The Lonely Monster

There was once a monster who lived in the dark.

He’d come out of the darkness before but every time he did all the other monsters laughed at him. He didn’t know why they laughed but it made him feel very lonely.

After some time, he decided that he must laugh too. ‘’If they can do it, why can’t I?’’ he asked himself, and so he practiced in the dark, day and night.

He knew their laugh off by heart. It was stuck in his mind and very easy to imitate but he didn’t like the way his stomach felt as he practiced. Once he’d mastered it, he felt even more lonely.

Even so, he decided that being lonely with all the other monsters would be far better than being lonely all by himself and felt that he must come out of the darkness of his cave and join them.

He patted down his hair and breathed deeply as he stood half in the light, but at the moment he took the first step outside, he was gripped by fear. ‘They’ll only laugh harder or in a different way or worse still they’ll beat me to death for copying them,’ he decided.

And so for the next hundred days he practiced their laugh over and over. He practiced so hard that a moment came when his laugh began to change. It was less horrible and more funny, and when he remembered the silliness of the other monsters’ laughter, the lonely monster made his laugh even more funny, and that’s when he learnt to sing.

The lonely monster enjoyed singing so much that after a few more days he had learned how to cry. Remembering all the times he’d been laughed at, he cried and cried. After a while, he was surprised to feel something completely different to sadness and loneliness. Even more surprisingly, he found that he didn’t care about all the times the other monsters had laughed at him.

He’d never seen or heard anyone cry or sing or even laugh happily before because they didn’t do that where he came from. They only cackled and tutted and hit and kicked.

He practiced his singing and stopped laughing until a song came to him, which he practiced again and again so he’d never ever forget it. Singing the song finally gave him the courage to go outside.

It was a cold, wet, dark day but that didn’t matter. ‘I’m going out there and I’m going to sing my song to the other monsters if it’s the last thing I do.’

But there were no monsters anywhere. They were all in their mud huts. He could hear them hitting and hurting each other with laughter and fists, but that just made him want to sing all the more.

So he went to the centre of the mud huts and stood on the mound of dirt where the biggest, baddest monster of all scared and hit anyone who dared not do things exactly as he wanted.

The lonely monster’s song made no sense at all but that didn’t matter because it wasn’t about hurting and hating and hitting. It was about loving and fighting and showing he had a voice.

But fear again rose inside him as he drew breath on the mound. Wondering if he should run back to the darkness of his cave, he was frozen to the spot.

As he was about to step off the mound, a little bird came and sat on the lonely monster’s shoulder. He looked at it and wanted to eat it because he hadn’t had eaten for months.

Just as he was about to bite its head off, it chirped the first few lines of his song. Then it stopped and repeated first few lines so that he could join in.

Join in he did, and how beautiful the sound of a lonely monster singing a song of love to all the other monsters who only knew beating and bawling and battering.

His voice rose in strength and then dipped with sadness, rose again and then dipped. As the bird flew away, the lonely monster was filled with an even greater strength.

Before long, a small crowd of monsters had gathered before him. One tried to laugh but he couldn’t and when the others tried, nothing came out of their mouths.

When the biggest, baddest monster ran towards the crowd, which had grown to be greater than any that had ever stood before him, he too tried to laugh his head off but when he heard the lonely monster singing his mouth wouldn’t do a thing. He tried to raise his fists, which always struck fear into any monster, but he couldn’t get them to go above his stomach. They just flopped at his sides.

By that time, all the monsters were there. None of them minded that their children had got out of bed and joined them. They’d come to the mound still asleep with their arms held out like ghost monsters.

One child monster started to sing the song with the lonely monster, and soon enough all the children were singing the song, adding a high-pitched tone that fitted perfectly.

When tears started falling from the lonely monster’s eyes and down his cheeks, the children started to cry too. Their parents just stood there listening to the song and watching their children cry, not knowing what to do.

When the biggest, baddest monster started to laugh, none of the other monsters recognised it. His laugh, normally the most horrible and nasty of all, was light and cheerful. All the other monsters copied him because that’s what they did. They copied him, and if they didn’t, they’d be beaten and bawled at.

Once the song came to an end the biggest, baddest monster approached the mound while all the other monsters cried tears of joy and laughed happily.

He held out his arms to the lonely monster he’d always hated, who came off the mound and hugged him. No monster had ever hugged anyone before, let alone the biggest, baddest monster of all, and there was quiet.

‘You are the new leader of the monsters!’ the biggest, baddest monster shouted.

‘But I don’t want to be a leader. You’re the leader and you always will be,’ said the lonely monster.

The crowd of monsters cried and cried and laughed and laughed. They didn’t know what crying or real laughing was but cry and laugh they did, howling and wailing and hugging the monster that stood next to them. Around the mound all the parents held their children close to them, saying things they thought they’d never ever say.

Even the biggest, baddest monster was crying and laughing the new laugh but then he stopped and turned to the lonely monster. ‘If I’m still the leader then I decree that you must sing every day here on the mound so that we always remember how to cry and laugh.’

‘I will sing here every day for the rest of my life. I won’t just sing new songs, though. I’ll sing angry and awful songs so that we always remember everything.’

The biggest, baddest monster shook hands with the lonely monster, and so it was that the lonely monster returned to his cave that night.

He laughed and laughed and cried and cried into the night, and when the sun rose the next day he went outside, stood on the mound and sang to the monsters.