FRANKENSTEIN

“Skull Emoji, Lightning Emoji, Eggplant Emoji” by Joe Wadlington

Victor Frankenstein and Henry Clerval played Magic: The Gathering in an empty pub with no setting details. Victor kept using zombie cards.

“Victor! You are a force with necromancing cards!” Henry laughed.

“I did this a lot in college,” Victor mumbled.

“Victor, I would love to hear more about your time in seclusion. You didn’t send word to the family for years—then showed up with sagging skin, black lipstick, and smelling of embalming fluid,” Henry said. Victor rolled his eyes. “Adjust your countenance, Victor! You’ve been a fountain of misery for all of our trip from Europe to a different part of Europe. I hoped we’d get blacked out, then go to brothels and pay to cuddle—but you’re acting like someone deleted your Tumblr!”

“UGH FIIIIIIIINE!” Victor tossed his head, shifting dyed black bangs from one eye to the other. “I spent my time in seclusion working on my art. It’s ummm… found-object sculpture. I’m playing with the idea of creating life,” Victor said.

Henry’s eyes narrowed. “Like, in an abstract way?” he asked.

“NOPE!” Victor said, laying down another zombie card.

A village person with no physical description burst into the pub.

“THE DEMON RETURNED! He killed nine people!” the man yelled.

“Well, I hope no one was hurt!” Victor said with fake concern.

Henry ran to the man. “Sir! What is this demon you speak o—”

“SCIENCE!” Victor screamed, breaking a bottle over the peasant’s head. Victor cradled the man’s body and looked innocently at Henry. “It’s okay! We can put lightning on it!” he said, then broke the man’s neck with his hands. “Whoopsie.” He flashed a cute little smile.

“Lord spare us! Victor, you devil! What have you done?!” Henry yelled.

“I need more parts for my second monste—I mean my art project,” Victor said.

“Are you dismembering people again?!” Henry said.

“NO ONE WE KNOW!” Victor dropped the man in defeat and pouted on his way back to the table.

“All this time we hoped you were just jerking off and threatening people on the internet,” Henry said.

“Only on my breaks,” Victor mumbled, brushing his bangs over his eyes.

“As a kid, you tortured small animals and showed no capacity for empathy, but we thought giving you half a science degree, two years of funding, and no follow-up questions would help,” Henry said.

“Yeah, that was a bad idea—I chased nature into her hiding places, dabbled through unhallowed graves, and tortured the living animal to build my lifeless clay—but we all make mistakes, right?” Victor said, playing another zombie card.

“Stop that! You aren’t even tapping mana. And I can’t believe a maniac like you was granted a lab!”

“Do you know how easy it is to get a lab in this country? Only slightly harder than getting a semiautomatic rifle. And demented science is a natural urge for me: like dancing in the rain or falling in love with my sister. It just happens,” Victor said.

There was a pound on the door. Victor shrieked and ran to bar it.

“That has to be the monster! All the other characters are dead by now! Henry, he’s horrifying: violent, angry, and, worst of all, not conventionally attractive.” Another pound. “Please don’t let it get me!” Victor pleaded. “I’m just a misunderstood white kid. I didn’t know what I was getting into—well, I did know, but I hoped none of the obvious consequences would happen to me. Please! I’m done with my wicked occupation. Now my happiness lies in one day marrying Elizabeth and blindsiding her with my horrifying past.”

“How can I kill it?” Henry asked.

“IDK just shoot it! This isn’t Beowulf!” Victor said.

“Victor, my dear playmate. I will stay and fight this beast with you. For your father took me in, clothed me—I am only medium-rich, so it was charity. I owe you my loyalty!” While Henry was monologuing, Victor had slipped out a back window. Something pounded on the door again.

“Ah, shit.” Henry kicked the door open and stood at the ready.

The night was completely black, to build suspense. Henry could see nothing but heard a sound like bean bags being tossed and snakes slithering. As the monster filled the doorway, Henry realized Victor had been wrong: This wasn’t the demon; it was the demon’s half-finished wife.

