To Love A Monster

by Marina Simcoe

  She looked outright furious. Rage shook her slender body, her ink-black hair messy and wild.

  But she stopped yelling insults at him. Instead, she clenched her fists and took a deep breath. Her eyes narrowed, the amber-brown in them deepened.

  “How many?” She asked gravely.

  “What? Hos?”

  Arguing with her didn’t seem so funny anymore. She wasn’t just angry, now she was a picture of a barely contained fury ready to erupt in something outrageously insane, and he really didn’t want to deal with the meltdown.

  “Yes!” The loud shrill of her voice cut like a knife through the pain in his head. “How many girls have you slept with? You, asshole!”

  “Fuck if I know!” He yelled back. “Lots. It’s not like I keep a record somewhere. I don’t even remember their names. A shitload of them. Okay?” He turned towards the bathroom, suddenly feeling tired of all of this. “Why are all of you so annoying in the morning?” He mumbled, deciding to go back to bed whenever this one left. “Just . . . welcome to the club, babe. And get out of here. I gotta take a piss.”

  She didn’t appear to have heard him.

  “You slept with the wrong girl this time, babe.” Her voice was dangerously calm, prompting him to glance her way one more time. Angry specks of gold flashed in her eyes as she set her hands on her hips.

  “No kidding,” he muttered sarcastically under his breath. “What the fuck was I thinking?”

  “Well, I’m going to fix this.” Her grave, strained voice demanded to be taken seriously. “No more misunderstandings. Now, you’re going to look on the outside the same disgusting animal you are inside. So no chick will ever mistake you for her Prince Charming again.”

  “Whatever, babe.”

  Psycho!

  “It’s Cecilia! You asshole! And I’ll make sure you remember my name as you sit in the middle of nowhere with your tail between you legs, wishing there were at least one woman in the world who could still love you—all of you—just the way you are, when she is no longer blinded by your pretty face.”

  Chapter 21

  MONSTER. NOW . . .

  Cecilia.

  She was right. Out of all the names of random girls he’d been with, hers was the one he couldn’t forget.

  “It was horrible. The way you treated her.” Sophie’s somber voice reached him.

  He didn’t embellish that morning, didn’t leave anything out. He didn’t try to paint himself in a better light or make up excuses for his behaviour, laying himself bare to her judgment instead.

  Yet the grave note in her tone filled him with dread. Had he shown her too much of his real nature, his true ugliness? Enough to send her running in fear and disgust once again?

  “It was awful,” he agreed wholeheartedly. “It took me years to realize it though, even longer to feel any kind of true remorse.” Now, he would give anything to turn back time. And not just back to that night. He’d have to go way, way back to start anew.

  “Do you really think Cecilia did this then? As a revenge or punishment?” She leaned over and touched his knee—in an impulsive gesture, he was sure of it. Her touch burnt, scorching his skin with the now-so-familiar pleasure and pain.

  Her movement sent a fresh whiff of her tantalizing scent his way, washing over him with another heat wave of desire. And he held his breath, counting the seconds until the wave receded, lest he lunge for her again.

  “How could Cecilia, or anyone, do something like this?” Her voice held more concern than judgment, he noted with relief.

  “Beats me, princess. I have no idea how she did it. As soon as she stormed out of the bedroom that night, I went back to sleep and woke up here, looking like this.

  “For days, I was convinced I was still dreaming, having some super long nightmare that would have to end sooner or later. I couldn’t walk on these.” He kicked out his clawed foot. “My neck was sore and shaking after just hours of carrying these on my head.” He swung his horns her way. “None of it felt like it could be real.

  “On top of it all, I was starving. So ravenously hungry, I felt I could eat a horse. Then I did. Not a horse, but an elk. I hunted it, and killed it with my bare hands and teeth. That’s when the reality slowly started seeping in. The animalistic satisfaction from the hunt, the contentment I felt as I tore the meat off the bones—convinced me I was no longer human.”

  “Why here?” She asked, peering at him intently with those inquisitive grey eyes, as if he held all the answers, as if he could help her make sense of it all.

  “I honestly don’t know, Sophie. Of the dozen or so properties that my parents owned all over the world, why did I have to get stuck here? My best guess would be because this is the most remote of them all. The only place where hiding someone like me would be possible.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Just over six years. Almost three of them entirely alone now, save for an occasional hunter wandering in.”

  The first year of being alone was the hardest. Between gnawing hunger during the months when game was scarce and the excruciating loneliness and despair, there were moments when he didn’t think he would last much longer. Sitting on the riverbank, he had caught himself wondering a few times how tall a tree he’d have to climb to make sure the fall onto the rocks below would break his neck at once.

  Sophie shifted on the couch, wrinkling her nose in that adorable way when she concentrated on something.

  “Melanie, at the restaurant, mentioned that someone used to come to check on the property regularly.”

  “David.” He nodded. The old grief of loss tightened around his heart like a band of steel. “He was our family chauffeur. My one true friend. David found me a few weeks after I turned into this.” He gestured at his chest. “He came up here with my father’s hunting party.”

