Monsters
by James Patrick Kelly
© 1992 by Davis Publications, Inc. First Published in
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June, 1992.
When Henry looked in his dad's old mirror, he couldn't
see the monster. He touched his reflection. Nothing. No
shock, no secret thrill, not even a tingle. Usually his
nipples tightened or the insides of his knees would get
crinkly and if he were in a certain mood he'd crawl back
under the covers and think very hard about women in
black strapless bras. But this morning -- zero. He
stared at a fattish naked white man with thinning hair
and yellow teeth. A face as interesting as lint. He
wished for a long purple tongue or a disfiguring scar
that forked down his cheek, except he didn't want any
pain. Not for himself, anyway. Henry hated looking so
vanilla. There was nothing terrifying about him except
the bad thoughts, which he told no one, not even God.
But this morning the monster was cagy. It wanted to get
loose and he was tired of holding it back. Something was
going to happen. He decided not to shave.
The gray dacron shirt and shiny blue polyester pants
hanging on the line over the bathtub had dripped dry
overnight. His nylon underwear was dry too, but the
orlon socks were still damp so he draped them over the
towel bar. Henry wore synthetics because they wouldn't
shrink or wrinkle and he could wash them in the sink.
Some days, after wallowing in other people's mung, he
boiled his clothes. He liked his showers hot too; he
stood in the rusty old clawfooted tub for almost half
and hour until his skin bloomed like a rose. The water
beat all the thoughts out of his head; nothing wormy had
ever happened in the tub. He opened his mouth, let it
fill with hot water and spat at the wall.
He owned just five shirts: gray, white, beige, blue and
blue-striped; and three pairs of pants: blue, gray and
black. As he tried to decide what to wear to work, he
had a bad thought. Not a thought exactly -- he flashed
an image of himself bending toward a TV minicam, hands
locked behind him as he was pushed into a police car.
Blue or blue-striped would show up best on the Six
O'Clock News.
He petted the shirts. Maybe he was already crazy, but it
seemed to him that if he 3:01 PM on 5/19/96wore blue
today, it might set off the chain reaction of choices
the creature was always trying to start. He pulled the
white shirt from its hanger.