Victor had run many experiments aside from his monster. They had organized and escaped their prisons. Hundreds of zombie body parts flooded the doorway—and mostly the sexy ones. Vaginas of every shade and dilation were jumping across the ground like suction cups being plucked, then relocated, plucked, then relocated. Strong arms wobbled in like uncertain toddlers and the dicks slithered on the ground like dicks always fucking do—but the breasts… oh the bushels of breasts! They leaped through the world like a water balloon toss, with invisible players. One of the vaginas appeared to be the leader and spoke boldly.

Hundreds of zombie body parts flooded the doorway—and mostly the sexy ones. Vaginas of every shade and dilation were jumping across the ground like suction cups being plucked, then relocated, plucked, then relocated. Strong arms wobbled in like uncertain toddlers and the dicks slithered on the ground like dicks always fucking do—but the breasts…oh the bushels of breasts! They leaped through the world like a water balloon toss, with invisible players.

“YOU DOWN TO… EXPERIMENT???” she cackled, speaking exactly how you would envision a vagina to speak. The breasts began organizing into a colony that spiraled higher and higher—using a few penises, but only auxiliary for structure, NOT because they needed them.

“Nooo-ooo,” Henry stammered. “That’s disgusting!” He was so turned on. “I don’t want this to happen to meeeeee.” He wanted this exact thing to happen to him very badly and for a long time.

The breast coven was taller now. Four legs slipped under it, then stood, bringing the tit teepee to eye level. It looked like the back of every twelve-year-old boy’s notebook. The Wankenstein moved forward slowly, with considerable tit bouncing. All Henry could think was, Boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs, and some dicks.

An army of hands walked through the door, carrying a woman’s head. She was passed from the floor to the top of Chesticle Mountain and leered down at Henry. The hands began running up Henry’s body—massaging him, relaxing him. This was all the foreplay Henry needed. His oven was preheated and about to burn the house down.

“I see you don’t need rigor mortis to get hard,” the head said with a poisonous laugh. She stared at Henry’s bulging monster and licked her lips with a tongue that was clearly four tongues sewn together. One of the hands undid his pants.

“I… I just want to be held,” Henry said. The head nodded knowingly. Mammary Mountain parted in the middle like a bathrobe, and Henry stepped inside. He was surrounded by a patchwork of skin tones, like a quilt, if a quilt could fuck you. One penis slipped into Henry’s butt comfortably and on the first try—because that’s how anal works in fiction. The walls burritoed him—he felt safe but in a sexy way.

Henry heard the glasses behind the bar trembling, then the floor. The shaking moved through his body too. Henry realized the boob quilt was revving up to motorboat him. The shaking increased, and the bosom bushel waved like it was being wrung out. It felt like being in a cement mixer filled with water balloons. More dicks and hands joined the mix, making it a penetration tornado. The head began yodeling wildly in time with the tit pummeling. Henry pulled his arms above his head and started leaping up, into the corpse cavern. The shaking increased and the yodeling got louder, until a final pleasure seizure began vibrating the tower to pieces. Before the head fell, she yelled, “It’s alive! IT’S ALIVE!”

The pieces disassembled quickly and exited. Henry lay on the floor sweaty and covered in bruises.

“I love you!” he yelled.

“Let’s keep it casual,” the head said, rolling out.

Henry lit a cigarette and took a long drag. “Fuckin’ science, man!” he said, shaking his head.

“Safie’s Choice” by Kitty Stryker

It was a dark and stormy night.

Well, it was dark, anyway, something the Creature was thankful for as he settled in for another long night of peering through a stranger’s window. He told himself it was for “educational purposes”; the fact that his hand very often ended up in his pants was merely coincidence. Correlation is not causation, after all.

That’s a science reference, because this is a science-fiction story.

The Creature had been peering through this particular window for many nights. It was a lot more interesting than reading Paradise Lost, which isn’t terribly surprising if we’re being honest. The goings-on inside the cottage, meanwhile, were a lesson in open-mindedness. Not in an intersectional awareness sort of way, but more in a “wow I had no idea all those things could fit inside a butthole” sort of way. The Creature was pretty into it.

The window belonged to a cottage housing three peasant youths, who, despite being peasants, were all strikingly attractive and miraculously free of smallpox. There was Felix, the dashing young man with firm, tanned muscles who seemed sad and therefore probably would have loved Paradise Lost. There was his sister Agatha, a blond-haired and freckled young woman with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. And there was Safie, a bright-eyed and dark-haired beauty who enjoyed accommodating the siblings’ many pleasures.

