Laura Madeline Wiseman

Preference

I like monsters, I said to you and you took me to Seattle to a museum that would make monsters out of us. We stood in the darkness. We were silhouettes on screen. Monster eyes appeared between our elbows. Monster hair and bone plates grew from our skulls. Monster antenna sprouted, spun, probed. The more we moved, the more monstrous we became. When we held hands, we were one big monster with horrible eyes, a hawkish jaw, and blackened teeth. Random kids walked by and became our monster spawn, smaller mimics of our conjoined form. I laughed as if we were the only people in the room. You took video on your phone. After, we sat in a booth and captured our scream. I really screamed. You just pretended. Outside we waited for our scream photos to appear. I said, I’d rather be the thing to scream at than the screamer. You said, I prefer your hand to a scream.