Create a Monster

A monster story for Halloween.

Create a Monster

 

            “Create a Monster!  Everything you need in one easy, portable kit.  Just $9.95 (includes S/H). Order now for delivery before Halloween!  Check or M/O only.”

            The ad at the back of my science fiction anthology magazine looked intriguing.  I’d never tried to make a monster of my very own before.  I reached for the Mason jar on the shelf above my bed, and dug out a crumpled five dollar bill, three equally crumpled ones, six quarters, four dimes, and a nickel.  Leaving the open jar on my desk, I picked up the magazine, and trotted downstairs to the living room.

“Mom?” I asked quietly, not wanting to startle her.

She looked up from the stack of math papers she was grading.  “Hm?”

“Can you write me a check?  Please?  I have the money here.”  I displayed the bills and coins.

“I guess,” she said, distractedly.  “Get my checkbook.”

Dropping the cash on the corner of her desk, I hurried out to the kitchen, where her over-sized, brown, leather purse sat on top of the big dresser by the back door.  The top zipper was open, and I saw the blue vinyl cover of the checkbook next to her wallet.  I pulled out the checkbook, and returned to the living room.

I showed Mom the ad, and she made out the check to the company that was listed.  She made the necessary comment on the bottom line, to show which ad the check was for.  She signed and dated the check, and ripped it out along the perforations, with a distinctive tat-tat-tat-tat-tat sound.  I waited, impatient, but politely silent, while she recorded the check in the check register.  I bit my lip, but I knew better than to rush her.  Finally, she closed the magazine, with the check sticking out like a bookmark from the classified ads page, and handed it back to me.

“There y’go,” she said.  She handed me the checkbook.  “Put this back.”

“Thanks,” I replied, taking the magazine in my left hand, and the checkbook in my right.

I went into the kitchen, and tucked the checkbook quickly into Mom’s purse, right where I found it.  Then I walked quickly through the living room, and dashed down the hall and up the stairs.  In my room, I wrote the order on a sheet of notebook paper.  I made sure to include everything that was needed.  I tore the page out of the notebook.  The paper made a brt-brt-brt-brt-brt sound, as tiny paper fragments flew from the wind coil that bound the pages.  I folded the paper around the check, put it in the envelope that I took from a box under my desk, and licked the flap.  The glue tasted sweetly bitter, as always.  At least I didn’t get a paper cut on my tongue.  I printed the address on the front of the envelope, then printed my name and address on the top left corner.  Finally, I folded the envelope in thirds, stuffed it in my right front jeans pocket, and followed it with a handful of coins.

I jammed my bare feet into a pair of worn tennis shoes, and ran downstairs again.

“I’m ridin’ my bike to the post office,” I called back, as I rushed out the kitchen door.

“Okay, Hon,” Mom replied.

I grabbed the pink bike I’d been riding for the past five years, winced at the sight of the equally pink roses decaled all over it, and climbed onto the banana seat.  I rode carefully down the gravel driveway in the warm August sunshine.  Hearing a robin singing in the old apple tree next to the drive, I smiled.  I was glad I wasn’t one of Mom’s summer school students.  I still had two weeks of freedom.  With that thought, I reached the hot, slightly sticky macadam of the road in front of the house.  The familiar, tarry, petroleum odor wafted up to meet the hot summer sunbeams. 

I turned onto the street, and started the long straight stretch before the hill.  I needed to get some sped before I hit the hill, or I’d be walking the bike before I got to the top.  I pedaled hard, and quickly began to sweat.  I wrinkled my nose at the vaguely sweet, decayed odor as I passed the feed store, fought the hill as I passed between two rows of identical brick houses used by millworkers, and gulped air as I crested the hill.  It was a hot afternoon!

I was able to ride easily the rest of the way, and even to coast a little as I went down the gradual hill at the top of the village street.  The post office was the first building after the railroad tracks, across from the old trail station.  Together, they marked the start of the village.  I bumped careful over the tracks, just two sets here, unlike the four set across from the house, closer to the switches north of the feed mill.  I leaned my bike against the brick wall of the post office, and walked inside.

The air was cooler inside.  I big fan stood in the corner, at the end of the wall of glass-and-brass mail box doors, with their little letter and number combination dials.  Another, smaller fan was balanced on the end of the service counter, by the sponge dish.  The sponge looked dried out, as usual.  My uncle was the Postmaster for the village, and his jovial, round face, with its apple-red cheeks and twinkling, dark eyes met my searching gaze.

