Hopeful Monsters

by Hiromi Goto

  Which way is the outhouse?

  Masahiro peers about. The conifers are unnaturally tall. Masahiro blinks hard, squints a slow circumference. The moon slips among clouds, black and roiling. Spotlights fixed on to electrical posts cast pallid cones of unearthly light throughout the grounds. His son’s managed to choose the only camper pad that’s completely surrounded by trees. He supposes an American would just pull out his member and do his business on the ground with no thought to children walking about the next day. Masahiro is not beyond temptation, but expedience is no excuse for uncivilized behaviour no matter what the circumstances. Why, he’d be no better than an animal.

  When the moon slides out of the clouds, he can catch glimpses of the damp picnic table, the fire-pit, and Masahiro shuffles around them. The pale gravel reflects a strange greenish glow and he crunches over the surface. The drive must lead to the main road and then there would signs. Masahiro peers down at his feet, stepping carefully. A fall at his age could easily cause broken bones.

  His breath puffs moistly against his cheeks.

  Tiny flecks of lights in the branches. Masahiro is not sure if it’s an optical illusion. He rubs his eyelids with his pinkies, gently, in a circular motion. The minute motes flicker. Open, shut. They crowd close, blinking. Masahiro drops his gaze, curls his brittle hands over his icy arms. Heh, heh, he manages. Fireflies, of course. The cold presses his bladder, a painful weight.

  “Ehhhhh,” something groans.

  Masahiro twists around, his back popping. He stares into the black-limbed trees. Are leaves rustling? Did something move?

  The night air creaks the thick waists of trees, a keening whistle slides through heavy branches.

  The hollow booming of his heart echoes in his eardrums.

  The jumbled bones of undergrowth, crisscrossing boughs of trees all shapes and flickering bits of light. Eyes. Mist rising. A hollow of warmth. Did something breathe?

  A small hump of shadow. At the base of a tree. There! It moved! He is certain of it! The rounded shape of a head, tilting to one side. On its haunches. It’s staring and staring and Masahiro cannot move. And the night. An inaudible mechanical click. He feels the sound against his face. On his skin.

  One of the spotlights has gone out.

  Hoarse air rasps his throat. He is breathing loudly enough for all to hear. He cannot move to save his life.

  Click.

  “Ohhhh,” he moans.

  The pallid cones of light disappear. One after the other.

  Click.

  Click.

  The forest consumes him. The darkness enfolds his skinny form and he cannot inhale. Like when breath-sucking night haunts sit upon his chest, Masahiro is paralyzed.

  Icy, bony fingers slide across Masahiro’s palm and clamp down, hard, across his hand. The faintest prickle of pointed nails.

  His feet are stuck to the earth. His thighs and calves calcified into stone, he feels the creeping deadness twine up his torso. . . . He is not ready to go.

  Frantically, he flings his scrawny arm, flailing wildly and the deathly cold hand loses its grip. Panting, whimpering, he lurches in the direction of the camper; the rubber slippers skewing away from his heels, he stumbles. And with an agility born of desperation, he flips them off his feet. One! Two! His slippers fly through the air. He pitches forward, his arms swing in vain windmills, the gravel biting the side of his face. His glasses flip off into the night. He falls to the ground as if he had been thrown.

  Click.

  He cannot distinguish the camper from the trees.

  He is not ready. No. Please. Whatever it is that he must endure. Let it pass from him tonight. Masahiro grits his teeth between prayer and curses.

  Then.

  An orange light flicks on in the night. Distant, but close enough he can see the shape. Rectangular. A window. Someone is awake. They must have missed him. Worried. They will come for him! Masahiro waves his arm wildly. “Oiiii!” he shouts. “Oiiiiiii!”

  “Shut up.” A voice. A childish voice. Sweet and cold as winter air. Masahiro flinches. Then releases his breath. A warm waft clouds his face.

  “Jenny-fah!” Masahiro laughs. “Jenny-fah!”

  The little bitch. He will put on a good face now and make sure she’s punished tomorrow. “Ojī-chan’s had a little fall.” He turns toward her. “Go get –”

  “I said,” Jennifer’s voice enunciates in English, “shut up.”

  The words cool, distinct.

