Monsters

He was a man that knew the word ‘monster’ well though he never quite spelt it out. My dad told me that he had seen stuff. He had a Meerschaum pipe, you know like Sherlock Holmes, and he knocked it out on a battle scarred wooden table. As an inquisitive child, I had to ask. “What’s a monster Mr.?” (in my young mind monsters were kind of furry and cute, they had googly shaped bodies like the cartoon ones we see now.) He sighed and thought a while, then said: “See that little sparrow pecking at crumbs on yonder windowsill lad? I nodded. "That creature is a monster to a worm."