---

Godzilla as a Young Man Named Mike

E.M. Faulds

 

I remember your mum telling me, after it all went down, that during the lockdowns you washed your hands so often your skin cracked and turned scaly and angry red, but you had to keep going just in case neglecting it killed her.

It echoed, not much later, when the worst of the pandemic was past, only it wasn’t just your hands. All your skin changed into islands of mottled gray or khaki, building up tire-rubber thick in patches, and turning numb where your body just up and decided to not work the same anymore. It was all part of what you were becoming, whether you liked it or not.

There were days, fewer and farther between, where she could still see a glimpse her son Michael, the gorgeous boy you used to be: a spill of curls that fell down one side of your brow, a diffident slant to shoulders on a gangly frame, eyes the clear amber of long-steeped tea, that knowing grin. She’d see a ghost of that smile and be transported back through the ages of you, all the way to when you first announced yourself with a wriggle-kick to her womb. Then your grin would slide away as the pain did its thing and the beautiful boy submerged so your new self could rise, wrathful.

Early on, you spent long hours in the bathtub but your remnant humanity wasn’t built for it. You’d end up with curdled finger pads and stripped of any remaining skin oils to protect you from drying out. You spent months in bed, a place you used to enjoy, and it became a prison. You memorized every crack in the ceiling, watched car headlights migrate across the chalk-white steppes of it. Eventually, you recovered enough to stand for more than a few seconds at a time.

Well, “recovered” isn’t quite the right word. It was more that you decided to ignore the screams of your body because the alternative was never getting out of bed ever again.

You mentioned the day you tottered and stooped along to the kitchen in your Mum’s tenement apartment and how you’d never forget her look of who is this invading my home? before she realized it was you, but taller, and more, well . . . lizardy, and she rushed over to fit herself into the places she knew were strong enough to be hugged. You towered over her.

Even the hug told you that you were different now, and the likelihood of ever going back to who you used to be dwindled to nothing. So, instead, you tried to look forward.

---

When the pandemic had faded from everyone’s collective conscience just enough, our job said we had to come into the central Glasgow office again. Working from home had been okay for you; you’d made it back from your long-term sick leave, even got in a few prescribed exercises over lunch breaks. It wasn’t always the best and you hated being on top of your mum all the time but at least you could keep your cool packs in the freezer without some asshat moving them to put in their frozen yogurt.

None of the managers on the All-Hands call could give a real answer when you asked why going back to the office was mandatory if you got your job done from home? What the difference was if you were assigned tasks lying in bed or sitting in a conference room? Why you should pay out of your own pocket for a commute? How it was better for productivity if everyone caught the same bug going around an open-plan office?

I totally agreed with you. I mean, I didn’t say anything, and my camera was off, but inside, I agreed. I also knew those arguments weren’t your real hesitation. So did everyone who saw your changes.

It wasn’t like you could drive. You had to take the subway to work, a few stops around the tiny Glasgow circuit from Govan to St George’s Cross. Your head curled against the train’s ceiling, rattling tracks sending sine waves up your lengthened body. Some of your fellow passengers stared, openly hostile, as if you were pulling some kind of stunt just by being there. Still, it was better than the ones who’d insist you take their seat even though you were fine strap-hanging, who made out you were an arsehole for not taking them up on it, whose faces changed when you didn’t accept their charity.

I never did that to you, not that you noticed. We took the same line to work for months, before the lockdowns and after, but you hadn’t seen me. Your eyes slid right off my clouds of fog like everyone else.

Your first day back, first coffee break in the kitchenette, and Annette was at the sink, washing up her cereal bowl. Jen was being just a little too on, so I’d hidden in there as well. I’d faded into the background, leant up against the countertop, gently dissociating when I watched you gingerly maneuver your body into the narrow space. You didn’t register me but slid past Annette to reach for the mugs on the top shelf of the cabinets. She said, “I wish I was tall like you,” and you snapped, “No, you don’t,” and she flinched like you’d cut her.

You apologized profusely, said you weren’t too good at peopling anymore, and left your coffee mug to flee the scene.

“Oh my god, can you believe that guy?” Annette said.

To the air, of course, not to me.

You broke out at lunchtimes to avoid the rec area. When your legs were good, you’d wander down to the canal where there weren’t as many pedestrians. Discarded cartons and plastic bottles floated in scum down there, but it was quiet. You once confessed you had the weird urge to get in, do laps between the lock gates. It looked like it would poison you with chemicals, was filled with empty shopping carts and smelled like rotten eggs, but still, you wanted to get in.