Look, it was winter in Germany; there wasn’t a lot else to do. And sex is cheaper than coal. YOLO (well, unless you’re a reanimated corpse, but I digress).

Safie, who was not from around here, was being coached on how to speak French by Felix, even though they were in Germany. This ended up being a euphemism for “having a lot of kinky threesomes with his sister when Dad’s not home.” It was a hands-on education in the various ways one could pleasure themselves with their hands, someone else’s mouth, or a convenient gourd if the mood was right. The Creature, who had never seen such things and had only read about them in whatever the eighteenth-century version of Cosmo was, studied their behavior obsessively, learning words like shaft and cunt and important phrases like Use more lube and If you move from that spot on my clit before I come, I’m going to punch you. Occasionally the Creature would see an older man in the cottage, father to Felix and Agatha and blind, but he seemed more inclined to wander around the woods than stay there, probably in part because it reeked of sex and he really didn’t need that kind of intimate knowledge of his children’s sex lives.

The first time he observed the three fucking, he experienced a strange engorgement of the flesh and a wetness in his trousers. Reading Milton had not really prepared the Creature for the mysteries of his body, and he didn’t really speak to his Maker about the birds and the bees. Watching Felix orgasm onto Agatha’s face while Safie stroked his cock gave the Creature some context for what jizz was, and he began to put his hands down his pants in order to catch the curious fluid from its source. He told himself it was to save his clothes from staining, but secretly he just liked to lick it off his palm.

On this particular evening, the Creature peered through the window to see they were left to their own devices yet again, in part as their dad was blind, not deaf. Today’s devices appeared to be a broom handle, a zucchini, and a vibrating contraption that probably shouldn’t have been invented yet but we’ll pretend was in order to aid the story.

Agatha had blindfolded Safie for some sort of game—she held the anachronistic vibrator in one hand and the broom handle in the other and was teasing Safie to reach out and pat the arm that would be her pleasure object for the evening. Felix had pulled down his lederhosen and busied himself with the zucchini, putting on quite a show as he thrust the vegetable in and out of his eager asshole for the amusement of his sister. Safie, nipples hardening as she heard the moans coming from one side of the cottage, eagerly reached out and patted the arm with the broomstick, causing Agatha to giggle with devious delight. Because I cannot possibly write about the sexual use of a broom handle without shuddering thinking about splinters, I think we’ll adjourn back to the scene outside.

The Creature stared through the window, transfixed by the whimpers and gasps coming from within the cottage, his jaundiced hand stroking his dick, which was quickly resurrecting.

He felt a hand on his arm. It was the father, De Lacey, home at last from the village.

“Ah,” said De Lacey, “have you been spying?”

The Creature just sort of made an affirmative groan in response, partially because he had been really close to orgasm and this was really inconvenient timing. De Lacey, totally nonplussed by the nonverbal response, began to feel his way up the Creature’s broad chest, past his scars, up to his face.

“You’re a strapping young lad,” said the old man with a furrowed brow. “Why wouldn’t you knock on the door and say hello? As you can see, they’re pretty experimental, though I wish they did chores with the same enthusiasm.”

The Creature shook his head frantically. “I… I couldn’t possibly. They are so beautiful, and I am so hideous.”

De Lacey snorted in response. “Humph! Well, looks aren’t everything, my boy, take it from me. An eagerness to please wins out over a handsome face any day of the week.” He grinned, a smile that, sure, was missing a few teeth but made up for that in warmth. “Perhaps I could show you a bit of the old ‘brotherly love,’ if you think you’d give an old fellow like me the chance?” And with that he reached down to cup the Creature’s stiff prick in his hand. “It seems like you might.”

The Creature had never been touched like this before, and the warmth of the old man’s hand against the cool but throbbing meat of his cock was a new, welcome sensation. Then De Lacey kissed him, hard but tenderly, his beard sloughing off the top layer of the Creature’s skin—it was okay, because De Lacey was blind and the Creature couldn’t feel it. Soon De Lacey had spit in his hand and began stroking the hard flesh of his companion, beginning with a slow, gentle jerking off, then getting faster and firmer. “Yessss,” De Lacey murmured. “Just like we used to do in the army…”

“Um,” said the Creature, feeling a bit embarrassed but also very aroused, “I’m not entirely sure that’s the best idea…”

The next tug left De Lacey with the Creature’s cock in his hand, feeling like a bratwurst that had been left on the counter overnight.

