Monstrilio, p.11
Monstrilio, page 11
I tiptoed through their house. I couldn’t be sure a hungry Monstrilio wouldn’t forget who I was and attack me.
“Monstrilio. It’s your friend, Lena. Please don’t eat me.”
I heard a creak. I spun around and tripped over a sofa chair. Monstrilio was on top of me. “Get off me!” I kicked and knocked over a stool with a plant on it. Monstrilio wasn’t on top of me. Only the chair I tripped on. I took a moment on the floor to catch my breath.
“Monstrilio,” I called out to the patio. “Monstrilio?” I stepped outside. I heard rustling. Monstrilio plopped down at my feet. He smiled. Fangs bloody. “Fuck. What did you do?”
Cats and small dogs (some not so small), also a few rats, lay dead all over the patio, in pieces, eviscerated. It stank of innards and blood. Monstrilio leapt, grabbed a post with his arm-tail, and swung to another. He growled from up in his perch, chomped on something, then threw it at my feet. Bloody and furry. I stepped back in the kitchen and closed the door behind me.
I took three long breaths to push myself into surgeon mode and went back out. Monstrilio’s yellow house had a gate so they could lock him inside when they had strangers over. I ordered Monstrilio to get in, but he didn’t obey.
“Monstrilio, please.”
He leapt away. “Lena,” he said, playful.
I took a piece of who knows what animal and threw it in Monstrilio’s house. Monstrilio leapt inside. I locked the gate.
There was a rip on the net above. Joseph’s job to fix. I grabbed a shovel and a trash bag from a tool shed at the back of the patio and shoveled up a mostly whole hairy dog. Threw it in the bag. Monstrilio burped. I tried to pick up part of a cat, but it kept slipping off the shovel. The bell on its collar jingled. I went back inside the kitchen to find some gloves. It would be easier to pick up the dead animals with my hands.
“What are you doing here?”
I jumped.
Joseph laughed. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Don’t go out there.”
“Why?” Joseph’s face turned eggshell white. “Did something happen to Monstrilio?”
“I’m sorry, Joseph. I really am. I forgot to feed him yesterday. I guess he must’ve been hungry because he got out.”
“He’s lost?”
“He’s here. But his leftovers are too.” Joseph stormed past me, opened the door to the patio, stepped out, and then stepped back in. He was paler. I told him to sit. Asked him if he needed to hurl. He told me he didn’t, but I slid a bucket next to him, just in case. I rubbed his back. “I should have fed him. I’m sorry.”
“How many did he kill?”
“A lot.”
“Why so many?”
“I don’t know, Joseph. Instinct?”
“And he brought them here?”
“Kind of makes sense. This is where he usually feeds.”
“Magos can’t see this.”
“She needs to know what happened. Don’t you think?” I found a pair of dishwashing gloves, slipped them on, and headed outside.
“I’ll be with you in a minute,” Joseph said, so pale that the veins on his temple showed.
“You don’t need to.”
“I’ll be there.”
Joseph and I spent the next hour picking up as much of the animals as we could find. He threw bucket after bucket of soapy water on the floor. He mopped, and even when there was no blood left, he kept mopping. His face became red and sweaty. The day was too sunny for such a scene. Joseph didn’t acknowledge Monstrilio, who called out “Papi!” from behind the gate. I scrubbed the walls and flowerpots where blood had splattered. Some stains wouldn’t fully come out, but at least I made them less incandescently red—more brownish, like dirt.
“I think it’s clean now,” I said, and I picked off a bit of pet from one of the plants.
Joseph gave the floor a final mop. Monstrilio scratched the metal-bar gate with his arm-tail claws and asked, “Papi?” Joseph’s face muscles quit; his eyebrows and cheeks drooped.
“I can’t let you out,” Joseph said. Monstrilio scratched again. Joseph pushed his fingers through the gate, and Monstrilio placed his arm-tail on top of them. He stared at Joseph with big, beady eyes and showed his fangs, still bloody. “I’m sorry.” Joseph walked inside the house.
