Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

Author:Gerardo Sámano Córdova
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zando

The hospital wing that held the MRI scanner was deserted except for a nurse that kept watch, given that the wing also held a supply room. I distracted him with inane questions while Magos and Joseph slipped in with Monstrilio. The nurse could have caught us if he decided to patrol the floor, but he wasn’t a watchman, and the MRI room was far enough away that I was confident we’d go unnoticed. I sedated Monstrilio. Once he was asleep, Joseph and I placed him on the MRI table. Magos, Joseph, and I went into the observation room while the machine scanned. Monstrilio’s anatomy began to appear on the screen. Fuck me, I thought, but I waited for his whole body to be scanned before I said anything.

“Look,” I said, pointing to an empty area covering half of Monstrilio’s body, on his back and pooling where his arm-tail protruded from. “There’s nothing here, no discernible organs, bones, or cartilage. It may be liquid or simply one continuous membrane. There’s no structure.”

“Monstrilio was super squishy before,” Magos said.

“Right. But look here.” I pointed to the other half of Monstrilio. “There are bones here, you see?” They nodded. “And this here is a heart. And these are his digestive organs. And this right here at the bottom of his head is a cranium with a brain inside. Do you see it?” They squinted at the images. “Look!”

“We’re looking, Flaqui. What?”

“This is the anatomy of a young child.”

“What?” Joseph said.

“Half of Monstrilio has a young boy’s anatomy. Like a person gestating inside.”

“Like Monstrilio evolving,” Magos said.

“He’s a boy,” Joseph said.

“He’s not a boy,” I said. “Not fully.”

“What then?” Joseph asked. I didn’t have an answer. I hadn’t expected this. Magos was right. There was a person inside Monstrilio, at least anatomically. Joseph leaned forward, his nose almost touching the monitor. “That’s his heart, right?”

“No.” I pointed to where his heart was.

“Then what’s this?”

“A lung. He has only one.”

After the MRI, Magos and Joseph decided to remove Monstrilio’s arm-tail. His arm-tail, like Magos intuited, was not part of his new anatomy and perhaps was hindering Monstrilio’s transformation into his final form. Nevertheless, I remained uncomfortable performing the operation. I conveyed my reservations to Joseph and Magos, mainly that it felt wrong to interfere with a living body. And also that I loved Monstrilio as a monster.

In the end, I agreed. Of course I did.

I performed the operation at their house with instruments surreptitiously borrowed from the hospital. The scalpel sliced right through the base of his arm-tail, with no bones or muscles or tendons to hinder it, only bloodlike goo. Contrary to what Joseph had said, Monstrilio oozed something similar to blood but not quite blood, thicker and browner, like molasses. The only trace of his arm-tail became a sewn-shut stump that among all his fur was barely noticeable.

Soon, Monstrilio’s stump showed every sign of being healed. Without his arm-tail, though, Monstrilio became clumsy. He fell. He tripped. He couldn’t climb. He couldn’t swing. He stayed in his nest inside his yellow house.

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