“Uncle Andy!” I said, smiling, before he could speak.  “Can I get a stamp?”

“Debbie!” he greeted me, chuckling.  “Of course!  I have just the stamp for you!”

I dug the envelope out of my pocket, along with two dimes.

“Twenty cents,” he said, tearing a stamp from a sheet in his drawer.  It was hard to hear, with the metallic rattle of the two fans.

I passed him the coins, sliding them across the smoothly varnished, yellowish wood of the old counter.  He handed me the stamp.  I glanced at it.  “A Nation of Readers.”  I grunted soft, inarticulate acknowledgement.  Uncle Andy knew I was a voracious reader.  I had already read my way through his prized library of fantasy and science fiction paperbacks.

I liked the stamp.  The faint taste of mint didn’t mask the indescribable taste of the glue.  I tapped my tongue against the roof of my mouth to get rid of the taste, as I positioned the moistened rectangle, with its distinctively scalloped edges, on the upper right corner of the envelope.

Uncle Andy took it, stamped it with the red postmark stamp to cancel it, and tucked it into a blue cotton mail sack on the metal cart behind him.

“Thanks, Uncle Andy!” I said.

“You have a good day.  Stay out of trouble.”

I waved as I went out the door.  Grabbing my bike, I set out along the narrow packed-dirt path that paralleled the railroad tracks.  It was a lot shorter than going around by the road.  In a few minutes, I pulled into the parking lot of the smaller of the two grocery stores that served the village.  I propped my bike against the wall, bent to scratch the ears of the large dog that always lay on the front step, and went inside.  I passed down the first aisle to the back, where I retrieved a ten-ounce glass bottle of Coke from the cooler.  At the front counter, I picked up a Chunky bar.  The man behind the chipped Formica counter silently held out his hand.  I counted out a quarter, two dimes, and a nickel, then one more nickel for the bottle deposit.  Fifty cents for a chocolate bar and a soda.

On the way out, I used the worn, brass opener mounted on the wall to pop the cap off my Coke bottle.  I pocketed the bottle cap, earning a sour look from the man.  It was known that he added the discarded bottle caps to the metal he sold for scrap.  Outside, I took a long drink of the icy cold Coke.  That finally got rid of the glue taste on my tongue.

I walked my bike back across the road and down the path, so I wouldn’t spill the soda while riding.  When I came to the pile of discarded, used railroad ties, a couple of minutes down the path, I chambered up to the top.  The tarry, cindery smell that had soaked into the wooden ties through years of supporting the steel rails was smokier, and more acrid than the smell of street pavement.  I preferred the smell of rail travel to that of car travel.  I felt safe on the railroad, where I had grown up hitching joy rides with railroaders for a quarter of a mile or so, almost since I could walk.  I had nightmares about being hit by a car on the busy street.  I thought about this, as I sat on the pile, in the shade of a stand of red sumac trees, and pulled the not-yet-melting Chunky bar from the pocket that had previously carried the envelope with the monster kit order.  I savored the rich mild chocolate, generously studded with peanuts, cashews, and raisins, washing it down with the vaguely tangy, cold Coke.

When my snack was gone, I shoved the silvery candy wrapper into my pocket.  I tamped it down with the class soda bottle, which made an awkward bulge that rhythmically tapped the top of my leg as I pedaled away down the path toward home.

School started right after Labor Day.  Only two weeks had passed since I mailed the check.  It was too soon to start watching the post office.  September passed.  When October started, my friends started talking about Halloween costumes and the various parties we would all go to.  We were too old to trick-or-treat now, but many of us would go along with younger brothers or sisters; my best friend had to go with his little brother, and Mom expected me to go look after my little sister, for her final time going out for candy.  Six weeks had passed.  I started stopping by the post office after school.

At the end of the second week of October, Uncle Andy saw me enter the post office, and had the box waiting on the counter when I reached it, topped by a stack of letters and bills.  I stuffed the envelopes, and a couple of magazines and catalogues, into my book bag, and picked up the box.  It was enticingly heavy, and I heard things subtly shift positions inside when I tipped it.  It was only the size of a shoe box, but picking it up made my pulse quicken.