ESTRELLA CAME THAT NIGHT. It was a Monday. She bathed me, the frosted tips of her bunned-up hair soggy on her forehead. I pushed them away, and my hand lingered on her cheek.
“Is this okay?” I asked.
She nodded, her hands busy soaping my breasts. I didn’t normally touch the women I hired, but sleep was coming so rarely I wondered if I needed to do more to earn it. My hand traveled down from Estrella’s cheek to one of her naked breasts. I lingered on her large, beautiful nipple before going down past the curve of her belly to her vagina. I fingered her. It seemed she wasn’t sure if she should stop washing me or if she should just relax. She opted for the latter. I asked her to finger me too. After we came (I wasn’t sure if she came or if she pretended to come for my sake, though if it was fake, it was amazingly convincing), she toweled me off like in our regular sessions. She watched me dress in my nightclothes. I paid her more to account for the sex, and she left. I went to bed with the same ease I had each Monday before the incident, before Magos and Monstrilio jumbled up my life. I was confident I would sleep through the night.
I woke up an hour later and had no trace of sleep left in my body. I called Joseph and asked him to meet me at our favorite cantina.
“It’s midnight,” he said. I didn’t answer. “Okay. I’ll meet you there.”
Joseph showed up in sweatpants. I wore a tracksuit. We ordered beers, and it was only after we drank most of our pints that we found the spirit to speak.
“Thank you,” Joseph said. “I needed this.”
“You and me both.” We clinked glasses and downed the remainder of our beers. We asked for more.
“It was horrible, wasn’t it?” Joseph said. “I told Magos what happened. She’s still at Lucía’s. Apparently there are more things to be fixed apart from the wall. She said it was natural if Monstrilio was hungry. But she didn’t see what Monstrilio did, Lena. You saw it. This wasn’t hunger. It was like he was showing off.”
“A horror show.”
“Right? I mean, it was excessive.”
“Is Monstrilio still locked up?”
“I spent the day installing metal fencing instead of the net so I could let Monstrilio out. He seemed so sad in there, and it broke my heart to leave him, but I couldn’t let him out again.”
“It’s not Monstrilio’s fault. He’s wild.”
“I thought he was getting tamer, you know? I play with him. And he speaks for chrissakes. What the hell is he?”
“A monster.”
A table next to us cheered and clinked glasses. Joseph drank. I drank too.
“Should we even keep him? I mean, he had no qualms about mauling every pet in the neighborhood and bringing them home.”
“He doesn’t know any better.”
“I don’t believe he’s a monster, Lena. At least not a full one. He can learn.”
“Learn what?”
“To behave.” Joseph burped. “Magos wants to cut his arm-tail off. She says now that Monstrilio is growing into a more human body, he doesn’t need it anymore. She has a theory that the arm-tail is what makes him wild.”
“Where did she get that from?”
“I don’t know, but she seemed pretty sure.”
“Do you think it’s true?”
The table next to us erupted in laughter and I smiled, unsuccessfully trying to absorb their merriment.
“His body is changing,” Joseph said. “He didn’t have limbs before and now he has four. He’s getting less round. He’s not looking more human but at least more like a normal animal. His arm-tail is the only thing that’s off, coming out of the side like that.”
“So you’re going to chop it off.” I was angry for Monstrilio. I thought they loved him just as he was. “That’s bullshit, Joseph.”
I chugged the rest of my beer down and Joseph did too. The waitress, her hair so unnaturally red it was purple, took our empties away. We asked for one more round.
“I’m teaching him new words, and I want to keep teaching him. He learns quicker now. The other day he said, ‘Papi, water more.’ He’s constructing sentences. I saw notches scratched on one of the wooden posts, and when I asked him what it was, he said, ‘Sleep.’ He’s counting the times he sleeps! Like a calendar.”
“What for?”
