Choosing Monsters

“Tell me a story.”

“What?”

“Tell me a story! Tell me something interesting. I want to hear something interesting.”

“Once upon a time… there was a brave little girl.”

“Hmm, sounds like the story might be about me.”

“You’re not a little girl, anymore.”

“I imagine myself to be.”

“Fine. Once upon a time, there was a brave little girl. And she wouldn’t stop asking for stories, so the monster gave her one. And it was terrible and sad. The end.”

“That’s not a real story,”

“I’m not in the mood for a real story today. Are you?”

“I’m not in the mood to sit here in silence, staring at the bars of our cell.”

“Why don’t you tell me a story?”

“I’m not as creative as you are.”

“Are you trying to flatter me into un-boring you?”

“Is it working?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Once upon a time there was a brave little girl. She was a witch — a talented young witch. She knew how to use magic to help people, and change things.

But from the moment she was born, the brave little girl had been trapped.”

“Oh no!”

“… yes, the little girl didn’t know it, but she had been trapped from the moment she was born. She didn’t understand how trapped she was, because the monster she was trapped with looked like a friend. Like a real person.”

“If they looked like a real person, what made them a monster?”

“Hello?”

“Are you still there?"

“I suppose… What made them a monster is that they were dangerous.”

“Why did that take so long?”

“I had to think, obviously.”

“Okay, so the monster — it looked like a real person.”

“Yes, the monster looked like a real person. And the monster had the little girl trapped in its home. The little girl thought they were… friends. So she would do all these things to help the monster and to make the monster’s home better. And the more that she did, the better of a witch she became.”

“Dangerous monster home improvement project.”

“Something like that. Remember, the little girl doesn’t know. And the little witch, she keeps making things better in this house, but everything she does turns up a little weird. Like the red roses she started growing, they turn this deep purple. Or the tea kettle she heats up perfectly stays hot too long. Lots of weird occurrences.”

“Sounds like the monster’s house is actually magic.”

“An interesting theory. The monster always thanks the little witch, because as long as she’s stuck with the monster, she helps the monster. She doesn’t know any better.

But one day, the little girl leaves the monster’s house, and travels out to the edge of the woods by the house.”

“There’s woods?”

“Yes, the house is all hidden behind trees in the woods. And the little girl leaves the house. The monster followed her, because she didn’t want the little girl to escape—”

“She? So the monster is a girl?”

“oh, I guess so.”

“is the monster older than the little girl?”

“No one knows how old the monster is. And anyways, the little girl doesn’t take too long to get to a town. There are people all in a market, and they recognize the monster, but not the little girl.

The monster doesn’t want the little girl to get stolen away by the townspeople, and the townspeople think the little girl is a dangerous witch, since she’s with the monster.”

“But they don’t know that!”

“No, but they’re just townspeople. They don’t really know anything.

So the little girl tries one last time to prove her powers. And she looks at one of the townspeople’s children, a little boy, and says, ‘look, I can make you understand’—"

“Wait, is this story…”

“And the little girl reaches out to the little boy, who takes her hand. And the little witch shows the little boy all of the things she can do. And he’s excited, still holding her hand.”

“No, you can’t be—”

“But the monster is jealous and afraid of the townspeople. So the monster grabs the little witch and rips her away from the little boy. The little boy falls over, asleep. And the little witch tried to get back to the little boy, to wake him up, but the monster won’t let her. She keeps telling the little witch, ‘no! you can’t get back in his mind, it’s too dangerous!’”

“It isn’t too dangerous for the little girl.”

“But the monster knows it is. And just like the monster thought, the townspeople are jealous and afraid. They demand that the monster and the little girl wake the boy up. But the monster refuses the little girl’s help, and the little boy stays asleep. So the townspeople, furious, toss them both in jail. And they tell each other stories to pass the time.”

“The End.”

“Come on, say something.”

“I know you’re too bored to sit in silence, too. Say something, anything!”

“I can’t apologize for the story. It’s the truth.”

“Why do you keep saying that? The truth. Like you get to decide what’s true and what isn’t.”

“It’s always you! It’s you that gets us into these messes. You think that just because we have magic powers that we’re invincible.”

“Aren’t we? We only got caught because you’re a bad liar. If you would just let me talk us out of this…”

“That’s out of the question. I’m not letting you use your powers on innocent people again. That’s what got us here in the first place.”

“So what? we’re going to sit here in jail for the rest of our lives? Are you going to tell them, ‘ah, sorry about that, those magical powers were a fluke, please let me out and leave the magical powers in here’?”

“Maybe I will! Maybe I’ll tell them everything you’ve done and all the other things that you used your powers for, when you were in charge. Then they’ll get rid of you, and I’ll be able to do anything I want.”

“well… I would be afraid, but I know you wouldn’t do that.”

“And why wouldn’t I?”

“Because then they’d all know you’ve been talking to yourself.”