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Grade
11

She’s there. In that place again. She hears the cries of terror and the spitting flames and everything is just as she remembers it. The two Monsters are there too, lying on their backs, unmoving. Kneeling beside them, she tries everything to make them stir.

 

Nothing. Not even a twitch; not a sound escapes their painted black lips. She screams and screams: wake up, wake up, wake up…

 

“WAKE UP!” she pants heavily, slightly shocked by her own voice. Sitting up, in bed, no longer at that place. She looks out the window. There’s snow falling.

 

Her robe shrouds her frame apathetically as she shuffles her bare feet out of the room. She opens the front door, and the angry wind hits her; she can almost taste the bitterness of the blow. Her eyes automatically narrow, tearing from the cold. She doesn’t care about the few icy flakes that make themselves at home on her carpet. She is, in fact, fond of the slight mess left behind. Because it feels like she’s welcoming someone home. Welcoming them home.

 

She misses the way they ran circles around the table, with laughter so pure and unearthly, with lips spreading back to reveal a perfect, incomplete set of teeth. ‘Tag’ was their favorite little game - oh, how they loved to chase and chase each other. One of the boys would eventually get tired and stop in his tracks; the other would not stop in time and end up crashing into him, causing them to fall onto the carpet, giggling like they’d never been happier.

 

She’d smile down at them from her chair and tell them to get ready for school. She’d fetch their bags and lunches and shoo them towards the door. The screech of the school bus braking would send them bolting as they turned their heads slightly, yelling their goodbyes.

 

Blinking tears away, she shuffles past the carpet and out the door, dressed only in a robe and slippers. She shudders but walks on, staggering her way down the short flight of steps. The yard is buried under a thick blanket of snow, and she smiles because they would’ve been happy that school was cancelled. She closes her eyes as she remembers them hastily wearing their scarves (only to please her, of course) before running out into the yard. They’d flop onto this crunchy bed of frost and sweep and flap their limbs back and forth, back and forth.

 

“Look, Mummy! Look! Angels!” they’d shout in triumph.

 

“You’re right, darlings,” she’d reply. “Why don’t you go make some more?”

 

Her eyes snap open when someone, a neighbour, asks her why the hell are you stepping out in this weather dressed like that? She doesn’t know what to say or do, so she goes back inside. Her hands, fingers, feet, toes, everything has gone numb.

 

“Guess what, mummy?” one of them said to her one day when they’d gotten off the bus and come inside. “We learnt about Frankenstein today.”

 

“What did you learn, sweetheart?”

 

“Frankenstein’s Monster wasn’t very well-liked,” he said, pouting. “Our teacher showed us a picture and all the girls screamed. But we’d be his friend, you know, if he was real! And we’d make angels with him. In the snow.” He smiled, showing off two little black spaces where teeth should’ve been.

 

Once back inside the house, she closes the door and inches her way to the fireplace. She slowly regains feeling in her limbs. She stares at the crackling flames. She stares as they crackle and spit and jump and dance.

 

The boys were thrilled to go on their first trick-or-treating around the neighbourhood. Even the other parents were excited to see two adorable Frankenstein’s Monsters asking for candy.

 

“Mummy, mummy, let’s go!” one of them whined, gripping her hand and tugging on it.

 

“Mummy, mummy, they’ve all started!” the other whimpered.

 

“Yes, alright, darlings, let’s go,” she opened the door and chuckled as her two Monsters dashed past her legs, roaring, growling, chasing each other.

 

The sounds of her Monsters grew fainter as they ran out onto the street. Her back was to them as she locked the door, and it had only been a few seconds—

 

An agonizing, ugly screech. A crash so thunderous, so deafening, that her eardrums rang and the ringing did not stop until it scuttled like a vile spider across her skull.

 

She turned.

 

The blood in her veins froze solid, and her limbs were overtaken by a numbness so strong she could have collapsed if she had not run; and how she ran, ran, pushed her way past all the neighbours and their children.

 

A blistering wave of heat cut through the crisp, fall air, and it slapped her in the face when she reached the the middle of the street. She just stared. She stared at the car, crumpled like paper against the tree. She stared at the crackling, spitting flames that jumped at her.

 

Her two Monsters lay there, face paint smeared across their unmoving faces. No longer roaring or chasing or smiling or laughing. They lay on the grey, scarlet-splattered asphalt, their limbs spread.

 

She couldn’t hear a thing, couldn’t feel a thing as her knees buckled and she fell, almost prostrate, before her Monsters. They lay with their limbs spread, like they were making angels.

 

The flames flickered and danced, and they spat in her face.

 

It’s much warmer now. She thinks of her Monsters on the asphalt. How cold they must have been on the ground. She remembers how cold they were when she cupped their faces in her hands before being pulled away. The poor things, she thinks with deep sadness, they will never feel the warmth of the fireplace again. They used to sit in front of it, cross-legged, listening to her tell their favourite story, the story about the Monster.

 

The clock perched on the wall ticks, tocks, ticks, tocks. Time to try again.

 

She rises from the couch and shuffles over to the door leading to her basement. The door creaks open and she pulls the string, and with a click casts a dull light over the staircase . As she walks down the wooden steps, she recalls how much they loved the Monster - they would read the novel over and over again; watch the movies over and over again. She always allowed them to do so as many times as they wanted, for a good mother does everything to make her children happy. And she smiles at this thought, because her work in the basement would make them happy, and so, she is a good mother.

 

Two long tables, side by side, and she smiles even wider knowing that her Monsters are kept warm by the musty air that lingers above them, like a pendulum suspended in motion.

 

“Hello, my angels,” she whispers, leaning down to plant a kiss on one of the pale, cold foreheads. “Mummy’s here.”

 

The Monsters do not stir from their deep slumber. Their eyes remain shut, their marble-like white skin mottled with scars and stitches from her many attempts to wake them. She gingerly takes one of their hands in hers, and somehow its lifeless grip is so much stronger than when it grabbed her that Halloween night. She quickly lets go.

 

“You’ll wake up soon, my angels. You know mummy promised you that, right?”

 

They do not reply, like always. She feels like she is playing their favourite game with them. Oh, how they loved to chase and be chased...it was their favourite, and she is comforted by that. There is comfort in that.

 

Tonight, she will try again. And she will keep trying until she, like Doctor Frankenstein, brings her Monsters to life.