She Calls Me Monster

“Are you there, God? It’s me, The Monster. Or so that is what she calls me.”

I am bewildered by her hatred of me. I had spent nearly a decade in preparation, studying, outlining, and training for when the time was right to strike. I lay low for years in my study and all for her. She never saw my sacrifices or effort; she simply went on living her life without acknowledging me at all. I want to scream, “How dare you?!” each time she curses my name or cries in agony. She is unaware of my power, my abilities, and, most of all, that I am saving her life.

I attempt to soften, to give her room to grieve, to yell, and hate me, but I hope one day she realizes I was only here to save her. My sole mission is to save her, and yes, to save her will cost her the life she was familiar with, comfortable with, and in love with, but what is life without a bit of agony mixed in?

She thinks I do this on purpose because she hates me. She thinks so little of me and feels so little of my power. She feels betrayed by me, by her own body.

I wish I could punish her further, but I am only allowed to attack when she is in jeopardy. I am invisible, unnoticed, but everyone in her life discusses me. I am always the theme of the conversation, but never in a rewarding tone, no, always hurtful and spiteful. How they speak of me is cruel. Silly girl doesn’t know I am saving her each day, she doesn’t see it or feel it because I am there first to conquer the real monsters. I am her savior, and it breaks my heart to hear her cry into her pillow at night, wishing I would soften. I cannot soften. I am her protector.

“God, why does she not see me?”

Here she goes again, shedding silent nighttime tears, assuming everyone in the home is asleep, but I am awake. I am always with her. She cried because she fell at school again, blood stained the cement she landed on, ripped her knee wide open, and she was carried off to the ambulance on a stretcher. Thirty-two stitches later, and she still has not learned that no matter the potions they pump into her veins, I will always be here. I want to jump up and down because, unlike her, I can, and scream, “I am here! It’s me! I am protecting you!”, but while I am always with her, I am the last thing she ever wants to acknowledge. She will never see me as the good guy. My efforts are futile.

Here we go once more off to the doctor to fill her body with poison. Foolish of doctors to assume that the real monsters can be conquered through liquid potions. They are wrong as they have been many times before. The place that fills her veins with potions is the worst because the nurses mock me in childhood antics. They assure her that this time the medicine will work, and that there will be quiet. They also wish her good luck for her muscles to stop wasting away. Wishing upon a star is not going to help her because only I can.

Only I can gorge on her muscles before they can kill her. I am the savior, the destroyer, and the protector, but somehow the world is confused by my abilities, and I am labeled the villain, the bad guy, and the monster. I am the reason she lives in decay, but only because you cannot be hurt by something already dead. How does no one understand that?

“God, why does she not appreciate me? I am tempted to do more so I am noticed and finally appreciated.”

I shred her muscles, and the result is to make her weak, but what she doesn’t know, what the doctors do not know, is that her muscles are trying to kill her. The fibers laced throughout her body are toxic, mutant, and must be destroyed, or they will defeat her. Yes, I feast on these fibers each day like my own private muscle-themed Thanksgiving, but without me defeating them, they would kill her. I do so many favors on her behalf, and yet all the doctors label me as ‘confused’ as if I do not understand my whole mission. So what if she cannot stand, or walk, or do much of anything? Would she rather be dead? She cries at night for death, but she doesn’t know. I think she is the one who is confused.

I rest silently for a while, a few years of pleasant slumber, but I am never comatose. I am always there, I hitch rides with her everywhere she goes, continuing to study, watch, and prepare. The nerves she carries everywhere she ventures are mine. The worry she bathes in is me.

I feel her hope rising again and something about a new treatment, a trial, another potion disguised in an IV bag. These new drugs won’t touch me, because I am not some stray bacteria or wayward cell. I am in her blueprint, threaded through her DNA, carved into her like the rings of an old tree. I am her inheritance, her legacy. I was born for her, just as she was born for me.

She doesn’t curse my name as often. Her hatred of me has become something quieter. And that scares me more than all the screams. I know hatred. I know how to survive hatred. But this… this quiet… is unsettling. It’s like she’s adapting.

She no longer dreams of being normal. I feel it in the way her muscles strain, not for the past, but for a future. For strength. She’s learning to live with me. To work around me. To fight in ways I can’t predict.

“God,” I whisper, “what is she becoming?”

She should hate me forever. She should fear me until the end. But instead… she is building something new, something beyond my reach. She writes about me. She shares her pain. She dares to tell others I exist and not as a monster, but as something she survives.

She takes back the narrative.

And suddenly, I realize that this is how I lose.

Not by potions. Not by doctors.

But by her refusal to break.

By her becoming more than what I can ruin. I never planned for this.

“God, have I been reduced to a shadow rather than a monster?”