  Her head. It’s . . . overlarge. Masahiro blinks and blinks. He cannot focus. “Heh, heh,” he manages. That stupid American hat. Without averting his gaze, he pats the forest floor for his glasses. Her eyes glow green. A trick of light or his sight. Her eyes loom larger, closer and she is upon him, her fetid breath in his face, her cold wet nose pressed against his. She licks his cheek. Rasps. Her coarse tongue will tear his skin. He bats at her head and his hand glances off soft fur, but the hat. . . . She leaps away and stands nonchalantly, her pale arm and legs glowing. She is outlined in the moon. He blinks rapidly. Can almost make out triangular ears, a feline head, on Jennifer’s childish body.

  “Leave him alone,” a boy sighs from behind him.

  “Gary!” Masahiro blinks back tears. So suddenly. Surely, he loves his grandson. “Gary, my boy!” Masahiro cranes his head back.

  Into the muzzle of a fat cat.

  The boy is wearing his housecoat. Pyjama bottoms. But his head. His face. Gary’s troubled eyes stares at him from a cat face.

  “Ehhhhhh,” Masahiro moans. A hot pool grows rapidly cold in the crotch of his pyjamas.

  “Jesus!” Jennifer leaps further back.

  “Oh, Ojī-chan!” Gary mutters. He reaches down for his grand-father’s hand.

  Masahiro does not want his touch. But the other cat is a bristling presence. He can feel her distemper emanating from her skin. Her furred face. Masahiro puts his trembling fingers into his grandson’s palm. The boy’s hand is hot and dry.

  “Here to come you shouldn’t have,” Gary explains wearily in Japanese. “For us tonight important.”

  “I never wanted to go camping!” Masahiro blurts. “I never liked the wilds. I like wildlife, you understand. Ecosystems. Very important. Balance. Heh, heh, heh.”

  The pain is fast and keen. It slices, dissipates, then blooms across his back. Masahiro gasps.

  The monstercat licks her fingers. Instead of human nails, retractable claws curl from the pink tips.

  “Stop it, Jennifer!” Gary snaps. “I mean it.”

  “It’s just a little scratch. What are you going to do?” Jennifer coos. “Tell Shizuko?”

  Could he try creeping away? Masahiro whispers to himself. While they fight? If they turned upon each other he could run for the camper. Ohhhh, what manner of children are they? Their mother is a monster. His fool son. His poor, poor son would blame himself for his father’s death. But Shizuko would say Papa must have wandered off, senile. Hypothermia. Masahiro sniffles. Something rattling in his throat.

  “Kora!” a stern voice calls out. From the darkness.

  Oh!

  Relief is a soft breeze; a kiss releasing the clench of terror held in his jaws, shoulders. His groin. Masahiro’s heart lifts. His whole life he has been saved from the daily indignities. His socks, underwear pressed and laid out on the bed. The bread toasted while he brushed his teeth. The deliveries and pickup arranged, and he had never paid a bill in his entire life. Food appearing like it ought to whenever he was hungry. His bath filled until it ran over. Abundance and grace. His life path has been polished and shined by his helpmate, Mama, all along.

  He pushes against the ground. Feels the cold circles of his glasses against his fingertips. They are intact and he eagerly perches them on his nose.

  “Chiye. You heard me.” He turns, a smile breaking his face in half. “These children – these monst –”

  His wife.

  Her face.

  It bobs mere inches from his. Lit up like a paper lantern,
her face glows. Her expression is benign. She stares at him. Small black eyes unblinking. Like they are painted on her skin. He cannot feel her breathing. Her breath.

  Masahiro cannot move.

  His wife’s head starts weaving. Churning, moiling through the night air, his wife’s neck writhes sinuously without a sound.

  Her body, sitting neatly on the ground, is three metres away.

  Masahiro’s cells. They scream inside his body. Blood turning sluggish, thickening, icy, and his limbs lock, turn to stone.

  His wife. His wife.

  Has she been a monster all along?

  Masahiro cannot bear it. His heart convulses erratic, a hiccup of pain stutters, spasms inside his chest. The defining edges of sight decay. A mist swells from the periphery. Ever closer. Rising from the mouldy leaves, the clammy soil. He can hear Jennifer laughing. A mewling sound. If he closes his eyes, it will all go away.

  “Yes,” his wife’s face mouths. Her sagging cheeks are fuller, but not with blood. Her lantern face glows. Her lips black in the darkness. “That’s right.”