  He winced at mentioning this. His father’s death brought him some kind of a closure. However, none of the memories of him were pleasant.

  “They hunted here?” Her eyes went bigger, entreating him to lose himself inside her gaze simply to bask in her concern for him.

  “There never was any actual hunting.” He attempted to give her a calm smile, even though it probably just looked like him baring his fangs at her. “My father built this place to take his drinking buddies and random women out of the reach of my mom’s lawyers. The last thing he wanted was to give his wife a solid reason for a divorce.”

  “Did your mom want a divorce?”

  “Only if she caught him red-handed and could take him to court for everything he had. She came from a prominent British family and hated Calgary, couldn’t stand Canada, and loathed being married to my father, but she loved his money. And he was good at creating golden shackles to manipulate people into doing what he wanted. Money was just another form of control for him.”

  “Did David tell your parents about you?”

  “Mom never came here and knew nothing about what happened to me, but my father did. He knew. I was stupid enough to hope he could help, or at least care.”

  “He didn’t?” There was a clear note of compassion in her voice, but no surprise. From what she had told him about her own father, parental indifference was nothing new to her.

  “No.” He shook his head. “We had an argument. It didn’t go well. He left, and I knew he’d never be back. He died in a car crash not long after. Mom passed away, too. They said it was heart disease, but I knew before David confirmed it that it was a drug overdose. She’d been using whatever stuff she could get her hands on since I was a little kid. Everything, just to forget what kind of monster she’d married.”

  He paused, exhausted by the dark memories. For years they had been collecting inside him, weighing him down. There was something oddly liberating in being able to bring them out into the light. Talking to someone about all of this, he realized, lightened his soul.

  He shot a cautious glance at Sophie’s face again, needing to see her expression. Feet tucked under her, she sat facing
him, her attention seemingly fully on him, waiting for him to continue.

  “How did you manage here?” She prompted when he remained silent a moment too long.

  “David taught me everything I know about how to survive out here alone. Survive in a human way, I mean. He showed me how to skin and butcher a kill properly, how to operate and maintain all machines and tools on the property. He even taught me how to cook. Before that I had no clue how to boil an egg for myself. Then one day he left, promising to return in a couple of weeks, and never came back.”

  He swallowed hard at the memories of waiting for David by the fence—day after day for weeks that turned into months—before the inevitable realization that something horrible must have happened to David fully settled in his mind.

  “Oh, Monster . . .” Sophie inched closer to him, and his arms ached to pull her into a hug. “David. He passed away, too.”

  He inhaled sharply, fighting the spear of pain her words sent through his gut.

  He guessed this had happened—David wouldn’t have abandoned him just like that. However, hearing the confirmation of the death of the only real friend he ever had—the true father figure in his life—still came as a shock of overwhelming sadness and pain he could barely cope with.

  Her soft voice reached through the cold wall of grief, ringing with sincere empathy and concern, “Bob said David had a heart attack. I’m so sorry, sweetie.”

  She leaned even closer his way, and he couldn’t hold back any longer. The hug had become a necessity.

  He grabbed her by the upper arms and dragged her into his lap. Wrapping himself around her delicate warmth, he breathed deeply, reveling in the genuine compassion of another human being.

  She stroked his mane, whispering something kind and soothing in his ear.

  Crushed by the avalanche of sorrow, he didn’t even attempt to comprehend the meaning of what she was saying. He simply allowed the soft cadence of her voice to slowly carry him from the dark abyss of grief back to the light.

  Chapter 22

  “IT’S WARM IN HERE.” Still, I hugged myself, as if the air of the room brought the chill to my arms. My skin prickled along my spine from the uncomfortable feeling of being in someone else’s bedroom.

  “I cleaned the fireplace yesterday. It’s been on since morning.”

  “Thank you.” I clutched the folded, clean bedding to my chest. I had washed it and brought it back with me with the full intention of sleeping in this bedroom. Now, however, I was wondering if I should sleep downstairs, on the couch, ripped upholstery and all.

  Monster seemed to sense my doubt.

  “This room is smaller than the living room. It will stay warm through the night. The bed is very comfy, too.”

  “You’ve slept in it?”

  “I did. At the beginning.”

  He moved to the bed and tugged the cover off, helping me change the sheets.

  After the bed had been made, I washed my face and brushed my teeth using the bottled water I brought with me. Monster then escorted me to the outhouse on the other side of the rose hedge.

  It was quite a walk from the main building, as the outhouse was probably built for the workers maintaining the grounds. But it was either walking all this way or going in the bushes somewhere, which Monster probably wouldn’t allow me to do anyway for fear of the cougar.

  “The cat doesn’t adhere to any strict hunting schedule that I’m aware of, but he seems to be more active late in the evening or early in the morning,” he explained when I wondered out loud whether the cougar was around.

  “Has he attacked you before?”

  Monster’s wounds seemed to have been healing well, not that he would let me inspect them to make sure of it, but the fur had smoothed out over them, giving no sign of the injury underneath, and I hadn’t noticed him wince from pain or discomfort when he moved.

