A malicious being resided in the pit of my stomach. It looked up and flashed a wicked grin, one that may have even challenged the width of the moon. The day it decided to show its face was August 16th, 2009. I had lived a fairly normal life, with a fairly normal family. My family consisted of me, my mom, my dad, and my sister. A deep, dark part inside me didn’t like being normal. It thrived for attention, no matter what the cost. Now, I hate that part of me with a fiery, burning passion. Because that day, that horrid part of me, that monster, got its wish.
“Uh-huh,” my mom spoke softly into the phone. I watched her as she talked, my youthful eyes wondering from place to place. I thought about what a perfect day it had been. With Dad and Emily at our beach condo, Mom and I had the whole day to ourselves.

Suddenly my mom’s eyes went dead, like she was a robot who had the batteries ripped out. She put the phone down with the same dead expression painted to her face.

“Honey,” she whispered, “Something happened to Daddy, we need to go to the condo. Go pack some clothes real quick, ok?”

That’s when my demons came out to play. They loved the idea that Dad was hurt. Maybe now the kids in school would pay attention to me, they thought. The selfishness in them infected me.

No questions asked, I raced upstairs to retrieve my stuff. Wind whooshed through my ears as I ran to my room as fast as my legs could carry me. I was never very good at packing. It was hard for me to even round up my things in an hour, so how was I supposed to get everything I need in only a few minutes? I lunged for a random assortment of colored shirts and shoved them into my blue denim bag. Next, I grabbed a book and my Nintendo D.S. and bolted out of my room and back down the stairs.

The car ride to our condo felt like it would take a lifetime. I spent most of the time on my D.S., either that or watching the many shades of green from the trees zoom past the window while twiddling my thumbs. Three hours later we pulled into an unfamiliar place.

My eyes widened and my breathing got heavier. I thought we were going to the condo, but a hospital lay before my eyes. Was this really that serious? Worry began to make its way through my body, and the screeching grind of tires on gravel as we pulled in didn’t help.

The almost-too-clean smell of the hospital hit me like a hammer. It was like I was drowning in cleaning agents. A nurse ushered us into a too-clean-room in this too-clean-building. The first thing that I noticed was my sobbing sister, Emily. I have never seen her look so broken. She has always been the sane one when I was lost in a sea of tears, but not that day. At that moment, she wasn’t Emily anymore, she was a stranger with burnt red eyes, and a chest rapidly and rising and falling in time with her gasps.

The next thing I noticed wasn’t anything that I recognized. It was an alien in the center of the room. The alien was connected to what looked like a thousand tubes and wiring, and rested its pale, ghost-like body on a hospital bed. Bumps and bruises covered the strange being. It was absolutely hideous.

Then they told me the world-shattering truth. The alien was none other than my dad. My kind, loving, beautiful dad was now a hideous alien. This was the man who made me soup when I was sick. This was the man who let me get the higher score in zombie shooter games on the Wii. This was the man who took me net-fishing. This was the man who showed me anime for the first time. They told me this alien was my dad, but I could barely believe it.

Upon learning such a thing, I could feel the monsters inside me grudgingly drag themselves back to their hovel. Finally, the monsters got their wish, but the victory was not as sweet as they anticipated. No, instead it was thickly covered in pain and guilt. So, they hid in their hovel, and silently shed luke-warm tears.