The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection

In time, the tale about Anna Lvovna’s husband came to be forgotten, but as the Monster grew older, he began to turn nasty, and gave us no peace at all.

You’d go into the bathroom and the sink and bathtub would be full of frogs and newts; or suddenly all the refrigerators would begin to howl horribly and heat up, the milk inside them would boil and the meat would roast; or else poor Anna Lvovna’s nose would erupt in a boil of amazing size that changed color with each passing day: One day it would be blue, the next day lilac, and the day after that a poisonous green color.

It should be mentioned that Aunt Angelina and the Monster were on somewhat more equable terms. If she found a tortoise in her cupboard instead of bread, she would exclaim with pleasure, “Look, a reptile! I’ll take it straight to the kindergarten for their pet corner!”

I now realize that when I was little the Monster simply couldn’t stand me because I annoyed him so much. Everything I did annoyed him: I clattered up and down the hall and I laughed too loudly and I loved peeking into his room at him. So he kept giving me tonsillitis. Not serious cases, but the kind that if you so much as laugh you lose your voice, and if you run you get sent to bed.

When I grew up, the Monster did me great harm for a time; whenever anyone called me up, he would always get to the phone before the others and hiss, “She’s not in. She’s gone out with someone else.”

I live alone now. My parents are no longer alive, I have never had a family of my own, and Aunt Angelina, with whom I share the apartment, takes care of me after a fashion, but as for the Monster ... At least he’s stopped tormenting me. Of course, if I come back late from the theater or from visiting friends, I’m bound to trip over the cat in the hall even though we’ve never had a cat. Or I’ll tear my new dress on barbed wire. But that’s nothing—mere trivialities. And recently even that kind of thing has stopped happening. Something’s gone wrong with the Monster. You wouldn’t recognize him: his eye has turned from red to a kind of dirty ginger color and his fur has gone gray; to put it in a nutshell, our Monster is getting old. He’s stopped going to work and sits for days on end in his room, just hissing occasionally and sometimes sighing. And it was only today that Aunt Angelina said she’d prefer things the way they used to be because it broke her heart to look at the Monster, and she didn’t have the energy to sweep up his scales after him.

“About those dreadful scales I totally agree with you, Angelina Nikolayevna,” declared Anna Lvovna. “It’s disgraceful! He must be made to do an additional week of cleaning duty. Nobody should have to wipe his dirt up after him!”

At this point the conversation came to a sudden halt because the Monster’s door squeaked loudly, and a minute later there he was in the kitchen.

“Picking on me behind my back, eh?” he asked, and his eye reddened slightly. “Well, now I’m going to make you all freeze. You’ve never felt such cold!”

And the Monster began to blow so hard that his cheeks turned blue and his head started to tremble.

He blew and blew and suddenly I noticed Aunt Angelina shivering and jumping in place and knocking her legs against each other and rubbing her nose as if it had been frostbitten.

Its so cold, oh, it’s freezing!” she moaned dolefully, for some reason winking at me. Then she suddenly screeched, “What are you standing around like that for? Keep moving! Keep moving! Or else you’ll catch your death of cold! Hands on your waist! Bend your knees! One, two, three!”

I wasn’t that cold; in fact, I was even rather warm, all the more so because we were in the kitchen and all the gas burners were lit. But Aunt Angelina was winking and shouting so that I, too, put my hands on my hips and started doing knee bends.

“There you go! There you go!” shouted the Monster gleefully. “Now you’re going to dance for me!”

I scarcely had time to think before Aunt Angelina grabbed me by the hand and began leaping about in a frenzied dance. I followed her lead.

This is a nuthouse!” declared Anna Lvovna angrily and left the kitchen.

The Monster stared after her with a frightened look, then turned to Aunt Angelina as she danced and asked quietly, “Why isn’t she dancing? Why did she go away?”

She's stiff with cold!” shouted Aunt Angelina, gasping for breath but continuing to dance. “Can’t you see?”

But the Monster had already forgotten what he had been asking. Dragging his tail and leaving a trail of scales across the floor, he went over to his refrigerator and opened the door.

Where s my bone? he said in perplexity, “I remember it was here yesterday, I bought it at the store!”

“Your bone? There it is, you made soup out of it this morning, don’t you remember? shouted Aunt Angelina, stamping away, but at the same time managing to pass the Monster her own white enamel saucepan with soup in it.

“I did? Oh . . and the Monster looked uncertainly into the saucepan, “I never had a pot like this.”

“But it really is your pot, I just cleaned it up a bit, that’s all.”