---

A few weeks into the new routine, you got back to the office from one of these walks and found your colleagues had organized a surprise for you. Someone had seen your records and noted it was your birthday.

Me. It was my idea. I worked on the HR systems as part of my support duties. I’d Slack-messaged Jen, who’d mentioned it to Nestor, who’d told Matt to go get a cake and a card from the supermarket while you were out.

You were visibly flustered when you took in your colleagues and the little tableau at your desk.

Birthday cake. You supposed it was decent of them make a big deal about treating you nice for once, but you couldn’t eat it. It’d make you hurl. You wanted to politely explain, but you could only imagine coldness in their eyes. Instead you pushed some around with a fork, pretended to eat, made a show of lumbering around to talk to everyone and show gratitude despite the fact you were so tired you could weep, until you could slip into the kitchenette and discreetly fold the paper plate over your slice to shove it deep into the garbage below the sink. But you weren’t so good at stealth; you ended up putting your fist through the back of the plastic bin.

I mean, you probably don’t remember, but that’s when we officially met.

I said, “Don’t make ‘em like they used to,” and you were just so shocked someone had caught you at it, you suddenly saw me. It helped that the fog had lifted that day, and for a change, I was fully visible to people who actually made the effort.

Even on reptilian features, you wondering who the fuck I was registered loud and clear.

“I’m Kaydee,” I supplied. “You’re Mike. I know you. I’m not new, I’ve been with the company two years.” I was used to telling people that. Repeatedly.

“Oh,” you said, straightening up in embarrassment so fast your head went tink against the light fitting on the ceiling. “Then how come . . .”

“I’m mostly on Jen’s team. And . . . I’ve got a little issue with, uh, being seen,” I said, handing you a dishcloth to wipe crumbs and bin juice from your claws. “Well, most of the time. Today’s a bit better. Gluten intolerance?” I asked to change the subject.

You nodded. Then laughed. “Something wicked. In fact, I don’t really eat much at all, these days.”

“That’s a shame,” I told you, going for winning charm. “My brownies are to die for.”

“Might be a little bit too literal for me.” You smiled, queasily, to show me you were joking and knew I was too, and that everything was fine.

You didn’t eat food, I found out later. Or at least, what I’d call food. You ate radiation. You had to go to the doctor to get your doses. The only other choice was to sit in the sun, but no such chance in Glasgow. Even if that were possible, work somewhat opposed the concept of their employees spending eight hours lounging on a rock.

At the end of each day, you went back to Govan. You still had to live at home because your mum was the only one who could or would care for you. Sometimes, you had to take a rideshare from the subway the three blocks’ walk because you just couldn’t. You had to pay for the premium type because most cars didn’t fit you. You couldn’t really afford it, but you didn’t get a lot of choice.

Scales covered you from head to painfully swollen toes by then, and needed frequent scrubbing by someone with the reach to scour out the parasites and infections that got underneath. You said no matter how hard or intimidating it looked, you were always itchy but also still raw below this new armor, like your soft little mammal body just refused to get the memo. Your spine jutted knobbly protrusions from your neck, and you stopped being able to lie on your back. Sleep was more in the vein of “occasional fits of passing out”.

So you were tired, and your vision murked up. The world looked like it had sunk into swampy water, a dirty chartreuse filter over walls, screens, faces, whiteboards at project meetings. You spent so long trying to decipher every janky, squeaking marker stroke, they’d moved on by the time you were halfway through. They expected you to magically have everything down, though. Why not? Everyone else did. Even Stella.

Stella had hearing aids. It was her own deal, but it wasn’t the same.

You could never get comfortable sitting at your computer desk in the office: something up with your lower back. You asked for an ergonomic chair, and they said they’d get right on it. In the meantime, you squirmed, and everyone huffed and sighed at you like you were causing distraction deliberately. There was a meeting. You tried to explain it was just that the seat didn’t work for you and you were in pain but their method of dealing with it was for you to take a laptop into the boardroom and try to work from a screen so small you could barely see a whole document at once. The glide pad scratched under your fingernails thickening into claws, which made you feel guilty again.

---

I came to visit with you after work a couple of times. To your home. You felt awkward about it, but you couldn’t really spend leisure time anywhere else. You made a big deal as we came into the hallway of your flat, to make sure your mum clocked there was a guest.

