No, my cousin is not mutant. On the contrary she is quite normal (in a good sense), peaceful, beautiful, loving, and wise. Which makes her hidden ninja side even scarier....
Thank you so much for your incredible stories MMC! (And sorry. I'll come up with a better nick name for you...)
If you don't know what the Make it a Story Challenge is, go back a four blog posts and read about how it works. I'd love to hear your stories!
Monster Stories, by MMC
Cory carried monsters.
He held his green-and-orange backpack in front of him, trying to rush out the door before his parents could notice that it was wiggling. Snap – or Sneak – let out a muffled growl.
“Cory? Did you need that waiver today?”
Cory leaned his head back into the house. “Augh-awhat?” he yelled, to cover the sound of another growl.
“For the natural history museum,” his mom replied patiently.
“Nope Mom it’s oooooo-kay!” Cory called, stifling a yelp as a sharp tail poked him through the backpack. “I’ll just get it in tomorrow!”
“Your trip is today.”
“That’s-fine-actually-Dad-got-it-bye!”
Cory ran out of the house. On the bus, he forged a signature onto the waiver.
While the noisy class sat in the dark space section of the museum, Cory snuck away to the “Prehistoric Oceans” display. He knelt and peeked under the display platform.
Yellow eyes winked at him.
Cory opened his backpack. Snap and Squeak untangled themselves, and stared up with the same yellow eyes.
Cory hugged them, bristly scales and all, then pushed them under the display. Happy squeals came from under the platform. He thought he could recognize Sneak’s.
He turned to go. His face felt hot, and his eyes filled with tears.
A tall green monster stopped him, and held out a hand.
Cory shook it.
Lyssa searched for monsters.
The lone lantern on the bow of her gondola gave weak light to the canal. She gave a clumsy stoke with her oar, and warm water splashed her bare arms. Her purple dress might be wet too, soon.
Uppity restaurants lined the canal, outdoor porches and tables twinkling with lights. Businesspeople chatted and sipped wine. But here in the middle of the canal, the music and chatter dimmed.
Lyssa should be back at the legal party, smiling, chatting, making connections in her new career. Only children believed in monsters.
She paddled slowly to the canal light where two waterways intersected. No one else was out here – no humans, at least.
She had been chatting with a young lawyer at the party, leaning on a rail by the water. He had complimented her work on the last case, and she had looked down, pleased but embarrassed.
Yellow eyes had winked in the water.
Lyssa stopped paddling in the intersection and scanned the canals. She was too old for this. But those eyes had called up half-forgotten memories – or fantasies? Yellow eyes. A scaly tail. A feathered face and curious fuzzy nose.
Fantasy. The overactive imagination of a lonely child. Lyssa was past that now.
She bowed her head.
And something splashed behind her.
It jumped into the boat – yellow, curious eyes – and nuzzled into her lap.
Sophie played with monsters.
She told Kent that when he came to play during the parents meeting, and he said that his brother said that monsters aren’t real. But his brother was wrong then, because but they ARE. REAL.
Sophie told Kent that, but he said no, his brother is ALWAYS right.
Sophie didn’t want to play with Kent after that. Which is why it was okay to be in time-out for yelling. Kent was stupid anyway. Sophie WANTED to be in time out.
Except she yelled that, too, and kicked at the bed, which got her in more trouble.
But the really bad part was after the meeting, when she had sat there and calmed down and even said sorry to Kent. Kent left, and Sophie started to get happy again, because time-out was over and there were extra peanut-butter cookies from the adults. But then the parents had said no, don’t go outside yet, sit here and we can talk while you eat your cookie.
Then they said that monsters weren’t really real.
Sophie took her cookie and ran outside after that. She sat on the dock by the canal and cried.
Yellow and Yellow Two came first, sitting by her with their stripy feet and looking at her with big eyes.
Big Tooth nuzzled her with his fuzzy head.
The fish monsters poked their heads out of the water and waited.
Finally, Sophie slowed down her crying and broke up her cookie to share.
She played with her monsters till the sun went down.
Mattie wrote for monsters.
She sat backstage, because she did scene changes for the play, and wrote the story in her head.
She had been sitting on a tall stool, reading a book while the main swordfight scene went on. It was a long scene about an evil dragon. The book she was reading was about an invasion of alien lizards.
That was when Mattie thought – what if there were good monsters?
Mattie imagined the story. The sword-woman in her cloak – the sword-woman was Mattie, now – would be fighting an evil dragon with red scales and dirty teeth. She would be fighting bravely, but then she would trip and fall.
And that was when the good monsters would come.
They would be green and scaly, with yellow glowing eyes, and they would climb over the dragon and attack it with their teeth.
Mattie could imagine them the clearest. After the monsters had helped Mattie the sword-woman to kill the dragon and save a couple mountain towns from total destruction, they would stay with her for a while.
Their skin was rough and scaly, but they had round, curious eyes, and they would never hurt her.
Making up the monsters felt more and more like remembering them.
Anna fished for monsters.
Her mom said not to go too close to the canals, but Anna was older now. Old enough to finish school, soon. Old enough to know that her grandma’s old stories, of green, scaly monsters who liked peanuts, were just stories. Old enough to know that the canals were dangerous now.
But Anna still wondered.
So she covered a hook in peanut butter and snuck out to Old Town. There used to be restaurants here, but now they were musty old gift shops.
Behind one was a canal intersection, with an almost-drowned canal light in the center.
Anna swam to the light with her fishing pole and climbed up. She dangled the hook into the water.
Anna imagined her grandmother here, years ago, in a wooden gondola. The water was probably lower then.
Anna wondered if she should be scared. Probably not. If there were still monsters here, they would be out at night, like in Grandma’s stories. Her mind wandered as she sat there in the sun.
She heard a quiet splash and looked down.
Her fishing line jerked, and her pole flew out of her hands and disappeared.
She thought she heard a gulp, muffled by the water.
A yellow eye the size of a plate emerged from the surface.
It winked.
Janika lived with monsters.
Some people worshipped them. When an ocean-lizard raised its great head, they prayed to it. When a rumble-hill opened a grassy eye, they sang special songs.
Some people feared them. Janika’s grandparents built their house on a stone plateau, far from rumble-hills and pesky earth-diggers.
But Janika thought the monsters were just animals, like dogs or parrots. Like all of God’s creatures, just – bigger.
She didn’t worship them. You don’t worship dogs, you worship God for giving them to you.
She didn’t fear them, either. The rumble-hills were huge, yes, but they never crushed anyone. They just looked at you patiently, and if they moved that did it at the pace of a snail.
She’d even seen an ocean-lizard, once. She had gone to the docks with other tourists to throw peanut-packages into the water, and it ate her package and winked a giant yellow eye. Her little brother squealed and hid behind her leg, but Janika thought it was a friendly wink. She read stories about when the monsters had been smaller, and they never hurt people then. They played with children.
That was why Janika decided that when she grew up, she would live on a rumble-hill.
One hill, in particular. It stayed close to Janika’s house, in a little valley across the road. She named it Grain, for the wheat that sometimes grew on it. She built herself a swing on Grain’s tree, and when she played on him, his deep rumbles sounded happy.
Janika’s friends said she was crazy, but she just smiled and read her stories of monsters.