  “Just once. He jumped on my back out of a tree when I was passing underneath. I fought him off, but he still lurks around quite often. You wouldn’t even notice he’s there until it’s too late. Don’t ever walk out here by yourself.”

  Afterwards, I lay alone in the massive bed in the master bedroom.

  In the dark, the deep shadows created by the tall flames in the fireplace danced between the wooden beams of the ceiling, making the room appear like something straight out of a horror movie.

  I closed my eyes to shut out my unnerving surroundings and focused on my breathing instead, willing pleasant thoughts to trickle into my mind.

  Monster’s story stayed with me, though—unsettling, incredible, and unbelievably sad. His deep voice still rang in my ears, filled with anger, pain, and remorse bringing back the overwhelming desire to comfort him.

  As I finally drifted to sleep, my last conscious thought was the memory of his soft fur under my palms as I patted his wide back and the feeling of safety from his strong arms wrapped around me.

  HE WAS ON TOP OF ME. His heavy weight on my chest pinned me to the ground. My face was shoved into the ravine floor. The dead grass and dirt stuffed my nose and mouth, forcing me to fight for my next breath as I thrashed under him.

  The feeling of a complete helplessness rushed all my senses, immediately turning to panic. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream for help.

  The terror inside me built up to the power of an explosion, threatening to rip me apart without finding a way out.

  Every last modicum of my awareness focused on one single task.

  Scream.

  And I fought to pass any kind of sound out of my strangled throat.

  Scream!

  Then I felt it before I heard it. The liberation of the air rushing out of my lungs in a loud, desperate cry coming, it seemed, out of the bottom of my very soul.

  The crashing noise of a door flying open followed my scream.

  “Sophie!” Monster’s voice, filled with alarm, brought me back into the bedroom and reality.

  I was in bed, on my back, with no one on top of me.

  It had all been just memories coming back as nightmares.

  I sat up, rubbing the remnants of tightness out of my chest.

  “Sophie?” Monster leaned with his knee on the bed and grabbed my shoulders.

  “I’m fine,” I mumbled. “Sorry, just a bad dream.”

  “Jesus, Sophie.” His massive shoulders slumped in relief as he lowered his forehead to mine. “That scream . . . That fucking scream.”

  “Sorry, I woke you up . . .”

  With his hands still firmly on my shoulders, he leaned back to catch my gaze.

  On this moonless night, the crimson glow from the fireplace cast grotesque shadows across the beastly features of his face. Blood-red highlights streaked his mane, and the hellfire itself appeared to glance off the polished points of his horns and off the sharp canines peeking from under his upper lip.

  In the dim, red light of the room, he appeared much closer to the creature from a nightmare than to somebody who came to save me from one.

  Yet the sight of him no longer scared me. On the contrary, a wave of relief and gratitude flooded me at his presence.

  “What was your dream about?”

  “Nothing. Really . . . Just an uncomfortable feeling . . .”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “This was not a scream of discomfort, Sophie. More like of utter terror.”

  My gaze wandered up to the tip of his ear peeking out of the mass of his mane.

  “It’s not important. And it’s normal for me. I have them once in a while . . .They’re just dreams—”

  “Nightmares. Not just dreams.” He let go of my shoulders and shifted in an easier position next to me. “How often do you have them?”

  I let out a sigh at his insistence. My usual tactic of dealing with nightmares was to sweep them out of my memory as soon as possible, or to stuff them deep into the graveyard of my mind if they refused to disappear for good. I definitely didn’t feel like dragging all their ugliness out into the light right now.
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  “Please, princess.” His voice softened as he moved a strand of hair from my face and tucked it behind my ear. “Tell me. What horrors torture you at night?”

  The somber sincerity of his tone, the warmth of genuine concern in it was tempting. Except that even if I wanted to open up to anyone, I had no idea where to begin. I simply didn’t know how to talk about it after so many years of silence.

  “You don’t want to know,” I exhaled with a short, nervous laugh.

  “I need to know, Sophie.” His hard stare reflected the conviction of his words. “But this is about you, not me. You have to tell someone. Even if not me—”

  “It has to be you,” I interrupted quickly. The truth of my words registered with me the moment I said them out loud.

  With me sitting in this eerily lit room, facing Monster in the middle of the night, the real world didn’t exist. And the story of my past was just that—a story. Something about him—big, strong, and kind—stole away the power the past held over me, if just for a few moments.

  “The nightmares don’t happen that often,” I said quietly. “And I deal with them one by one as they come. I keep telling myself I can do it on my own—I’m functioning okay, trying to make myself useful to the people around me . . . But sometimes,” I found his hand on top of the covers and squeezed it in mine. “Sometimes I wonder if they’ll ever go away. Because if they don’t . . . I just don’t know how to go through the rest of my life fighting this.”

  “How long have you been having them?”

  “Eight years,” I replied without having to think about it because I knew exactly when the nightmares started and why. “Ever since that night . . .”

  His hand twitched in mine, but he remained silent, so I continued.