You step down the street, the sharp squeal of rubber soles against wet cobbles heralding your presence. The rain falls against your hood, its steady-rapid pitter-patter-ratatat-tat blinding your ears to all but the loudest demands that would be made of them. Glass breaks as a gnarled beast tosses a man through a window, the kiss of pavement against its victim’s spine gentle as a doctor’s lips.
You bump into something, a texture like mud-drenched denim scraping against you. What could it be? A mugger? A kidnapper? An uncaring stranger ready to cast you aside for daring to touch them with your wretched sickly body?
Oh.
No.
No, it’s only a monster.
It’s all sharp edges pushing out against skin not made to hold it back, hateful judging eyes scouring the streets about you. The remains of a pair of jeans barely contain the beast’s malformed legs as they struggle to carry its ungainly torso with its bones of knife blades. It sees the two men behind it as they shout in surprise and scramble from it in fear, which is silly really.
Monsters aren’t real afterall. And if they’re not real, they cannot hurt you.
Don’t they know that?
The screaming and shattering and fighting continue to echo down the alleys and from around street corners. You can only imagine what must have caused such violence. An insurrection, a race riot maybe? There could be looters and arsonists and rapists and murderers on the loose and you would be all alone, unprotected. A terrible rumbling sounds behind you, and after coughing up a lung’s worth of dust you turn to see a great towering beast of soundless mouths screaming epithets of fire, its thousands of grasping hands shielding me from the debris of a collapsed tenement building.
You are at war with yourself for a moment. On the one hand it’s only polite to thank someone for their help – and the sting of lessons learned shows that you should always be polite – but those same lessons made sure you know that you shouldn’t let people see you talk to your things that aren’t there. You cast your gaze about for but a moment, but the only possible witnesses are great bulbous eyes bearing snarling grins, burning those about them with searing judgement. Thank goodness, only monsters.
And monsters aren’t real.
And if it’s not real it can’t hurt you.
“Thank you!” You whisper to the colossus, its hands reaching out to smooth wrinkles in what remains of your clothes and pat you gently upon the stubble of your scalp. As the hands wander further your nan’s words echo in your mind, “It always pays to be polite”. Knowing the sting that comes from being impolite you allow the hands to continue their explorations, and bile does not rise in your throat because this is a monster and monsters are not real and if it’s not real it cannot hurt you. And your breath does not hitch because this is a monster and monsters aren’t real and if it’s not real it cannot hurt you. And that flinch does not encourage it to roam further across your body because it is a monster and monsters are not real and if it’s not real it cannot hurt me. And I do not feel the blistering heat of accusation from the other monsters upon the streets because they are not real and they cannot hurt me, and they do not whisper and laugh and taunt and shame because they are not real and they cannot hurt me and the searing light of judgement does not burn me because they’re monsters and monsters aren’t real and they cannot hurt me and they are not real and they cannot hurt me and they are not real and they cannot hurt me and they cannot hurt me and they cannot hurt me and they cannot–
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You do not limp down the street. Your skin does not burn, your clothes are not in tatters. The steady-rapid pitter-patter-ratatat-tat of rain against your hood does not stink of copper and your socks are not stained red. The smell of burning rubber and the scream of tires and the click of a door opening all pull your mind away from the things that are not happening.
“Bloody hell child you’re the first breathing human I’ve seen in too long. Get in, we gotta get out of here!” A voice shouts at me from the car to my left, freezing you in place. A person? In a car? They want you to get in their car? What could they want with you?
You turn around, stiff with fear but knowing that only more pain awaits if you struggle. As you catch sight of what lies astride the driver’s seat however you relax. Just another monster, wrought of garbage bags and hacksaws and scrubs and sedatives. You sigh with relief as you climb into the passenger’s seat, knowing that monsters aren’t real and if they’re not real then they can’t hurt you.
“Thank you, I’ve been walking for some time and I think I wore through the soles of my socks some hours back.” You wiggle your toes through the holes for emphasis.
Its hungry gaze turns briefly from the road as we drive off through the chaos, its leer writing in a thousand thousand notes about you and what it would do to you, if it were real. “Why’re you wandering about in all this?” It asks, one of its countless hands gesturing at the scenes beyond the windows as another three neither unclasp your seatbelt nor draw you closer.
“Well I’m not really sure. I woke up in my cot as usual, but no orderly came to give me my sedatives. Just a monster, and we all know monsters aren’t real.”
“Aww really?” It asked with a whine, not pulling a garbage bag over your head.
“Yeah, sorry you had to learn this way.” Your voice ballooning the plastic of the sack that isn’t there, the cold teeth of a sawblade tickling what couldn’t be your shoulder as you hear a measuring tape snap shut near your thigh.
“Well damn.” It sighs before ceasing to not be with a shock of whiplash and a wet crunch, your body flying through what you assume to be the windshield, your head’s collision with the concrete scarcely cushioned by the bag that was never wrapped tightly about your throat. For a time, you fade away.
When you can think again you begin to understand the sensations about you. The beeping of machines, the un-smell of a sanitized workplace, the feel of rough woolen sheets and a synthetic patient’s gown. You can’t open your eyes because of the swelling, but you can feel the glaring white light of the fluorescent bulbs above you, hear their buzz, feel the IV needle taped to the crook of your elbow.
The bleating of your heart rate monitor begins to pick up pace. A voice speaks up, “Shit, I think they’re awake. Get me a nurse, stat, their heart is going wild!”
That’s not the voice of a monster.
That voice is real.
That means it can hurt me.
I scream, and I do not stop.