Monstrilio

by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

From time to time, Lucía patted Jackie’s hand. I wondered if they fucked. Night came, and I said I had to go. Lucía asked why I wasn’t staying with Magos, especially with “that thing” in the house. I made up a lie about having surgery early the next morning. Magos kissed my cheek and I left.

Joseph and Magos would be a family again, with Monstrilio instead of Santiago.

I looked down at myself, trying to deduce if my clothes gave it away, but I wasn’t wearing anything doctor-y. “How did you know?” “Dr. Álvarez?” “Yes. Lena Álvarez.” “My grandfather is—” She said a name that sounded familiar but did not conjure up a specific man, rather a type, rich and old, with a big family of smiling pretties that call you Doctor with such reverence (because you’ve successfully saved their beloved elder) that you come to believe you’re someone important.

“It was great to see you. I’ll tell Grandpa I ran into you.” She offered me her hand. I held it. She squirmed, unable to decide whether to sit back down or run away from me. I didn’t let go of her hand. “What’s your name?” She told me her name, but I didn’t know what to do with it. She tugged away. I held on tighter, now with both hands. The woman was so uncomfortable, I felt like crying. “Nice to meet you,” I said, and I finally let go of her hand. She stumbled back to her group. What the fuck was that? her friend’s bulging eyes said. I ordered another mezcal.

Lina as monster. No one is entirely monster or “virtuous doctor”. Momstirlio has his good and bad qualities.

The net ensured Monstrilio had an open sky but prevented him from escaping again.

Inability to,contain one.s creation or situation.

Maritoni had quit. She’d found an exclusive gig. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I knew not to ask for details. I spent weeks searching for the right woman to replace her. I tried finding someone online. One woman seemed bored and washed me like a robot, harsh and mechanic. Another cooed and patted my head as if I were some sort of mangy animal she was rescuing. Another washed me pretty acceptably but then ran off with my bag and my blender. I had finally settled on Estrella. Excellent. Comparable to Carmina. But I still couldn’t sleep. I supposed that my body needed time to adjust to Estrella. She was good. No. She was excellent and would soon make me sleep.

Need or desire for connection or even just comforting being viewed as abnormal. People find a way to make Gayness repulsive even with the sex siphoned away.

Monstrilio swatted him again and bared his long row of fangs. I was sure it was a smile this time; his eyes glittered, silly and eager. Joseph swatted him back, and they began to play-wrestle,

And he speaks for chrissakes. What the hell is he?” “A monster.” A table next to us cheered and clinked glasses. Joseph drank. I drank too. “Should we even keep him? I mean, he had no qualms about mauling every pet in the neighborhood and bringing them home.” “He doesn’t know any better.” “I don’t believe he’s a monster, Lena. At least not a full one. He can learn.” “Learn what?” “To behave.” Joseph burped. “Magos wants to cut his arm-tail off. She says now that Monstrilio is growing into a more human body, he doesn’t need it anymore. She has a theory that the arm-tail is what makes him wild.”

“His body is changing,” Joseph said. “He didn’t have limbs before and now he has four. He’s getting less round. He’s not looking more human but at least more like a normal animal. His arm-tail is the only thing that’s off, coming out of the side like that.” “So you’re going to chop it off.” I was angry for Monstrilio. I thought they loved him just as he was. “That’s bullshit, Joseph.”

“Flaqui!” Magos walked into the living room and kissed my cheeks. “You look great. A bit pale. You’re working too much, no?” I nodded. Also, Estrella had left me, and I hadn’t had the energy to look for a new woman. I’d begun to wonder if my routine of baths had run its course. “I got some of that Tempranillo you like. Come. Come.”

“You had no problem with him being savage before,” I said. “Yes, but Monstrilio must evolve. We have to help him evolve.” “I don’t want to mutilate him,” Joseph said. “It’s not mutilation. It’s removing something that will ultimately hurt him. Like removing a tumor, right, Flaqui?”

“There’s nothing wrong with Monstrilio being wild,” I said. “He’s a monster. And anyway, why do you think removing his arm-tail will make him less wild?”