I trudged home, walking along the railroad tracks to save time and cut out the hill.  Drifts of fallen maple, birch, and sumac leaves crunched and rustled with every footstep, releasing a spicy, warm, slightly decayed odor into the air.  The smells of the feed store invaded my nose as I passed behind it, and the small strip of swamp between the tracks and the road after the feed store had a cool, fetid odor, mixed with the scent of floating algae, and the rotting smell of tarry, cindery wood where another pile of railroad ties had long ago toppled into the edge of the shallow, murky water.  There was a plop of a frog dropping into the water, and I saw its eyes below the surface of the water at the epicenter of a ripple of expanding rings; a turtle, disturbed by the splash, waddled past my foot.

At home, I went in through the kitchen door.  I dropped the rest of the mail on the dresser in the kitchen, snatched a magazine and two letters addressed to me from the pile, and hurried upstairs with my long-awaited box.

Inside my room, I dropped the letters and magazines on my bed, and slid into the chair in front of the desk.  Eagerly, I tore open the brown paper wrapper, and stuffed it in the waste basket.  The plastic box, with a hinged lid, had a picture of a warty, horned, green monster on the top.  I lifted the lid.  I started taking things out.  A bottle of white glue.  Six glass jars of poster paints: red, yellow, blue, green, black, and white.  Two jars of metallic glitter, one silver, and one gold.  A cellophane package of chenille wire pipe cleaners of various colors.  A cellophane package of garishly tied turkey feathers.  A rolled up bundle of a dozen rectangular sheets of polyester felt.  A similar roll of about 20 sheets of construction paper.  A plastic packet with several pairs of googly eyes.  A roll of white, cotton kite string.  A pair of scissors, two paint brushes, and a black felt-tipped marker. The booklet, folded double at the bottom of the box, showed the same warty green monster, with “Create a Monster” blazoned across it in blocky, red letters.  Inside the booklet were patters and instructions for making six monster masks for Halloween, all requiring added materials, such as paper plates, paper grocery bags, and empty toilet paper tubes.

I felt the tears welling up.  I’d been duped!  It was a craft kit, not a science kit.  Angrily, I threw the empty box across the room at the closed door.  It bounced off almost silently, without leaving a mark on the painted white wood.

My temper got worse as I forced my way through algebra homework.  By the time Mom got home, I was well past a snit, and I exploded into a full tantrum when she asked whether I’d got my box yet.  I shouted and sobbed.  I kicked the heavy wooden kitchen dresser, which made it worse, as my bruised toe throbbed.

When I finally calmed down enough to be talked to, Mom said, very calmly and sweetly, “Well, Deb, I’m glad your monster making kit worked.”

I stared at her, shocked and incredulous.  Had she not heard I word I’d said in the last half hour.  How could she have misunderstood my anger so horribly?

“No!” I wailed, still teetering on the edge of mild hysteria.  “It didn’t work!  It wasn’t what I ordered at all!  It was all wrong!”

“I think it worked very well,” she said, perfectly reasonably.

I gaped.

“Your kit made a very realistic monster,” she added, with that tight, narrow smile that meant the opposite of a smile.  There was a slight edge to her voice.

“How?” I gasped.

“Debbie, you have been a perfect, roaring, raving monster since I got home,” she said, tightly.  “Go clean up the mess I know you made, and play with your paper and glue like the bratty child you’re being, until you decide to be a human being again.”  She was using her very clear, clipped, angry-teacher voice.

I swallowed.  I clenched my fists.  I bit my lower lip.  I turned, and trudged upstairs to my room.  As quietly as possible, I cleaned my room.  I kept going until I no longer felt flushed and hot.  I cleaned up messes that had been there before my fit of temper.  I put the box on the shelf with my other craft supplies.

By the time Mom called my sister and me for supper, I was calm and contrite.  I had washed my face and brushed my hair in the upstairs bathroom.  I went down to the kitchen.

Mom looked at me.  She handed me a plate of shepherd’s pie.

“So, you turned the monster back into a teenage girl.”

I nodded.

She looked at me.

“Sorry.”

She nodded.

I carried my plate to the living room, sat on the floor in front of the T.V., and ate my food.

I had been a monster.

That gave me an idea.

I spent the last two weeks before Halloween working hard in my room.  Newspaper, flour, water, and salt became papier-mâché.  I molded it over a big balloon, which I popped when the shell had died hard.  I used the glue and the paints.  I used the feathers and felt.  Brown paper bags, more papier-mâché, more glue and paint.

On Halloween Night, I wore my home-made monster costume to the high school dance.  All my friends loved it.

I had created a monster.

Author's Note

Ignore typos and grammar. Also posted as a book chapter. Initial reactions and constructive criticism welcome.