Page 3 of Uncaging the Monster

My feet start to move, even though I’m still uncertain. I back away from both of them, trying to ignore the way the creature’s eyes follow me.

2

I haven’t heard from Zach all morning. My morning classes are almost over, and I don’t even have a text. Part of me is worried he might have gotten hurt, but every time I think about that creature in the woods, the hole in his wing that looked like it could have come from a bullet, I know the creature didn’t hurt Zach.

In the shape he was in, he didn’t look like he could hurt anybody.

“Minotaurs have been pulled from Greek mythology and are just one mythological creature that’s often seen in modern stories. Can anyone think of any modern media featuring minotaurs?”

I glance up at my professor. I haven’t been listening to his lecture on Asterion and Daedalus. I’ve read the story several times and don’t need a refresher for the quiz next week.

“Percy Jackson?” someone says, and a titter goes through the room.

Professor Watts shrugs. “Sure. It’s a bit direct, since Percy Jackson is already closely tied to the mythology. What about something a little more removed? How far can we reach and still find mythology?”

I zone out again, checking my phone one more time. Nothing.

“Well, how do we know minotaurs aren’t real?” Candace Helprin is asking when I tune back in. Candace and I have been going to school together since the fourth grade, when she moved to our town. Most of the kids in my high school also chose to attend our local college, the one we all grew up in the shadow of.

Professor Watt kindly indulges Candace. “There’s always a chance that creatures featured in Greek mythology really existed and that they somehow disappeared into obscurity somehow.”

“Yeah, or maybe they’re still among us, just like the forest monsters.”

I straighten in my chair, my eyes shooting to Professor Watts. He puts his hands in his pockets and leans back against the table at the front of the room. “The Yellow-Eyed Teufel,” he says. “Yes, let’s talk about them. They’re an excellent example of how fiction can become a part of real life.”

My fingers are typing away at my laptop, and when I find the translation for the word he used, teufel, my response bursts out of me. “They’re not demons!”

The entire lecture hall turns toward me, including Professor Watts, and I can’t stop the blush I feel creeping up my neck. Not just because I don’t enjoy being the center of attention, but because I don’t think Professor Watts—a young, handsome professor that I’ve heard more than one person swooning over before class—has ever given me his undivided attention. He walks over to my side of the lecture hall, where I’m several rows up.

“What makes you say that, Grace?”

I keep my eyes on him, not wanting to see everyone else staring at me. I shrug, trying to seem casual, even though I just proved to everyone that the topic is important to me. Is it important to me? The creature from the woods flashes into my mind. His calm eyes. The way he lowered his head like he was giving up.

I’m not even sure at what point I started thinking of him as a he. That vibe again.

“We don’t have any proof that they’ve hurt anyone. We’re just making assumptions.”

“Well, we’re making a lot of assumptions that they exist to begin with. We don’t have any proof of that either.”

I do.

“Regardless, there are a lot of creatures who live in forests and don’t want to hurt people: deer, foxes, birds. How are they any different?”

“Foxes aren’t the size of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson,” someone says, and the class laughs.

I duck my head.

Professor Watts puts up a hand to quiet everyone. “If you believe the stories,” he says, “they have many physical characteristics often seen in depictions of demons: glowing eyes, wings that are not angelic, claws, horns, a tail. Human beings naturally associate the unknown with the known. It’s why your brain hears English words when you’re listening to someone speak in another language. Your brain is trying to fit the information into your existing knowledge base.”

My existing knowledge base. I must be the odd man out then because my brain didn’t try to fit him into anything it already knew. If it had, maybe I would have been more afraid of him than I was. Instead, my brain put him in the harmless category, which it definitely shouldn’t have done. Right?

“I think,” Candace interjects loudly from the other side of class, “that enough people have seen them that we should definitely hunt them down and put them in a zoo. Or maybe just exterminate them.”

I roll my eyes and say into my laptop screen, “That’s barbaric.”

Candace doesn’t miss it. "What was that, Grace?"

I finally lift my head, my eyes scanning the faces of everyone in my field of view, all of them turned toward me. They seem to be enjoying the show. I thrust my chin up. “I said, that's barbaric."