PIHM Short Story: The Monster at My Window (Loves the Monster in My Mirror) by LA Knight

TW for brief mentions of self-harm, bullying, suicidal ideation, and depression.

Only a monster could ever love you.

Kids shout and jeer until, by the time I'm nine, the words are carved into the inside of my skull. Etched into my eyelids whenever I try to escape into sleep. Unlovable. I don't doubt it. I'm a monster, too, for so many reasons.

Age ten, I carve the words into both arms with safety pins, shaky scars an invitation to whatever horror could ever find room in its heart to love something like me. A feral girl all frizzy witch-hair and gnashing teeth white against my golden-brown skin, words on my tongue sharp enough to slice an artery. Love itself is a monster, after all, and monsters flock together.

I send out that invitation with flesh and steel at ten, get an answer at thirty-one. My hair is still a briar cloud and my nails can still flense the human monsters that only see fat and sick and dark and think weak and pathetic and ugly. I can barely get out of bed most days, my blood refusing to carry the oxygen I need, but anyone who gets too close learns I'm still a changeling with teeth. It only takes a breath to rip flesh.

I'm thirty-one and dying by inches when the monster climbs through my window, chasing its wayward shadow. Bare feet the color of rich, dark soil land almost soundlessly on the carpet. No shadow flows from the soles. Instead, the midnight wraith flits from wall to wall like a rabid kindergartener trying to win The Floor Is Lava.

"Get the fuck out."

I'm too tired for this. I don't have the bandwidth to deal with untethered shadows and people that can float through a third-story window. If it wants to kill me, fine. Maybe then I'll stop being so tired all the time. If I'm dead, I can stop struggling to prove to everyone around me that I deserve to just fucking exist.

I've earned that peace. And I'm so sick of having to earn it.

"What's your name?"

The monster's voice is like silver velvet and I'm too tired to even be pissed it's talking to me, or be worried that its voice makes my diseased blood shimmer. I pull my blanket over my head. Maybe I should be scared or something but that's so much work.

Being pissed is so much work, too, but I manage somehow when the monster yanks my blankets off. I rear up, hydra-swift and ready to bite. I can practically feel flesh give and veins crunch between my teeth. Echoes of old memories from when I was a kid, from before I got sick.

The monster is staring at me. I stare back.

It's beautiful. Ze is beautiful. I'm not sure how I know ze is ze like me, but I know. I can tell. Ze is a statue of a huge Greek goddex swathed in green and black chiffon and velvet and leather, a mountain witch tall as a reaching redwood with a body carved from ebony by a generous and talented hand, full round breasts and face and belly. A fuzz of tight auburn curls like a cap of blood on zir head catches the scarlet glow of my galaxy projector.

It's the wings that stop me from lunging a second time, with talons ready to tear. Wings vast as the night sky, sable feathers sheened with cobalt and malachite and garnet at every razor-sharp edge. They're the same colors as zir shadow. The tops are tipped with obsidian claws like the claws on a bat or a gargoyle.

Zir gaze is warm honeyed tiger's eye, jewel bright. Golden sunfire that strikes sharp as a stiletto to the heart. As feral and scarred as I am. I want to look forever. Devour zem with my eyes. I haven't earned the right but for once, I don't think I need to.

"What's your name?" Ze asks again. Zir shadow has crawled back to hover by zir feet. Zir toenails are sharp, black chitin.

This time, I sheath my own claws and say, "Wendi."

A smile, a grin flashing sweeter than milk teeth and white sprays of soft-scented, poisonous baby's breath. The monster flares zir wings and bows from the waist, courtly as a hungry vampire.

There is recognition in zir face and somehow, I know what it means.

"I'm Petria," ze says. "Will you come with me, Wendi? My Wendi, all teeth and talons and terribleness?"

I was terrible once, before I got sick. Terrible as a summer storm when I turned vicious, a little monster-creature hungry for enough blood to make the cruel hurting stop. Terrible as a pack of wolves in winter. Petria can see the ghost of it on me still. My own shadow.

Only a monster could ever love someone like you.

I think of old taunts like prophecies. Old stories where people fall for beasts in castles and monsters in forests and eldritch gods of the heart. I think of the recognition in Petria's feral amber eyes and the odd scent of ocean spray misting off zir wings.

As a little kid I dreamed of my own monster and now ze's come, night-wings and hell-shadow and sea-scent and all. I'm too tired to care if ze plans to kill me. Too tired to fight what I want. Too tired to care if I've earned this. I'm sick of having to earn even a nibble or scratch of happiness. Of mine-ness.

Let me have something without having to fight my body or the world for it. Let it be as easy and as hard as getting out of bed for once.

I want what I was promised. I want a monster, my monster. It’s not about deserving. Fuck deserving.

So, I get up.

I take Petria's hand.

I don't tear out zir throat with my talons. Ze doesn't tear out mine with zir fangs.

Instead, ze folds me in zir soft, Stygian wings and kisses me. Zir wings smell of the sea and zir kiss tastes of blood and salt and starlight.

Ze tastes like flying and never coming to land.

LA Knight is a disabled, chronically ill, autistic biracial Black person. She is bisexual and genderfluid. They use any pronouns except it/its. Xe is active on Twitter at @LA_Knight89. His work has been published in Foliate Oak Magazine, The Young Adult Reader, Tomorrow’s Cthulhu, Combat Magazine, New Legends of Fantasy: Caster*Castle*Creature, Fiyah Literary Magazine, and We're Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2021. Fae will be published in The Dragon’s Hoard 2, Maleficence: An Anthology of Queer Disabled Villainy, and Fairy Rites this year. Ze lives with jør genderfaun spouse, two life-partners, and eir cats in the Sonoran Desert.