She was embarrassed, and in the chatter of someone welcoming a stranger into their home, told me she wished she could move to a better flat for you, bigger, ground floor so you didn’t have to walk up all those stairs, and apologized for everything not being good enough. Before I could tell her your home was perfectly lovely, you said you wished you could afford to buy you both a cottage down by the coast, like Nestor casually dropped into conversation last week, can you believe that guy? But it must be nice, just getting up every morning and taking a swim — salt water was amazing for skin. You had bath salts, but the sea! What a difference that would make.

Everyone in the room was quiet a second, studying the floor as the wish died in the air above our heads.

Your mum had made a small stew and some rice for herself, and I took the smallest portion she’d allow me to have. All three of us sat at the small Formica table. You swiveled an eye my direction then back again, saying distinctly, apropos of nothing, that you didn’t feel hungry but other people eating didn’t bother you, then deliberately turned your chair away from the foggy patch located strangely just around my chair. You leaned a skinny arm on the tabletop and chattered about what we’d watch, instead.

After, we sat in the living room for the monster movies you wanted to show me. Your mum suddenly remembered she had some reading to catch up on and closed her bedroom door with a discreet click.

You talked through most of it. You wished you could do what they could. You wished radiation made you huge, instead of a bit sick. You wished you could stomp on whole buildings like that. People would run, and scream. But you’d only stomp people who deserved it, of course.

Humans were characters in the movies as well, but you fast-forwarded them, not engaging with their plots. You just wanted to see the big monster every time, pausing and rewinding to point out something that delighted you. I guess a lot of other people might have made their stiff and glassy-eyed excuses and left, but I got it. You sparked up whenever the granite boulder became an eye, the mountain moved, when the island became a swimming thing about to dive for the abyss.

You saw a force of nature, of justice and retribution. You’d swat airplanes too, sweat out bullets, metal would rain down the way the remnants of your hair did into the bathtub plughole.

At the end of the night, you’d gone quiet, with a particular clench to your posture. I told you I had to get back home to feed my cat.

I don’t own a cat, but you didn’t need to know that.

I was pretty sure I’d be safe from office gossip. Even if you made up lies about it and said we’d done more than watch a corny B-movie or two. Even if you told them my name, they’d say, “Who?” But I didn’t think you’d do that. I think you actually wanted to be my friend.

---

At work, they kept trying to pit you against Stella, making a big deal about how well she coped. Mainly because they’d forgotten I worked there too. Or maybe they didn’t see my own issues as comparable. Whatever. Nestor gave you shitty make-work tasks and when you raised it, he pretended you were turning your nose up, too good for it.

You kept extending yourself further and further, though anyone could see what they were doing. We talked it over. We’d conspire in the kitchenette or walk at lunch down by the canal. You could always find me, even when I was having my worst days. For some reason, your swamp-water eyes adjusted to seeing a girl lost in a cloud, once you knew what you were looking for. Or maybe you had infrared or smellovision, like we saw in the movies.

After weeks of Nestor making your life as hard as possible, I said, “But if you walk away, you won’t be able to apply for unemployment, will you?”

“I don’t know, I want to go down to the Citizens’ Advice, but . . .”

But that takes extra energy, and right then you were using everything you had just to hold on.

“You can’t let them edge you out.”

“I know.” You were frustrated. Not at me, but it felt like it. “But I don’t think I can do this anymore, not gonna lie.”

There was only one option left.

“You’ll need a doctor who actually listens,” I murmured.

---

You left work that day without telling them it was your last. You didn’t want to go home yet so instead we got a train to the coast. It was summer; we still had hours of daylight. A beachy paddle, sand between your toes, forget about your troubles, that was the idea. But we got there and found your memory had played a trick on us. You’d been here years ago, when your dad was still around, and you could have sworn it was this direction from the train station. But this wasn’t a beach. This was a swamp.

“We’re here now,” I told your hangdog expression. “Let’s just make the most of it.”

We found a jetty not too far and sat with our toes dangling just above the water. Duckweed drifted, chartreuse on olive green. It was nice. We sat and let ourselves drift with the weed.

A flurry of peeping sounds erupted into the twilight, and I wondered if waterbirds had hatchlings in the sedges.

Little snouts broke surface tension, and the chirps became laser-blast loud. Tiny reptiles. Not crocodiles, not around here. Not monitor lizards. “What the hell?” I asked the water, but it kept its counsel. You didn’t speak, just watched, still.

