The World is Not a Safe Place

I watched as the throng of students made their way into the classroom and into their seats and reminisced on what it felt like to be a student many years ago. Boisterous, curious, and passionate. Age had since tempered those qualities in myself. I removed my glasses from my face and proceeded to wipe them with the napkin that I kept in the front pocket of my suit jacket. Naturally, I wanted to believe that my transition back into a monster would have prevented the deterioration of my eyesight, but it remained one of the lasting implications from a decision that I made from eagerness many years ago. It was one of the major reasons that I decided to become a professor. Another was that despite the cruelty age showed the body, it had its way of enhancing the wisdom of the mind.

        “Please take your seats,” I spoke to the unique array of monstrous students.

        They were monstrous in every way possible. Some large, some small, some short and some tall. Some with large eyes, others with one. Some with as many as ten legs and few with just one. After a few minutes, the group quieted as they focused their attention on me.

        “Welcome to Humex,” I announced. “A class dedicated to the study of humans and their behavior.” I made eye contact with a few of the students in the classroom, “A few of you will learn a lot, some of you will learn a little, and there’s a select few of you that will merely just experience the class.”

        The students chuckled.

        “It is my goal that you all leave this class with more understanding and appreciation of yourselves,” I turned towards the projector and clicked to the first slide of my presentation that had depicted me many years ago as a full monster. “Let’s begin.”

        I took a deep breath as I silently acknowledged the tears that burned my eyes. Like most things, the beginning was always the hardest. “I’ve always known I was ugly,” I announced.

        The class erupted with laughter for a few moments before settling down.

        “To be a monster is not an easy thing,” I continued. “We are one of the most feared because of our assumed presence in dark and dank places, but also because of our appearance. If we are being honest, aliens have more respect than us and they have never been sighted. The term to describe our very essence is used when a human has witnessed or experienced the worst behavior in another human being. It begged the question of how a human could describe someone as a monster when they had no idea what it takes to be one? Furthermore, what did it mean to be a human? When Nightmare Academy announced this course years ago when I was an undergraduate student, I quickly signed up in the anticipation of what I would learn.”

        I clicked to the next slide, “These are humans.” On the slide was an assortment of people, laughing and smiling as they ate ice cream. “They are spending time together while partaking in one of their favorite pastimes-eating.”

        The students murmured in agreement.

        “What do you notice about this picture?” I asked the class.

        The question was met with silence as students deliberately avoided eye contact with me to avoid being called on. That is, until a small monster in the center of the classroom raised their claw.

        “They look umm…I think the word is happy.”

        “Good observation,” I added. “How do you know that?”

        The small monster remained quiet as she was challenged by the question. Another student spoke up from the back of the classroom.

        “They all look the same…they are all smiling.”

        I clapped my paws together. “Brilliant. I would like you all to try your best to make this expression.”

        The crowd of students attempted their best to contort their faces to those that were on screen. Some of the smiles resembled a grimace while others bared their fangs.

        “If you turn and look at your other classmates, you will see the differences amongst yourselves. The unique thing about humans is their smile is universal.”

        “That’s true!” another monster quipped. “That’s so cool.”

        I smiled, recognizing the familiar eagerness in the student.

        “Humans are so nice,” another monster concluded.

        I winced. I once thought the same thing.

        “Years ago,” I started, finding the strength in my voice. “I participated in Nightmare Academy’s pilot experiment of transitioning into a human. If some of you are surprised, it is because the program has long been discontinued to due to some adverse effects,” I gestured to my human eyes with my paws. “A lasting impression.”

        A student timidly raised a tentacle, “So, like what happened?”

        I looked solemnly at the group of expectant students, certain that the words that I would speak next would reverberate for years to come.

        I took a deep breath, “After my experience, I realized that I would rather spend one day as a monster than 75 years as a human.”

                                                     ***

         “The objective of the Sapiental program was simple. By selecting a monster to undergo the transformative process of becoming human, we would have the opportunity to get a narrative account to supplement the knowledge of what we knew about humans. There were a couple of things that we understood already, such as their high intelligence, high adaptability, and interdependence on one another,” I stated.

        “So, you decided to become a research project?” one of the students snickered.

         His joke fell quiet to an attentive classroom. I recalled the rigorous process of the transition to the students. For almost ten hours a day over a span of three weeks, everything from my nose to my toes were structured to resemble a human man. I studied and learned to emulate everything about humans, from the gait of those who were perceived to be powerful to the angst of those who were not.

        “Everything was going well until it came to the pigmentation of my skin,” I told the expectant class.

        The researchers worked tirelessly to find a pigment that allow me to blend into the various shades that comprised the human tapestry, but the only color that would deposit on my artificial skin was a hue a little darker than the shade of blue.

        “If I had known then what I know now, I would have refused to continue to with the experiment,” I told them begrudgingly, “As intelligent as humans are capable of being, I realized how little they did to understand things that were different from them.”

        I told them of my initial fears of not being a good enough human. That maybe I didn’t smile enough or had a funny gait when I walked. I spoke to myself for hours on end to make sure that my words flowed eloquently enough for me to be believed. Yet, people veered away from me at every instance. I inspected myself at a superficial level, changed my wardrobe and learned how to dance. The human embrace remained elusive to me. I contacted the researchers for the Sapiental program to vent my frustrations about my inability to collect information. They encouraged me to keep tweaking myself because something would inevitably have to work.

        “And nothing ever did, and it was until a fateful meeting on a park bench that I would understand why.”

        I spoke to the class about the afternoon when a girl’s little ball rolled towards my feet as I sat on the park bench. She stared at me quizzically as I handed her the ball.

        “You look funny,” she said as she cocked her head to the side in thought.

        “As I was sure there was nothing funny about my countenance, I asked her what she meant.”

        She resumed bouncing her ball as she circled around me, “You’re the color of my shoes,” she announced.

        I looked down at her shoes to find that she was indeed wearing tennis shoes that very closely resembled the color of my skin.

        “Good observation,” I muttered.

        “Do you have any friends that look like you?” she asked as she continued to bounce the ball.

        “No,” I responded.

        She paused, “Then you must be an alien or something,” she drew closer and attempted to touch my skin.

        I felt myself smile genuinely for the first time since my transition. I finally passed the test.

        “Don’t touch him!” A voice shrilled from afar, “Get away from her, you freak!”

        “Don’t call him a freak, Mom!” she responded, “He’s just like us. Just lonelier.”

        “He’s not like us,” the mother spat. Her eyes were red and enlarged, “We” she emphasized. “Don’t look like that.”

And with that final statement she dragged her child with her away.

“As I sat there on the bench, I realized that there was something that I could tell the researchers that I learned about humans.”

“Which was?” an inquisitive monster asked.

“That their fear makes them frighteningly unpredictable. It is their fear of the unknown and ignorance towards the unfamiliar that makes them prejudiced, greedy, controlling, angry, vengeful…and it is for this reason that the world in an unsafe place.” I concluded.