Monster

Monster

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Sylvia Snyde. Sylvia was very beautiful. Every morning, she looked into the magic mirror that she had bought at a local antique shop. The mirror was enchanted. It could speak, and daily, it told her how beautiful she was. No one is your equal in beauty, it would say. So Sylvia knew she was beautiful, and that knowledge began to change her.

At school, Sylvia and her entourage would sit on the tables near the front of the school, judging their classmates. No person was safe from their captious gazes; nobody was free from catty remarks; no one, not even teachers, avoided their fault-finding commentary. Gossip and slander flowed freely from their lips.

Then one day, a new student arrived. She was incredibly beautiful. Unlike Sylvia, her beauty permeated her being. Her ears were always open, listening for others in need. When she saw a classmate with holes in his shoes, she put a gift card in that student’s locker. If someone needed help on his or her classwork (because she was also brilliant), she offered to help. So this new girl became very popular, and Sylvia became green with envy. The last straw came when the magic mirror told Sylvia that the new girl was the most beautiful in the entire school. She threw the mirror against the wall and it shattered into a million pieces.

Sylvia’s jealousy was so great that she started vicious rumors about the new girl. However, because the young lady was so kind, no one believed the lies. So Sylvia, with great emotion and fake tears, resorted to acting like the new student tripped her on purpose. But the first person to offer a hand to help her up was her rival.

“You did that on purpose to make me look like a fool!” Sylvia screamed while pushing the girl’s hands away.“You’re…you’re a monster!”   

As others surrounded the hysterical Sylvia, the new girl turned and walked off, muttering, “As the bully begins to pout, let her darkness turn inside out.”

The beautiful new student was in fact a faerie, and what she had uddered under her breath was a curse. She only cursed those with truly dark hearts. Sylvia’s was one of the darkest she had ever seen. There had only been one other that was darker.

The next day, Sylvia showed up to school with bandaged knees, a wrist brace on the wrist she didn’t fall on, and an exaggerated pout. Her morning group was trying their best to cheer her up, making particularly cutting remarks about everyone that day. What Sylvia really wanted was to tell the new girl off in public, but the faerie was never seen or heard from again.

While the group dispersed to go to their classes, Sylvia pulled out her compact to check her makeup. It was then that she noticed a pimple–a small blemish directly on the end of her nose. It seemed to be growing.

Oh no! she thought. Ducking behind a nearby bush, she took a deep breath and peered once again into her small mirror. What she saw horrified her.

The pimple was indeed growing rapidly, as were her eyebrow hairs. Her chin had also sprouted some hair growth. Black hair sprouts were coming out from all over her body.   

She waited until the bell rang and the parking lot emptied before running to her car. Unfortunately, by the time she reached her vehicle, she had grown to an enormous size! The door came off in her hands as she tried to open it. When she put her foot into the car, it went through the floorboard! Her claws shredded the material of the seat as she used it for support to get her foot out. She was just about to put her head into the car when someone behind her shrieked.

Turning, she met the wide eyes of one of her entourage. 

“A monster!” the girl exclaimed. She pointed a shaky white finger at what used to be her friend–her leader.

Upon hearing the scream, students and teachers began to file out of the school. Sylvia, realizing that the present situation would not end well for her, loped towards the woods as fast as she could. This task was made more difficult by her knuckles dragging the ground. She ran and ran, on and on, putting as much distance as she could between her and the school. Eventually, her hands got in the way and she tripped, rolling head-first down an embankment and landing in mud. When she raised her head, she saw the entrance to a cave and decided to hide there.

Quite a ways into the tunnel, it opened into a magnificent cavern. A small hole in the ceiling provided a small ray of light to illuminate the room. The cavern was gorgeous; crystals dotted the walls, amplifying the light. In the middle of the space was a clear pond.

Overwhelmed with thirst, Sylvia kneeled by the water. The shape of her hands and sharp claws made it impossible to cup the liquid, so she bent over and lapped at the water like a dog. After she drank her fill, she looked at her reflection.

Matted black hair covered her body. Her jaw jutted forward, creating an underbite with two yellowed fangs poking out around her inky black lips. A small river of drool fell from the corner of her mouth. The pimple was now a huge mass of warts with a nose somewhere underneath. Heavy, unruly eyebrows framed bloodshot eyes–green ones.

She truly was a green-eyed monster. 

Then Sylvia began to cry. Large tears fell from her eyes, mixing with the water from the pond.  She cried and cried, but had no idea why this fate had befallen her. She had been so beautiful, so popular, and in her mind, everyone loved her.

Finally, the tears wanned, and Sylvia into a deep sleep. She dreamed that she woke up normal again and that she went back to school and back to her old life. It was a good dream–a happily ever after dream.

Several hours later, the sound of humming brought her consciousness from its slumber. It was a familiar tune. It was one that her mom used to hum around the house in between episodes of Dr. Phil, which she’d watch for the express purpose of picking on the participants. Sylvia’s mom considered herself a professional trophy wife whose purpose was to hang on her husband’s arm (he was a famous plastic surgeon) at hospital fundraising galas. During these events, she would drink wine with a couple of other wives and rate the other women in the room. Her husband kept her looking young and beautiful by tucking everything that needed tucking and filling her prescription for Botox injections. The woman thrived on controversy and gossip. It made her feel better when she pointed out the faults of others. It’s as though she were helping them in some way–helping them see their imperfections through her withering stares. 

Mysteriously, Sylvia’s mom disappeared three years ago. There was no note, no signs of foul play, and no clues whatsoever. Her mother simply vanished. 

The continued humming eventually woke Sylvia up completely. Sitting up she asked, “Mom?” 

The monster beside her was her doppelganger, except that it had some gray hair mixed in with the black. Smiling hideously, for there was no other way that it could smile, it said, “Yes dear, it’s me. I guess that faerie got you too.”