Monstrilio

by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

I believed that flower was my son reincarnated. One believes the stupidest things in grief. I spoke to the flower and called it my son. And then I laughed because how ridiculous—how cruel, really—it would have been if my son was reincarnated as something so ephemeral, frail, and beautiful. I killed that first bloom with one swoop of my hand. Dead again, my son could become something else: the shell of a tortoise, strong and ancient, or a hideous fanged creature deep in the sea where he’d see wonders even he could’ve never imagined.

I only realized then that she had lost a grandchild. Her one grandchild. How bizarre that someone so far away as my mother then seemed, in this large, sunny house in Mexico, with its terra- cotta floors, arranged flowers, and paintings in gilded frames, so far away from my son’s ashes, from the bed from which he never woke up, could feel his loss. Santiago was so mine, I could not fathom her feeling him gone. I laughed.

“It’s part of his lung,” I said. I expected shock and repulsion, but I only got a nod. “Have you fed it?” She pointed at the lung. “Feed it and it may grow.” “Grow into what?” “I don’t know.” She laughed, but I didn’t get the joke. “It’s a story they tell in my town.”

Pulga, I called him. He was small and dark haired like a flea, and like a flea he bit life, sinking into it, refusing to let go. Some people clapped as I lifted him back into my arms, alive, as if I had performed some miracle. This was no miracle; there was no luck, no divinity. This was Santiago and me biting, jaws clenched, sucking life.

“God is supposed to look over all of us,” Joseph explained. But Santiago said no, God chooses who he cares for, and he hadn’t chosen us. But, Santiago added, we shouldn’t be sad, God had too many rules anyway, and did we really want to follow so many rules?

I felt alone, perfectly alone. So alone I felt divine. Divine like a lonely god unfathomable to anybody but herself. Perhaps I could believe in Santiago’s God, a God who existed but had chosen not to look over me.

“It’s the lung’s poop!”

“The monster can’t possibly shit all over las Lomas,” I said. “It’s shit is finite.”

The monster stared at me and growled. Magos held it closer and kissed its head. My mother thought I was a monster and didn’t love me because of it. This thing, an actual fucking monster, was loved.

Monstrilio yawned and his fur bristled. “Goodness,” Jackie said. “I know.” Monstrilio’s mouth, when outstretched, split half of his body wide open.

I pretend my time as Monstrilio is hazy. Muffled sounds and blurred colors. I say I remember warmth. But I don’t say I miss my fur. I don’t say I’m hungry because my hunger is what makes everyone scared. They are happy to believe I forgot how they maimed me.

Monstrilio was hungry all the time. The difference is he didn’t know he shouldn’t be.

I go down to the basement. Basement-rat walks over to me to smell my kebab. I give it a piece. It eats the kebab. I eat the rat.