The little baby whatever-they-weres seemed to like you and clustered around your feet. A stronger swirl, and a tail wave broke over by the far bank. Mama watched us and I froze, but you met her dry-grass-colored eye.

“Maybe we should go now, leave her in peace,” I breathed, and you nodded. You pulled your legs up, unhurried, and started the long process of standing up.

On the train back to town, you said the water had supported and soothed her. She’d felt safe there, why she didn’t mind her babies being near us. You wondered what it must feel like, to be so comfortable in your environment. I wondered if what we’d seen had been real.

“Next time, maybe we’ll make it to the beach,” I said.

“Not if I’m claiming disability.”

“Can’t a disabled person have a day out?”

You gave me a look, and tendrils of fog crept up my legs.

---

I saw you sometimes, but it was getting harder to find time outside of work and you had bad days, told me to leave you alone. I respected that, but it had been ages. I was getting worried you’d forgotten I existed when you couldn’t smell me. So, one Saturday, I wafted over to your side of town and pressed your building’s buzzer without messaging ahead. It took a concerning amount of time for your mum to reply or to open the apartment door when I finally made it up the stairs.

“Kaydee,” I told her. “I had dinner a few months ago? We watched monster movies? I’ve been back a few times . . . His friend from work. Or I was, before he left. Now I’m just . . .”

She looked puzzled, but let me in.

There was a scent inside. Like, toast? Woodsmoke? There wasn’t a fireplace in these flats, was there? I made to go to the living room and the smoke smell got stronger, but she blurted, “Not there,” and jerked my elbow towards the kitchen.

“So, is he in?” I asked, a little freaked. You stayed in a lot now, scared you’d be reported as a false claimant if you dared to step outside. So, where were you?

She worked her way around to telling me what had happened. She kept her eyes closed most of the time. Sometimes, it was like she’d forgotten I was even there. To be fair, wouldn’t be the first time that’d ever happened to me.

You’d had a visit from a health department official, she told me, assessing your claims for disability benefits. There’d been so many of these assessments. They’d randomly cut off the money, so you had to appeal and then start the whole cycle again. Perhaps the official who sat there that day wasn’t to blame, just doing what he was told, but he wouldn’t hear you when you told him it wasn’t possible for you to go back. That you couldn’t hold down a job. You’d gotten worse, could barely see well enough to use a computer now. He wouldn’t hear you or even look at you.

He ignored the fact you couldn’t sit still while he grilled you about your pain levels and told you about the government’s drive to “get people back into work” and “welfare efficiency” which sounded great until anyone realized it meant “force sick people to work or starve”.

He went on and on, relating wellness platitudes, positivity mantras, the benefits of exercise, discounted your pain and difficulty even waking up every morning, until finally something just gave inside you.

Your neck grew longer, the protrusions at the back stretching your scaly skin so tight it seemed to glow an eerie blue. You made a sound like a distant freight train getting closer. You stretched and stretched until . . .

I hurtled towards the living room, even as she spoke. A gouge mark, a pall of black soot seared up the wallpaper opposite your favorite seat: a torrent of rage written onto the bones of your home.

My stomach became a fist and I stumbled back to the Formica table. Your mum was still talking. “I don’t know where it came from. I never read this as a symptom. Didn’t kill the guy —”

Oh thank god.

“— just scared him off, but the police came. I couldn’t tell them anything, where Mike was. He just left. And I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t tell them, but I think he’s gone to the seaside.” She looked up, urgency in her face, seeing me fully for a moment. “Keep it to yourself. Please.” She caved in on herself, strength departed. “My little boy.”

She couldn’t stop the tears, even as my clouds turned the room opaque, boiling white.

---

She understands. That’s what I want you to know, Mike, if you ever see this. She’s grieving but she understands. You had to leave.

On the Ayrshire coast, not too long after, they discovered a giant groove that had appeared overnight in the sand dunes by the beach. They theorized there’d been a landslide, or some kind of freak tide, but it looked more like drag marks of a tail to me.

It’s said that in the depths of the Irish Sea, somewhere off that same beach, if you go far enough, you’ll find a munitions dump from the end of the Second World War. They say that seagulls who feed in these waters have radioactive shit. There’s a nuclear plant that might have made some contribution to this, too.

Eat up, my friend. Get strong.

