The Happiness Monster

Chapter 8

LISE

The monster was nothing she had expected it to be. Nothing she was ready for. She cursed herself under her breath as she watched the creature undress.

He had said that he was human. He could speak, and he had a name, and there something very familiar about him. But that was what the monsters were supposed to be like, right? Cunning and vile, pretending to be human and have language and names, and then they would claw through your throat while you weren't looking.

But he was also everything a monster was not supposed to be: weak and funny, and slightly drunk. His skin was like the skin of a potento tuber, kept in the basement for winter, his skin was brown but looked pale — as if something had washed him in his mother milk from inside.

She watched him undress, peel off his armor that had been fitting as close as a second skin. Under it, his body was all wrong: well built, like a lord's, as if he had never starved as a child, and smooth as baby's, as if he'd never been beaten or burned. There was not a single scar on his body, save for the small nick her knife had left on his neck. It was now caked over with dark red blood, human blood.

Lise put her knife to her mouth and licked the blade carefully. His blood tasted like human blood.

And then she saw the monster staring at her. He looked scared, the whites around his eyes showing, and his dark, long hair looked as if they were standing on end. All the hairs on his arms and chest were bushy like some small sickly animal's.

"Come closer," Lise said.

He hesitated, breathing deeply. Lise didn't want to scare him any more. She didn't like him scared, he looked like a child.

She liked him drunk and laughing, she liked him asking questions.

Nobody had ever asked her questions. Nobody had ever been scared of her — and nobody had ever been in need of her mercy. Suddenly Lise realized that maybe this was why she hadn't killed the monster: because he had asked her not to. Because he begged.

Because he had said "love".

"Come," she said. "If you are human, come to me."

He moved, slowly, clumsily, swaying the net, rocking it gently, and she held on, like a child on a swing.

"And you?" he asked. "What are you?"

"Me?" Lise looked at him. He advanced. Now he looked better, less scared. Perhaps it was because of her smile. He was not scared when she smiled.

"Are you — are you human, just like me?"

"Yes. Yes, I am." She reached out to touch his skin. It was soft, as if a tanner had laid it out and worked on it for days. And then put it back on him, but not before drenching it in milk. Maybe that was how you made monsters. Maybe that was why you were supposed to kill them right away, even though preserving their life fluids would be easier if they were alive.

He reached out too, and he touched her cheek, the one that Nika had scratched a long time ago. His fingertips were soft too, like moss, like the underbelly of a small bird.

"Where did you get this?" he asked. "The scar?"

"Well." Lise thought about it. She knew that Nika was listening. "Somebody scratched me, they didn't know me then."

"That seems like a weird way of introducing oneself."

"I introduced myself by promising to cut your throat, remember? It worked."

He laughed. "You didn't know me then."

"I still don't know you."

But she wanted to know him, and not by talking. Talking was what the lords did, when they were tired of riding and hunting and drinking and singing. That wasn't Lise's life now, and she wasn't going to pretend it was.