I Am A Monster

• Cynthia Mak, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2014

I am a monster. I am loathed, hated, isolated from everyone else. When people see me on the street or in town they throw tomatoes and lettuce at me, yelling words of such hate that I cower and quickly flee, wondering why I thought they would ever change and come to like me.
Everyday I sit and reflect on my life on the roof of an old and abandoned factory, they’re right to judge me this way; for even I despise and am disgusted at what I am.

We weren’t meant to look like people but then we weren’t supposed to look like monsters either, but we did look like monsters. We had a face that was completely blank apart from one can shaped hole for a mouth and two small button sized holes for eyes. My creator had originally created my brothers and I to become robot like things that would read people's minds and store information for people so that they wouldn't have to worry about forgetting things. We were known as Storers; things that moved around and followed whoever was getting us to store information for them. My brothers worked the way they should've, but the same couldn't be said for me.

I guess I just buckled under all the pressure of taking care of people's secrets and information because I made the mistake of telling my masters’ secrets and information to the rest of the town. That is my one and only regret because after the incident no one wanted a Storer anymore, they destroyed all of my brothers; but when they finally came to destroy me, they found that they couldn’t because I was immune to everything that they did. Thus I was forced to live the way I am living now, isolated.

I would have preferred not existing if it meant that my brothers were able to live. They’re right to judge me because I look like a monster, no because I am a monster. I ruined the life of my master and am still living, if I wasn’t meant to be a monster I would have been destroyed already. But if they just took the time that I know they have to really look at me and try to understand me, I know that they will see that I am not a monster. Instead they would see a robot that just wants to learn how to be human, how to love and care for friends. If they could see that it would make everything better, I would forgive them for the things that they did to me and I could help them improve their city, I could also keep their memories to pass down through the generations so that what they don’t want to be forgotten won’t ever be.