Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters Read Online Free PDF Page B

couple days after I confirmed old Boar’s claim, I heard they found Giraffe Man, on the floor of what remained of the old lab—a bubbling brown mass of putrescence.
    We gathered at the site and Fish Guy shoveled up Giraffe’s remains and buried them in the garden out back. Monkey Man Number Two played a requiem on the unburned half of the piano and Squirrel Girl, gray with age, read a poem that was a story of a tree that would grow in the spot Giraffe was buried and bear fruit that would allow us all to achieve complete animality. Everybody knew it would never happen but we all wished it would.
    When I loll in the big river, I think about the cosmos as if it’s a big river of stars. I eat fish and leaves and roots. Weasel Woman says it’s a healthy diet, and I guess it is. How would she know, though, really? As long as I stay with the herd of real hippos, I’m safe from the alligators. There have been close calls, believe me. When standing on land in the hot sun, sometimes I bleed from all my pores to cool my hide. Panther Woman has admitted this aspect of my nature disgusts her. To me she is beautiful in every way. The fur . . . you can’t imagine. She’s a hot furry number, and she’s gotten over her fear of water. I’m telling you, we do it in the river, with the stars watching, and it’s a smooth animal.
    If you find this message in this bottle, don’t come looking for us. It would be pointless. I can’t even remember what possessed me to write in the first place. You should see how pathetic it is to write with a hippo paw. My reason for writing is probably the same unknown thing that made Moreau want to turn people into beasts. Straight up human madness. No animal would do either.
    Monkey Man Numbers One and Two are trying to talk some of the others into going back to civilization to stay. They approached me and I asked them, “Why would I want to live the rest of my life as a sideshow freak?”
    Number Two said, “You know, eventually Panther Woman is going to turn on you. She’ll eat your heart for breakfast.”
    “Tell me something I don’t know,” I said. Till then, it’s roots and leaves, fucking in the wallow, and bobbing in the flow, dreaming of the cosmos. Infrequently, there’s an uncertain memory of my family I left behind in the old life but the river’s current mercifully whisks that vague impression of pale faces to the sea.
    That should have been the end of the message, but I forgot to tell you something. This is important. We ate Moreau. That’s right. He screamed like the bird of paradise when we took him down. I don’t eat meat, but even I had a small toe. Sweet flesh for a bitter man. Mouse Person insisted on eating the brain, and no one cared to fight him for it. The only thing is, he got haunted inside from it. When we listened in his big ears, we heard voices. He kept telling us he was the Devil. At first we laughed, but he kept it up too long. A couple of us got together one night and pushed him off the sea cliff. The next day and for months after, we searched the shore for his body, but never found it. Monkey Man Number One sniffs the air and swears the half-rodent is still alive on the island. We’ve found droppings.

Among Their Bright Eyes
Alaya Dawn Johnson
“What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate; I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself . . . neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us again: I will go to the vast wilds of South America . . . My companion will be of the same nature as myself and will be content with the same . . . ”
—The monster, Frankenstein
    He doesn’t understand what it’s like, to hover at their edges without a light while he spends each dead day within shining distance of their eyes. I’ve seen my eyes in still pools after the rain. They have two different colors, blue and brown, but they’re mismatched and they never shine. Even if I bring a fire right by my face, even if lightning