No Monster of Mine

I had always believed my son was good. Henry was a good kid. I knew it in my heart. Not perfect. No, of course not. No child is.

Sure there had been fights in school, broken windows, a stolen wallet in eighth grade. But boys made mistakes. Boys learned. I raised him to be kind, to be strong, to do the right thing. I believed in him.

I believed in him once. I really did.

But with the detective sitting across from me, with her eyes like polished stone.

Doubt crept in. Does that make me a terrible father? Am I a bad dad for doubting my own?

“We have proof,” she said. “DNA, witness statements, his own confession.”

The more she spoke the tighter my fingers curled into fists in my lap. “You’re wrong.” It was more of a request then a demand. I had no strength left to fight it.

The detective exhaled, sliding the folder across the table.

It stopped just in front of me, the manila edges slightly frayed from handling. It wasn’t thick, just a few pages inside.. But it felt heavier than anything I had ever held.

I didn’t move.

The room was quiet, except for the hum of the overhead lights and the dull scratch of the detective’s pen against her notepad.

“Take your time,” she said.

My fingers twitched. I reached out, stopping just short of touching the folder. The paper looked ordinary, just ink and text and images. But I knew, the moment I opened it, something inside me would break.

Once I saw, I could never unsee.

A strange thought surfaced. Maybe if I don’t open it, it won’t be true. Maybe my Henry was still just a boy who made mistakes. Maybe this was a misunderstanding. Maybe they were wrong.

I curled my fingers into a fist, drew in a shaky breath. Be strong.

I forced myself to open it. Sometimes as a parent. You need to show strength. To fake it. Even when it’s not there. Non existent. Sometimes you need to bullshit your way through life. For your kids.

I didn’t want to open it. But I did

And everything inside me collapsed.

When I opened the folder. The photos inside did not belong to my son. They belonged to a monster. This wasn’t Henry. This was not my boy. This was not my blood.

I kept looking through the folder, wide eyed. Even with a shuddering breath I couldn’t stop. The words blurred. I found myself reading the same sentence over and over, trying to make sense of a reality I never considered possible.

He had taken a girl, a young girl. A girl who had trusted him.

The more I read, the more I saw, the more my mind raced to the nostalgia, my safe space, when Henry was six years old, tugging at my hand with sticky fingers, looking up with wide eyes, asking if monsters were real. I remember kneeling down and I promised him, No, son. Monsters aren’t real.

Liar. I’m a fucking liar.

My stomach twisted. My mind raced. “Why… why did he do it?”

My heart broke. Shattered into grains of sand.

The detective watched me, she was waiting for something, anger, denial, tears. I had none of those left. I was already broken.

“Sometimes,” she said carefully, “there’s no answer that makes sense.”

I closed the folder. Gently. I was lost in space. My hands trembling. “I raised him to be good.”

“Maybe you raised him to seem good.”

Those words. They burned. I couldn’t help but to flinch. I felt nauseous. Faint.

They let me see Henry once before the trial. The boy—the man—was shackled, but he sat straight-backed, eyes dry. No fear. No guilt.

I wanted to scream at him, to shake him, to demand an explanation, but all I could do was stare at the face I had once kissed goodnight. I wanted to cry. To punish. To beg.

Why?

“You’re my dad,” he said, his voice calm, almost gentle. “You know me.”

But my throat burned. “I thought I did.”

Henry gave a small, sad smile. “Then keep believing it.”

It was an invitation, an escape. I could reject the truth, blame the system, tell myself Henry was framed, misunderstood, the victim of a cruel world. I could sit in the courtroom and weep and swear my son was good. That my boy was not a monster. That he didn’t do those horrible things.

But that would be a lie.

I looked at him. My boy and saw the last illusion of fatherhood standing before me, waiting to be upheld. It would be so easy to hold on.

Instead, I let it break. The memories

When the trial began, I sat in the front row, silent, as the evidence laid my son bare. I did not speak for him. I did not defend him. What we had ended. It had to. I had to stop it. To destroy it. When the verdict came, I wept, because the court had taken my son away, but Henry had already been lost.

Not to the system. Not to the sentence. But to something far worse. Something that had been growing inside him all along.

He had already been the monster long before that verdict.

I drove home that night, but I don’t remember the drive. The streets passed in a blur, headlights streaking like ghosts on the wet pavement. My hands were tight on the wheel, knuckles white. My throat ached from holding back something. I wasn’t sure if it was a scream or a sob.

When I pulled into the driveway, I didn’t get out right away. The house was dark, the porch light flickering, and for a moment, I could almost pretend that inside, Henry was still a boy. Curled up on the couch. Shoes kicked off in the hallway. Asleep with the TV still murmuring.

But I knew better.

I sat there for a long time, staring at the front door, remembering the nights I had locked it, thinking I was keeping the monsters out.

The monster was inside all along.

The house waited. Empty. Silent. For the first time, I was afraid to go in. Afraid to be alone.

I promised my little boy that monsters weren’t real. But I was wrong. Monsters do exist.

The monster was mine.

I created one.

A young girl suffered.

And it is all my fault.