“Oh,” said De Lacey. “Awkward.” He lit a cigarette and offered it to the Creature.

The Creature shrieked and flung the cigarette at the cottage in horror, which immediately caught on fire.

“Love is Deafblind” by Molly Sanchez

“I can’t believe you’re leaving me for this asshole,” Helen Keller signed angrily into the palm of Anne Sullivan. It was a lovely Alabama spring day and the pair of them, along with Anne’s fiancé, John Albert Macy, were strolling around the local carnival. “I mean, does the phrase bros before hoes mean nothing to you, Anne? Like, what the actual fuck?”

“What is Helen saying, dearest?” John asked as he guided them past the many sights and sounds of the fair (all of which were lost splendidly on Helen). Anne rolled her eyes and cleared her throat. “Oh nothing, pumpkin. She just said she’s frightfully excited about our wedding.”

“Listen, bitch, John is not a dingbag and he is not a ho. He’s an English teacher, for Christ’s sake,” she signed furiously into Helen’s hand, all the while smiling as John nodded toward the cotton candy vendor. “P.S. I know you can’t see it but he is really freaking hot. Like super hot. He has an ass like a layer cake and last week I definitely got some over-the-pants action while you were in the room.”

Helen shook her head. “Yeah, asshole, I’m blind and deaf but not stupid. I can feel your BJ vibrations from across the room. Also I have touched the dude’s face, okay. He’s a six at best. I just don’t know why you’re abandoning me for a six!”

“Are you and Helen all right, sweetness?” John asked.

Anne smiled and nudged Helen with her shoulder. “Of course we are, my darling. Helen was just saying that she couldn’t be happier that I’m settling down with a man like you and that she’s really jealous.”

Helen smiled sweetly at John and gave a little wave. “I will fucking murder you,” she signed to Anne.

Helen was lonely. Annie, her best and only friend, the only person who she could really be herself with, was ditching her for a nerd. At nights when Helen fondled herself in the dark, she longed for a partner more substantial than her usual handle of a hairbrush. Someone who would hold her and talk to her and see her as more than just the waaater girl. As she lay there, panting, her hairbrush sullied, she wished someone loved her, or at least wanted to fuck her like they did.

Suddenly Helen smelled something interesting. A cold smell, a musty comforting smell that reminded her of soil after rain. And as she inhaled deeper, she sniffed something familiar, keen loneliness. She nudged Anne. “What’s going on?”

Anne signed, “They just wheeled out this dude they found frozen in the ice caps years ago. He’s still frozen.”

Helen sniffed again and signed, “Is he cute?”

She knew if she put her hand to Anne’s face, she’d feel an eye roll but she felt her friend pause for a second before answering, “Hard to tell, but very tall… Oh fuck.”

What Helen couldn’t see was that the scorching Alabama sun had been melting the ice block all afternoon and suddenly the Monster broke free of his cold prison and started stretching his limbs. The crowd started screaming and running and Anne furiously tried to explain the situation to Helen.

“But you say he’s tall?” she asked.

“Jesus, Helen, that’s not the point. He’s a hideous mansicle!”

“Okay, but tall?”

“Fuck it, yes!”

“He smells good. Let’s take him home!”

And so they did. Anne, being used to dealing with frustrating people, offered the Monster her coat and coaxed him to join them on their way home (in the most awkward carriage ride in recorded history). Eventually he became a staple in the Keller household.

It took some time for him to adjust to living somewhere that wasn’t a literal hovel. He was an eloquent conversationalist (though with obvious daddy issues) and soon he was able to join the Kellers and Anne at the dinner table.

He was fascinated with Helen but kept his distance, learning her movements as he had learned those of Felix, Agatha, and Safie years ago. In her he recognized an all too familiar sadness.

He was entranced and sometimes in his room at night his member became stiff and uncomfortable at the thought of her body so much so that he had to abuse himself between the box springs for relief.

He was charmed to see the candor with which she and Anne conversed, a candor only the keen observer could catch. He first noticed this when Anne told John Macy aloud that she had been “simply contemplating what a joy it would be to be your wife, dear heart” when in reality he had seen her sign, “He has a dick so pretty I want to make an oil painting of it!” as Helen laughed, her small breasts heaving with wanton abandon.