“Let’s say you’re right, Magos,” Joseph said. “Chopping off his arm-tail still feels cruel to me. Monstrilio does everything with it.”

“I’m not going to do this, Magos. Monstrilio is wild. If you loved him, you wouldn’t want to change him.” Magos’s lips became thin.

“Half of Monstrilio has a young boy’s anatomy. Like a person gestating inside.” “Like Monstrilio evolving,” Magos said.

I conveyed my reservations to Joseph and Magos, mainly that it felt wrong to interfere with a living body. And also that I loved Monstrilio as a monster.

The one thing he retained was his same dumb-looking face, though his eyes were duller, and he didn’t bare his fangs anymore. I managed to avoid the three of them for a few weeks, waiting (hoping?) for the day Joseph or Magos would call to tell me Monstrilio was dead.

Monstrilio lowered his head and hid it between his front legs. The kitchen seemed dimmer than normal. I realized it was Monstrilio’s sadness that radiated thick around us and blocked out the light. We had fucked up. I’d fucked up. But I was going to set things right. I showed Joseph a vial with a sedative that could stop a rhino’s heart.

“I thought you loved Monstrilio. But you only wanted Santiago back. Monstrilio was amazing. Look what we did to him.”

It was a week before Joseph called. He’d gone back to Brooklyn with Luke. I didn’t hear from Magos. My ability to summon focus, my surgeon mode, had become erratic. I decided to take time off, rescheduled whatever patients I could, and referred the others. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I visited the cantina. I hired women to bathe me, not just on Mondays but any day I needed them. Almost every day. More often than not I had sex with them. My insomnia continued.

a narrow balcony where I kept a dying hydrangea, a gift from Lena, the one failing element in our home and yet the one I loved the most.

I had expected Peter and me to end. Maybe that’s why it was so good between us. I had no other motive to be with him than to enjoy him. Whatever irked me about him, whatever his faults, were easily overlooked since I knew they weren’t really mine to deal with. I was temporary. Soon, he’d leave. Why fight

I stroked my ring’s smoothness, and a happy flutter rocked my belly. A romantic Joseph still existed somewhere.

Then Santiago came, and every time he looked up at me like I was a superhero, each time he called me “Papi” to tell me something half-invented-half-true—“Papi, did you know there’s water on the moon where tiny dinosaurs live?”—each time he clung to me breathless and my touch soothed him enough to make him breathe again, pulled me deeper into a love I had no idea could exist. One I had no idea what to do with. When it all went away, I was content not to love again.

He asked for a second date and a third. I waited for the moment he would become disenchanted. I had a messy and unfinished previous life I would eventually have to go back to. I was simply enjoying a respite, this break from all that had happened, but it couldn’t be my future.

On Saturday morning, Peter dashed around in his pajamas. A week had passed, and I hadn’t yet told anyone. Meanwhile we were being swamped by congratulatory bouquets from Peter’s family and friends. Peter placed an orchid on a table in the corner where sunlight wouldn’t hit it directly. My intention to cook pancakes was halted by so many mean, accusatory flowers.

He was so put together, so easy, so respectful. I was happy he didn’t fight. If he did, I’d have to flee or tell him all about my past. Our engagement would certainly be called off. Or worse! He’d want to be involved and I wouldn’t be able to stand it.

Sometimes I felt as if all the care he bestowed upon me was simply to keep himself from discovering what I hid.

Magos called him Santiago now, but I couldn’t. He wasn’t Monstrilio anymore, but he wasn’t Santiago either. Santiago was dead. There was solace in keeping his memory unchanged. He was a place to visit, like a book reread.

One summer, I caught M eating a couple of crows in his backyard. Uncle watched him, bent over, as if waiting for a cue to join in. I rushed to stop them. Magos and I had agreed to weed out whichever Monstrilian instincts remained in M. Uncle protested in grunts, but M froze, his jaw unhinged, feathers in his hair, fangs bloody. I grabbed the dead bird from his hands, scooped up the remains of the other, and said, “We don’t do this, M! Not anymore.” M looked scared but I kept firm.

