I had forgotten how she could so easily turn the tables on me when I got angry and loud with her. Now that I was near screaming, she had taken advantage of the situation with ease. She came over to me slowly, tracing her hand across the side of the counter. I dug out an avocado and began slicing into the skin with a dull knife. Green and brown slime leaked out from around the wound.

She slid up behind me and began massaging my shoulders. Her voice whispered calmly, “There is no way for you to understand what just happened in there. And, there’s no way we can go back in time and make it go away.” Her hands slid away. “And, with that in mind, I’m going to leave this house and you now, forever. You can sell my stuff or whatever you want.”

I turned, knife in hand impaling a limp avocado, but she had already made her way out of the kitchen. The screen door closed shut soon thereafter.

***

It took almost a half hour of intense fretting and pacing for me to remember that I hadn’t yet left the kitchen. In fact, the bedroom was still a mystery. Had Cookie Monster crawled out of a window? Chances are he did just that. But could he fit through the windows, which have always been too small for my liking? Just exactly how big was Cookie monster anyways?

To me, Cookie Monster had always been fiction, but only of the most intimate sort. I grew up with him, watched his ways, mimicked his voice, and learned the lessons he was designed to teach. When I developed a problem with whiskey in high school, it was Cookie Monster who reminded me that it’s okay to have addictions. He was an addiction-based monster, covered with blue hair and wild googly eyes, and he seemed to have a hard time with English, but he was happy. He was happy because, above all the shortcomings, he was going to get to mash at least one cookie a day. In fact, he would probably mash the table, the plant, and the telephone as well, and it was all good, because that’s what he does. His existence is defined by his insatiable appetite.

It was almost cathartic to me when I finally saw the Cookie Monster inside of me, and I abruptly gave up whiskey one rainy night in my early twenties. I could finally leave my lesser cravings with the googly-eyed friend, as a sacrifice. I even remember one night in a moment of lucidity I could clearly imagine him thanking me for the liquor and crunching the glass fifth between his powerful jaws.

We had a history that was deep and textured, at least in my mind. Therefore the fact that this personal mythological figure had just slept with my wife and was probably still in my bedroom was impossibly strange and intense. I checked the light switch and read a line from a phone book just to see if I was dreaming. I wasn’t.

I had just thrown myself into one of the kitchen chairs when a deep, methodical shuffling emerged from the hallway.

Then, in a voice unmistakably that of the furry man: “Me alone?”

I sat, silent and frightened out of my skull.

“Hello?” More shuffling.

Two eyes the size of baseballs peered out from around the corner. The black pupils were bouncing around their surfaces. I couldn’t tell if he saw me. Slowly, two fuzzy blue hot dog fingers reached around and pulled the Cookie Monster into view.