  Starts twining her serpentine neck around his frozen body.

  “So bad he’s not,” Gary says, his voice muffled. Masahiro can barely hear him.

  “Don’t be stupid!” Jennifer hisses in English, but the rest of what she says is lost.

  His wife’s neck winds round and round. Her skin is cold. Stink of wet iron. Bumpy and rough like the skin of a giant Gila monster, her neck scrapes against his hands, his arms, slowly rising toward his face. Coil after coil. Squeezing tight his heart. The cold. So cold. His nerves jerk, twitch inside his body. His mouth falls open in a howl. But no sound comes out. His face screams, silent.

  “Hey! Shhhhht! Shhhhhh!”

  A staccato of clapping hands.

  Masahiro is released so suddenly that he slumps to the forest floor. The ground darts with frightened motion. It leaps, darts, slithers in different directions.

  Masahiro stares blankly at the leaf litter in front of his face. The smell of decay is tinged with smoke. A pair of swollen human feet stops before him. The dawn is coming. For he can make out the plump toes. The person scrunches down and a huge nightgown balloons open to reveal a fragrant crotch. Luminous panties. She smells like the beach and lavender soap.

  “Papa!” Shizuko shouts. “Papa! Okay, are you?”

  Such a stupid question, Masahiro thinks. Such a stupid woman. Hot tears slide sideways across his face. He can’t move.

  “Osamu!” Shizuko roars. “Osamu!”

  The sound of pounding steps. Breaking branches. Osamu’s sleep-encrusted eyes blink and blink. He presses his face so close that Masahiro could kiss him if he could move his lips.

  “Papa?” Osamu quavers. Masahiro stares back.

  “Maybe he had a stroke,” Shizuko’s voice whispers. Her toes squeeze anxiously. They are calloused and unattractive. “There were animals around him! No! Don’t try to move him.” Masahiro can hear someone starting to blubber.

  “He might have broken something,” Shizuko continues hoarsely. “How long was he out here? He’s wet himself. The poor thing.” She lumbers to her feet. The waft of her crotch is pungent. Masahiro can hear his son bawling like a baby.

  “Does anyone know first aid?” Shizuko bellows to the early dawn. “Does anyone know first aid?”

  Masahiro wishes he could close his eyes.

  There is a crunch of branches snapping. Childish feet in thongs stop in front of his frozen gaze.

  “What happened to Ojī-chan?” a tremulous voice asks.

  Indignation, outrage flickers deep inside Masahiro’s rib cage, but the movement is as small as a dying sparrow. He doesn’t have the energy to sustain the emotions.

  “Shhhhh, don’t worry,” Shizuko consoles. “Someone!” she bellows to the skies. “Ojī-chan is really old, Jenny-love,” she continues in a loud whisper. “He’s not feeling well. But we’ll get help. Gary, go wake up your grandmother.”

  “I’m s-s-sorry,” Gary stammers. Masahiro can hear real tears in the boy’s throat. A residual warmth glows. I don’t blame you, boy.

  “What are you sorry for?” Shizuko scolds affectionately. Osamu hasn’t stopped blubbering. “Go get your grandmother. We have to let her know.”

  No! Masahiro wants to shout. No, not that. He can feel the ties to his body beginning to fade. Strand by strand, the pull of earth and life seems to fall off his spirit. But it is not fast enough.

  The boy’s pudgy feet trot out of his sight.

  Hurry this release, Masahiro pleads. He’d rather die than look upon Chiye’s face.

  Jennifer peers sideways at him, directly into his eyes. “Really?” she asks. “Want that, do you?” She looks perfectly normal.

  “Don’t, sweetie,” Shizuko says. Her large hand clamps on her daughter’s bony shoulder.

  “Ojī-chan says he’d rather die than look at Obā-chan.”

  “No! Why would he say such at thing?” Shizuko stares, open-mouthed, at her daughter. Jennifer shrugs carelessly. Shizuko drops to her knees and enunciates her words, yelling like Masahiro is at the end of a long tunnel. “Hear – us – can – you, Papa?” she shouts in his face. Shizuko turns to her daughter. “Did he say why, sweetheart?” she whispers hoarsely.