I wonder if you’ll ever get big enough to go stomp the people who made your life this way. The Houses of Parliament are right by the River Thames, which connects to the North Sea, which connects to the Atlantic, which connects to the Irish Sea. I know you don’t want to hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it, but maybe you could become that force of nature, the one who brings justice, retribution. Maybe you’re the thing that wipes the slate clean so we can start over, remind people to love each other again.

Either way, Mike, I hope the water soothes you and holds you up.

---

Host Commentary

Hello and welcome to PodCastle, the flying castle of fantasy fiction. I’m your guest host for this episode, Devin Martin.

I’ve been your guest editor for Disability Pride and Magic this month and I hope you’ve enjoyed it. It’s been an immense honour to bring these five stories to you.

I am also, as you may already know from previous episodes, stepping into the role of editor more permanently, trying to fill the shoes of our beloved Eleanor R. Wood as Co-Editor alongside Wanini Kimemiah. Eleanor’s off on exciting adventures and will be sorely missed around these ramparts. While the circumstances are extremely unfair and I’d really much rather Eleanor could stay with us, I’m thrilled to be joining Wanini at the helm.

With all of that out of the way: I’m incredibly proud to present our final story for this special month, a PodCastle original: “Godzilla as a Young Man Named Mike” by E. M. Faulds.

---

…aaaaand welcome back.

That was “Godzilla as a Young Man Named Mike” by E. M. Faulds, and if you enjoyed that then I can highly recommend her British Fantasy Award-winning collection “Under the Moon” and her novella “Bring Me Home” just recently came out, paired with another novella: “Song, Stone, Scale, Bone” by Juliet Kemp, in Wiz Duos 2 from Wizard’s Tower Press. Paired novellas released as a single book, what a concept!

E. M. shared these notes on this story: “The Labour government in the UK is currently proposing a severe reduction in disability welfare payments. This news has caused widespread distress, and in an already underfunded system, will likely lead to poverty, illness, and death. This indefensible political choice is just one of many aimed at disabled people in our current global climate. To anyone who is suffering this way, I wish you the strength to endure of a lizard taller than skyscrapers, and the water of community to soothe you and hold you up when you cannot. But most of all, to realise that while some people may treat Godzilla as a monster, the better folk know he is the hero of the story.”

Thank you, E.M. for the notes and this story.

It’s a vicious irony that, at the beginning of this our month of Disabled Pride, the UK parliament voted in those devastating cuts, demolishing a vital lifeline for disabled people. And that, just a day or two later, the US government voted to deprive millions of people of essential healthcare coverage. People will suffer and die because of these policies. This is, frankly, cruelty and eugenics.

When I first had the idea for this special month, I thought I wanted to do something fun and sparkly and uplifting. To focus on solidarity and mutual aid, despite the ongoing indignities of life under ableism.

Now I just want to despair and howl and rage.

What a gift, though, to be able to bring you all on that same journey with these stories! Our first story this month, “This Mentor Lives”, embodies that original optimistic vision with warmth and humour. Then we shift tone to that despair, and finding the strength and support to survive it, in “Broken All My Boughs and Brittle My Heart”. “Sour Fruit” enchants with its gentle voice, but builds to the howl and rage with the constant pressures of a society that refuses to understand. In “Moths in a Fluttering Heart” we start deep in the despair, but time outside of society helps Maria break free of internalised ableism, so she has the confidence to unleash her rage when it comes back, trying to force its cruel old ways on her.

Which brings me back, finally, to today’s story, which manages to tie all these themes and tones together in just 4,000 words. It’s fun — bitterly funny in that “yeah, life’s shit but it’s either cry or laugh” sort of way. It moves through despair, resignation, acceptance, and into fury. And through it all: understanding, compassion, solidarity, friendship.

Monstrosity as metaphor for disability is nothing new. Disabled people have been seeing ourselves in fictional monsters forever. Abled creators, thoughtlessly or maliciously, have been portraying us as grotesque and fearsome for even longer. It’s a fine balance, speaking to the former without evoking the latter and this story pulls it off with acerbic wit and keen insight. Mike is only trying to live his life, but the relentless alienation of ableist systems and attitudes push him to the fringes until he breaks. Society makes him a monster: the social model of monstrability.

And once society decides that you’re a monster, it becomes so easy and natural for it to exclude you further. To look away from your suffering. To blame you for it. To abandon you. To exterminate you.

But monsters have power. So: eat up, grow strong, and go forth with pride and wrath to stomp on ableist oppression!