“No clue. But you see how smart he is. And he says ‘Monstrilio’ now, did you know? He says ‘Monstrilio’ and points to himself. He knows who he is!” Joseph smiled. Then he became sad. “I don’t know what to do, Lena. I don’t know if I can keep this up.”
“Keep what up?”
“This life, here, with Monstrilio. With Magos. It’s like she’s acting. She does all the things Magos would do. She says all the things she would say, but there’s nothing inside her. Like she’s on automatic.”
“Faking it until it becomes real.”
“I’ve been doing it too, you know? I’m working. I’m smiling. I’m out here caring for Monstrilio. And sometimes, it does seem like it’s real, like I can actually be this person.” He pushed strands of hair behind his ears. “It just feels like I should be doing something else.”
“Like what?”
“Crying.”
“Then cry.”
“I’ve cried myself out.”
“I’d say.”
“Shouldn’t I be holed up in a dark room somewhere with a scraggly beard, dirty and insane?”
“Why aren’t you?”
“I guess I already did that. Back in New York. Uncle watched me cry. I could go back there or live somewhere else. End things, finally. That’s why I came back here. Why I showed up at your door that day. I still could. Start over for real, I mean.” He stared at me. I scratched at a bump on the table’s plastic covering until a small hole appeared. “Well. What do you think? Aren’t you going to tell me to stay?”
“Why would I?”
“Because it’s what’s best for me? For Magos and me. And Monstrilio too, I think.”
“Is it?”
“I don’t know. Help me.”
“Sometimes I think I should disappear to a cabin in Greenland, become a lumberjack.”
“Why Greenland?”
“Why the fuck not?”
Joseph lifted his glass and looked at me through his beer, his face the color of sunshine. He smiled, his teeth in full view, even the crooked one to the side. I stuck my tongue out. He did the same, put his beer down, and excused himself to go pee.
I arrived at their house at seven sharp. Most people wouldn’t dare arrive exactly on time, but I hated calculating how much cushion I should give (when is too late or just right), so I came at the time asked. Joseph received me. I pulled him down to hug him and he winced. His forearm was bandaged.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
“Doesn’t look like nothing. Let me see.”
“Flaqui!” Magos walked into the living room and kissed my cheeks. “You look great. A bit pale. You’re working too much, no?” I nodded. Also, Estrella had left me, and I hadn’t had the energy to look for a new woman. I’d begun to wonder if my routine of baths had run its course. “I got some of that Tempranillo you like. Come. Come.”
Magos had set the dining room table with candles, linen napkins, glittering silver, and beautiful earthenware dishes.
“Is this all for me?”
“I wanted tonight to be special.”
Joseph had combed his hair back and was wearing a shirt with a mauve blazer over it. Magos wore a flowy black-and-white-patterned dress with a chunky red necklace and heavy silver bracelets. I was wearing jeans and a shirt. I tucked my shirt in. Magos told me not to worry.
“Always beautiful,” she said, and she disappeared into the kitchen.
“Was it Monstrilio?” I asked, pointing at Joseph’s arm.
“It was an accident.”
“Give it here.” Joseph handed me his arm, and I undid his badly wrapped bandage. A gash ran from his elbow to his wrist, luckily sparing his radial artery. “Did you have this looked at? You need stitches.”
“I didn’t want to go to the hospital and have to answer questions.”
“You should’ve told me.”
“I’m fine.”
I left to get a suturing kit, alcohol, and gauze from a pharmacy three blocks away. When I came back, Magos and Joseph sat in the living room with wine glasses. Mine sat ready on the coffee table.
Magos lifted her glass. “Salud.”
“Wait. I need to take care of Joseph first.”
“Can’t you do that later?”
“Nope. I plan to drink tonight.”
I opened the bottle of rubbing alcohol and wiped the instruments with it. Magos left us. Joseph moaned when I cleaned his wound.
“Lucky it’s not infected.”
I gave him eleven stitches.
