“Just smile through it, my sweet. I will always return.”

She sets the arm down and repeats the procedure on the other side.

She hacks away at its limbs, ripping them off then cutting them into halves, surprised by how easy the task is. She skips over the chore of its chest and sits atop it, repositioning her legs on either side of the now limbless torso. Its head looks back at her with indifference, watching as she reaches toward it and places her hands on both sides of its temples. She tugs and the cavity in its neck opens up like a hungry mouth, unhinging its jaw wider and wider until, finally, it snaps apart and the stretched flesh recoils. Her fingers grip through its hair. She lifts the head to face her, a head that looks very much like her own. So much like her own that she imagines it could begin talking to her at any moment in the tongue she understands.

“How do you know?”

The sketch in graphite. That’s what I look like on the inside. And so do you.

The creature’s eyes, still so dark and unchanged. Glossy, once filled with such confidence and fear. Emotions she very much feels herself. Her eyes meet them.

Would I be this easy to pull apart?

“How do you know this is what we look like on the inside, Daddy?”

“Don’t ask silly questions.”

It turns out it wasn’t such a silly question after all.

You didn’t want me to know the truth. But I can handle it, Daddy.

Because they are just like us, aren’t they?

They were supposed to be deformed. Grotesque and dark and horrifying enough to chill her down to her very core until her bones turned brittle and fractured. Monsters in the shadows she’d cowered from in her thoughts and dreams. The ones that would steal her away from her daddy and take her to a bad place. A place where she would never see him again while they beat down on her with their giant fists and sticks. But that’s so obvious, isn’t it? Seeing monsters with their claws and horrible faces, those aren’t the ones to fear. In fact, they are the best kind because they are recognizable. But the other ones . . . the ones that can hide are cause for true fear . . . because under those layers of black, under that ugly shell of hate, they can shed their skin and become something else. It’s easy to avoid what you can see so clearly. It’s easy to avoid what looks like it wants to bring harm. It’s the ones you can’t see. The ones with the kind faces and familiar smiles. With trusting eyes just like your own.

The worst monsters are the ones invisible to you.

The ones who can hide amongst you.

“How do you know, Daddy?”

Because they look just like you.

CHAPTER XIX