would mean that they won.
‘They pinned him down next to the fire, on a tarp so there wouldn’t be a mess. The man got his bolt cutters from the shed. And they cut off his wings.’
Jamie flinched, and they smiled at the jump.
‘It took three tries before the bones finally broke all the way through’ Daddy said with relish. ‘And three hours to catch on fire; after all the bandaging was done. Boy did he scream and scream and scream.’
‘That’s right dear. We don’t like monsters, do we Jamie?’
‘No.’ He whispered.
‘But Jamie,’ She said quite sternly, placing her fingertips on the raised ridges near his spine, ‘You are the monster.’