Yet he could not bring himself to approach lovely Helen. How could he cope if yet again he had found the perfect mate only to be so grossly rejected?

But he could not contain his passion long. One fateful night when the family had gone to the theater and left Helen to rest, he crept into her room and sat down on her bed beside her. He took her hand.

“May I lay with you?” he asked meekly into her palm.

A smile quirked Helen’s lips “About fucking time!” she signed, and laughed slightly.

They lay down to face each other.

“You learned to sign?” she signed into his rough palm.

“Obviously,” the Monster signed playfully.

Helen laughed a husky laugh before putting her hands over her mouth. She cleared her throat and said shakily, “I’m ashamed of my voice. I think it makes me sound stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” the Monster said, holding her hand to his lips.

Helen blushed and said more confidently, “Such a way with words.”

She ran her hands over the Monster’s face, feeling the lines of grafted skin. She traced her hands down his neck and under his shirt to rest over his heart, which was racing.

“Do you think I’m a monster?” he asked into her free hand.

She looked up at him and with her high voice she replied, “Do you think I am?”

The Monster kissed her then, the way he’d seen other couples kiss. He kissed her softly like Agatha had kissed her father’s cheek, then tenderly and openmouthed the way Felix had kissed Safie on their reunion; then he drew her to him by her waist and kissed her hard like Victor had kissed Elizabeth on their fateful wedding night.

Helen groaned and pulled her nightgown over her head. The Monster had never seen the female body before and he wept at the sight of it.

Helen chuckled. “Come on, crybaby,” she signed. “Fuck me already.”

And so they made monstrous love until the power of their thrusting broke the antique bed frame and they went crashing to the floor.

Sweaty and sated, Helen rolled to lay her head on the Monster’s chest. “If we’re going to do this, you should know that sometimes I swear and I am definitely planning to be a socialist.”

The Monster heaved a sigh and placed her hand to his lips before saying, “If we’re planning to do this, you should know I accidentally killed a kid once.”

Helen cocked her head and looked at him with sightless eyes.

“Accidentally?”

“Yes, it’s a long story.”

Helen shrugged and kissed him deeply before snuggling back onto his chest. “Well, might as well start. We have allll night.”

“Juicing the Saddle” by Evan Burton

Elizabeth Lavenza sat at an open cottage window awaiting the return of her husband, the pompous taint worm, Victor Frankenstein. The purple-black night made it impossible to tell the road from the trees that bordered it, so she closed her eyes and simply listened. It was, after all, the surest way to tell if her husband approached on horseback. Among his many quirks was that Victor Frankenstein rode with his saddle backward, the hard shaft of the horn in the rear instead of in the typical front position. As he rode, constantly prodded by the horn behind him, Victor grunted quite audibly above the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves. Elizabeth once asked why he chose to be continually poked by the wood-hard horn––didn’t it distress him? Frankenstein responded tersely that he preferred it that way. It braced him.

And nothing more was said about it, which was representative of their relationship. As the self-absorbed perineum parasite, Victor Frankenstein peered boldly into the soul of creation and slid all up in the DMs of nature, battering its inbox with requests. He permitted nothing to be asked of himself. This one-man circle jerk of vanity, ignorance, and daring is what led Victor to birth a monster he could not control.

Elizabeth sat waiting and waiting and listening to the nothingness. It was their wedding night, and her husband had promised to return after securing a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of Tropicana orange juice from the local merchant. This, of course, was a ruse. In fact, he had set out on horseback for the pleasure it gave him, and because he meant to find and destroy the monster before the monster destroyed him.

Elizabeth embraced her solitary woes. How lonely to be totally possessed by another. And yet how necessary. Just then she heard footsteps in the hallway and thought perhaps she’d fallen asleep despite herself, missing her husband’s approach. As she turned to face her bedroom door, a giant figure emerged, filling her with a fear so immediate and absolute that it passed as easily as it had entered. She felt suddenly like an observer in her own body, free to act and yet unafraid of consequence. Elizabeth regarded the monster coolly, which was awkward because he had been counting on her to at least shriek or something, so that he could deliver his death sentence with dramatic flair. After a lame interlude of standing in the doorway menacingly, grunting and flailing his arms to no effect on Elizabeth, he went ahead and delivered his line.