  Masahiro can hear the dragging shuffle of his wife’s gait coming closer and closer. He had thought that her shoddy way of walking had been caused by the overuse of slippers inside the house. Did he remember a time when she had walked differently?

  “Papa!” Shizuko shouts, “you – want – to – go, okay – it – is!”

  “Nooooo,” Osamu moans.

  Something twinges in Masahiro’s chest. He had no idea that his son had cared for him at all. Osamu, you’ve been a good son to me, he lies.

  “He’s lying that you’ve been a good son,” Jennifer relays.

  Shizuko gasps. “That’s just like him! You really can hear!”

  “Masahiro-san?” Chiye’s voice sounds old and fragile. His skin would be crawling if it could. Her faltering footsteps shuffle through the dead leaves, the damp air smells of early rot.

  The cool morning sun breaks through the spruce and pine and pale golden beams slant across Masahiro’s body. As if he has been called by the promise of warmth, Masahiro’s ether slowly seeps out of his earthbound shell. The cold paralysis left lying on top of the forest debris, Masahiro rises with the mist, drifting upward on warming currents of air. His ether passes through branches of pine and spruce. The memory of touch tickles.

  “Goodbye, then,” Jennifer whispers. The girl tilts her head to one side, an unreadable expression on his granddaughter’s face. Then she purses her lips and blows hard. The blast of warm air catches Masahiro and he’s tossed upward. Flung into somersaults and spirals, he finds a still pocket of air above his family. Hovering, he stares down at the tableau below him. It looks like a movie, he thinks. He can see Osamu’s bald head bobbing with sorrow. Fat Shizuko dwarfs his freak wife who may or may not be the Chiye he married so very long ago. Gary, crouching down next to his body, looks like he is praying. Only Jennifer looks up. Her dark eyes glint in the rising sun. Chiye follows Jennifer’s gaze. Her mouth drops open in a wail.

  So many years, Masahiro thinks. So much time.

  “Anata!” his wife’s thin voice wails across a separate reality.

  But the sun burns off the damp of night and Masahiro’s ether floats ever lighter, transparent.

  Masahiro bobs, rises, a forward-backward drifting like a feather falling upward.

  The sun is bright, a loud invitation. He rises toward its call. Really, he thinks, his entire life. He hadn’t known any of them at all.

  Hopeful Monsters

  Goldschmidt did not object to general microevolutionary principles, however, he veered from the synthetic theory in his belief that a new species develops suddenly through discontinuous variation, or macromutation. He agreed that most macromutations ended disastrously, with what he called “monsters.” Nonethe
less, Goldschmidt believed that a small percentage of macromutations could, with chance and luck, equip an organism with radically beneficial adaptive traits with which to survive and prosper. These he called “hopeful monsters”. . . .

  Hisa started experiencing nausea the third week after fertilization and tested positive in the fourth. She couldn’t eat anything in the mornings and had to forego her single cup of coffee, but by two-thirty in the afternoon, her stomach had settled enough for a bowl of plain congee at the Golden Garden Café. By then, the noon line-up had disappeared and she partook of her rice porridge in peace. She ate meditatively. She never brought a book.

  Junko, her mother, phoned every day.

  “After you give birth, you must bind your loose belly with a long cloth. This will help you get your figure back.”

  Hisa wound her finger into the spirals of the telephone cord. She had switched back from the cordless after she kept losing the unattached receiver. She didn’t bother bringing up the fact that she never had much of a figure to begin with. Bobby didn’t mind, she reassured herself. Bobby’s belly was as big as hers and they joked about it when they lay in bed, naked.

  “This is your first baby,” Junko continued. “You must have good thoughts. Bad thoughts will travel down the umbilical tube and affect the baby.”

  “It’s an umbilical cord,” Hisa murmured.

  “And don’t you fight with Bobby. The bad energy might cause your baby to have psychological problems.”

  Hisa didn’t know whether her mother spoke out of superstition or experience.

  “I wanted to have four babies, but I went through hard times and didn’t I lose three of them, one after the other?”

  Hisa imagined her mother setting her baby in the sales bin of the downtown Hudson’s Bay department store. As she rifled through oversized and over-handled panties, clacked swiftly through one-piece dresses, elastic-waisted pants, and out-of-style skirts, the baby squirmed in the bed of soft panties, the silky cloth parting like water. He sank slowly and surely until he was completely covered.