I was afraid Peter would discover what M was. Peter had met him only a few times and knew little of his past, except that he was my son and had been in a coma for a couple of years. I hadn’t known how else to explain his tutors, the way he stared as if everything was new, his raspy voice, his awkward movements, too sharp at times, too fluid at others, the dentures he wore to hide his fangs, too large and forwardly protruding. I

This required her to kneel on the bed or shift her body, so her head was by my feet. She had to realize all this movement would wake me. But what mattered wasn’t that I was asleep, but that I pretended.

also knew of our engagement. We were a month into it, and I still hadn’t told anyone but Uncle, not even Lena. I wasn’t even sure why I was terrified of telling people anymore. M and Magos were in Berlin, and M was adapting to his job much better than either Magos or I had imagined. There was no need for things to change, for monstrosities to be revealed, for my two lives to merge.

To me, Lena’s life consisted mainly of work, occasionally interrupted by one of us, Magos, Uncle, M, or me. Everything else that she did—the places she knew, neighborhoods she walked through as if she’d been born there, texts that made her smile or get nervous in ways that couldn’t be work-related—surprised me every time. Her depths were a mystery, but I felt most comfortable with her.

“What does she say?” “She’ll tell me about going out and trying to speak her bad German. About how bulky some of Berlin’s buildings are. How sometimes it seems like a city about to, what’s the word she used, bleed open, so much is going on underneath. Mostly she talks about her day. It should be boring, but—”

She thinks the neighbor, Elias, is smitten with M. She has plans to invite him for dinner, play matchmaker. She says M loves that cat too. She repeats that a lot. Like proof he won’t eat it.”

M found out he enjoyed art. Art had no answer, he said, and no right way to be.

“Have you told Peter?” “Told Peter what?” “About M.” “What about M?” Lena rolled her eyes so wildly I thought they might leave their sockets. “No. How can I?” “Isn’t that what couples do? Tell each other things, secrets? Especially couples that are about to be married?” Surely Peter had his own secrets. I just couldn’t imagine what they could be.

was getting drunk. Keeping M’s secret felt safer than letting it out where its threads could come loose and knot, making a mess impossible for me to untangle. Lena and

“M? What is it? Are you okay?” “How are you?” “Good. You?” “I had sex with Thomas.” It was hard to decipher M’s tone. At times it was starkly flat and at others it was curious, his statements uplifted by the rising emphasis of a question, but it hardly ever revealed any strong emotion. His eyes were what carried the weight of his feelings.

“Don’t worry, Papi. Thomas didn’t like the bite. I promised I wouldn’t bite him again.” There was heartbreak in his voice. Sometimes I hoped M’s hunger would disappear. Other times I feared that if his Monstrilioness totally disappeared, M would be left an empty husk.

“How do you make sure people don’t stop liking you?” “I don’t know. I guess you can’t be absolutely sure. But I suppose if you like them and are kind to them and don’t hurt them, there’s no reason why they should stop liking you.” “Not eating them. For example?” Though M’s tone was flat, his eyes glimmered. It was a joke. I laughed.

M stared ahead. His face showed no sadness or anger or fear, but it wasn’t neutral either. It twitched as if unable to decide which gesture was most appropriate, which gesture could possibly communicate whatever mess of emotions were bubbling up as he watched his mother mourn the child she had been grooming him to replace. M kept rubbing the stump on his left hip, the remains of his arm-tail. Magos kept caressing a body that was not there.

A passport is a booklet with your name and picture on it. Mine says Santiago Jansen de la Mora. Capitalized letters. It doesn’t say human because only humans get a passport. Mine comforts me like an alibi.

Uncle Luke picks up one of his yellow pads. I read aloud: No mistake. This is M. Papi says, I know this is M. Telling me I’m M does not afford the clarity they think it does.

UNCLE LUKE IS SLEEPING WHEN I get back home. I wade through the shadows of our living room, hoping to find monsters. Chat with them. Laugh. But there are no monsters in these shadows. Only me.

wonder what his marrow would taste like with his voice trapped in it.

I pour myself a bowlful. This is the one food craving Santiago and I have in common.

Fruti Lupis make me feel 100 percent human.

I often steal this memory from you, Santiago. Right before I go to sleep.