“He didn’t mean it,” Joseph said. “I was trying to get him down from the mesh ceiling, but I must have surprised him because when he realized it was me he had hurt, he became, I don’t know if sad is the word, but he wouldn’t stop whimpering and climbing on me. He’s been doing whatever I tell him to since then.”
“You’re back to being friends with him?”
“I never stopped. I was just shaken. I didn’t know how to handle the pet thing.”
I bandaged his arm with fresh gauze.
“Now can we say salud?” Magos asked, appearing back in the living room.
Magos had cooked budín Azteca, my favorite, and had made a spinach-and-nut salad with jamaica dressing, and, for dessert, Joseph had baked a tres leches. He poured wine.
“How are your videos coming along?” I asked Magos.
“I’m fiddling with some ideas. I wrote a lot while staying with my mother, but I haven’t really done much video-wise.”
“Really?” Joseph said. “You’re in your studio a whole lot.”
“Practicing. Testing. But nothing concrete yet. I haven’t found my project.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“What I want to say, explore. Something that will make my work cohere. I think I might try a live performance.”
“Sounds intense.”
“It is,” Magos said. Joseph took a big gulp of his wine.
After dessert, and one more round of wine, they became silent and stared at me ominously.
“What?” I asked. “You’re not planning on feeding me to Monstrilio, are you?”
Magos laughed. “You’re an idiot.”
“What is it?”
“We need to ask you a favor.”
“Oh, man.”
“We want you to remove Monstrilio’s arm-tail.”
“Fuck no.”
Magos looked at Joseph as if it was his turn to say something, but he stared down at his wine glass.
“You’re fine with this?” I asked him.
“Magos says it’ll help Monstrilio be less wild, but maybe he’s not supposed to be.”
“Monstrilio almost tore your arm off, Joseph,” Magos said.
“He scratched it. Barely.”
“Lena just gave you stitches!” Magos placed her elbows on the table. “We have to do something, Flaqui. He can’t stay savage forever.”
“You had no problem with him being savage before,” I said.
“Yes, but Monstrilio must evolve. We have to help him evolve.”
“I don’t want to mutilate him,” Joseph said.
“It’s not mutilation. It’s removing something that will ultimately hurt him. Like removing a tumor, right, Flaqui?”
“Not like that at all,” I said.
Magos leaned back on her chair, took a sip of wine, and stared at the lamp, half a metal sphere painted in an acrylic orange. I was with Magos when she bought it at La Lagunilla, years ago, with Santiago in tow. He had observed each item with his hands held at his back like a tiny collector. I bought him a tin robot. He kept it on his lap when we drove back home. I told him he was allowed to play with it, but he told me the substances on his fingers might damage it. I remembered laughing. I loved his weirdness. I couldn’t remember seeing the robot when I packed away his things.
Joseph picked at the crumbs of his tres leches with his fork.
“There’s nothing wrong with Monstrilio being wild,” I said. “He’s a monster. And anyway, why do you think removing his arm-tail will make him less wild?”
“Instinct,” Magos said. “Like I had with the lung. This feels right, Flaqui. You both have to trust me.”
“Let’s say you’re right, Magos,” Joseph said. “Chopping off his arm-tail still feels cruel to me. Monstrilio does everything with it.”
“Why is he growing other limbs then? We have to help him learn to use them, but he won’t if he can keep relying on his arm-tail.”
“Besides the cruelty of it,” I said, “removing his arm-tail is not just whacking it off. We don’t know anything about Monstrilio’s anatomy. What if his arm-tail holds his brain, or his heart, or another essential organ? We need to know what muscles can be severed, if any. Bones. Tendons. Monstrilio could be one interconnected membrane. We don’t know. And healing? Do we know if he heals?”
Joseph said, “After the—the pet situation—Monstrilio was scratched up pretty bad, but he healed fast.”
“What would you need to do this?” Magos asked.
“I’m not going to do it. But you’d need X-rays, at the very least. Ideally an MRI. You need to know if Monstrilio responds to anesthetic and if he can handle it. We don’t even know if he has veins.”
