...The Monster...A Children's Story...

"I am your friend.  I am good."  It said as it stood over the child.  The child shivered as she looked above at the towering mass of self-inflating meat.  It did not look like either thing.  But it thinks so.  Perhaps it is because it says so.  At that the thing smiled.  Not a friendly or good smile, a self gratifying, smug smirk because there is no expression otherwise.  The child saw the mechanics of a smile, the lips pulled apart and lilted at their edges.  There was some teeth.  But the eyes were horrible.  They looked like it waited to hit something.  And not just something but anything.

The child took a step back.  It lumbered forward.  Its ego triumphant.  Its self-love complete.  There was craven calculation.  It said, in its dismissive way, "And, as a good friend, I am better.  You will be less than.  I will call you Less Than."

She was confused.  Her name was L-.  Wasn't it?

She kept an eye on it, her eyes felt as crazed as it.  It felt like it was going to leap any second.  The gesticulations of a predator.  Resplendent when it has found Less Than.  Oh, but so demure when it comes across Greater Than.  She had never seen Greater Than.  But she hoped Greater would soon arrive.  If Greater arrived than she could see it prate.  Self preservation.  In the face of reality, of hard hitting, fist shaking, reality, it would find self preservation.  In the end it was all it had.  It is what drove it.  Self preserve this shell, self preserve this facade, this fraction of fraction, this fiction of fraction.

For an instant, it stopped smiling.  It had let its guard down.  Eternal weariness made its face fall.  It stretched impossibly down, the shoulders slumped.  It gasped then caught itself weak.  SELF PRESERVATION.

"Less Than, it would be best if you become an adherent.  I want nothing else.  I command nothing else but that the denouement of you and I is ME."

She was backed into a corner.  She had little self preservation as well, she backed further into it.  She felt as if she had more she could back into.  Each crevice.  Before L- knew it, she was cowering.  It chuckled the soulless laughter of the dead.  It has nothing else to live for.  She pictured it satiating itself in front of a mirror.

"Am I not the smartest one here?"

She found she couldn't answer that.  Not because she could actually not answer it.  She found that its question was its answer.  She almost replied in the positive.

Something happened.  There was a music.  It was beyond her reach, but it was there.  The real answer did not need to come from her.  There is no answer to the question as your question was the answer.  She took a breath and raised her shoulders.  She faced it and scowled.

It stared at her waiting for it.  Then she swayed her arms in the style of a ballerina.  It was to the music that she very much heard.  It was graceful and came from the heart.  She moved about the space and it had to pull away.  To it, it was almost as if she appeared and disappeared into nothingness.

She found a hand mirror and gave it to it.  "Am I not the smartest one here?"  It asked itself in the mirror.  It earnestly bellowed a laugh, a deep-throated, belly rumbling laugh that shivered and shook itself as it erupted in with an engorged nether.  "YES!"  "Am I not the smartest one here?"  "YES!"

It moved blindly away, in circles and, eventually, L- watched as it disappeared from sight.