“I have come to take what was taken from me. Since I cannot feel love, I will destroy it.”

Elizabeth laughed from her gut, and the monster plodded toward the table where she sat.

“Do you not fear me?” The monster placed his icy hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders and neck.

In a fluid motion, Elizabeth slid out of her chair and spun behind the monster, lifted herself to the tips of her toes, and leaned into the monster’s ghastly ear.

“One cannot fear what one claims. You are mine now.”

“Thank you, yes,” said the monster, weeping openly. “I have been so lonely.”

Elizabeth extinguished one of the lamps on her table, dipped her fingers in the oil pit, and dropped the monster’s pants. She then copiously slathered his infernal asshole with oil, which the monster found hella pleasurable. His rigorous erection served as a confirmation to her powerful technique. The two slid into an unhallowed trance unified in the depths of their respective loneliness. Elizabeth, absorbed in her work, didn’t hear the grunting approach of her husband.

When Victor Frankenstein entered his home––with his saddle in one hand and an orange juice in the other––to find Elizabeth five fingers deep inside the monster, fisting him with all the gusto of a banana cream daisy bursting forth, after a long winter, into spring, he stood for a moment speechless. Victor dropped his bottle of Tropicana orange juice, disturbing the two from their dark reverie. Victor met the monster’s perpetually watery eyes, which were now extra watery.

“You fiend!” said Victor. “What are you doing to my dear sweet Elizabeth?!”

“Shut the fuck up, Victor,” said Elizabeth without breaking the motion of her arm, pumping the monster’s purple flower like a piston on a gas locomotive, “and come here!”

Victor obeyed, dropping the saddle as he approached.

“No,” said Elizabeth, “bring it to me.”

Victor picked up the saddle again, shaking and mesmerized by the unprecedented power he was witnessing in his wife. The scrotum muncher Victor Frankenstein had forced Elizabeth to wait for his attention and his affection at every turn as he projected his own monstrous image onto the screen of the universe. Now there was no more waiting.

Through the magic of ecstasy, Elizabeth intuited that the monster’s dick was detachable, so she gently reached around and removed it. She gave him a rest from the fisting and the monster exhaled like the bag of flesh he was. As Victor came closer to the pair, Elizabeth held the monster’s dick above her head and motioned with it to Victor.

“Do you want this daemonic dick, Victor?”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“Do you want this monstrous devil’s eggplant, Victor?”

“I am a wretch.”

“Do. You. Want. It. Victor?!”

“Yes! Yes! YES! Rejoin me with my own repulsive creation.”

With that, Elizabeth took the saddle and slung it on the monster’s back, who continued to weep joyously, facedown on the table. Wasting no time, she picked up the open oil lamp and poured it down Victor’s ass crack. Victor shivered in response, murmuring, “I am a wretch.”

Elizabeth guided his chest to the table next to the monster and mounted the saddle on the monster’s back. She leaned over and began fucking Victor vigorously with the monster’s dick.

“Ah,” said Victor, “sweet nature!”

The harder Elizabeth fucked Victor with the monster’s detached dick, the more the monster bucked, and Elizabeth found deep pleasure against the horn of the saddle. Now she understood why Victor liked to ride, and she resolved to do more of it herself.

“Yes, yes,” said the monster, feeling Elizabeth’s masterful operation of his dick inside Victor. “I am finally loved!”

With that, the monster came explosively and Elizabeth withdrew his dick from Victor, letting it spurt all over the curtains, and the floor, and the forgotten bottle of Tropicana orange juice, and finally out of the window. Reaching the pinnacle of her own pleasure, Elizabeth, too, came out of the window, followed by Victor Frankenstein, the ultimate fuckboi and deadbeat dad.

The moment their cum trifecta hit the ground, a dark forest teeming with vines and all manner of green life sprung up around the cottage.

Wrecked, Victor Frankenstein said in a soft voice, “If only I had known to look to the divine feminine as the source of life, I might have saved myself much tribulation.”

“Shut the fuck up, Victor,” said Elizabeth, still riding the wave of her orgasm.

Elizabeth patted the monster on the ass, and he helped her down from the saddle, which she then carried into another room to place among the rest of her belongings.