Hell Followed With Us

“If they want their monster, make them suffer for it.”

Benji learns What Makes a Monster as he transforms into Seraph and yet maintains a stronger moral compass than the people who created him. He hopes to take revenge against the people who killed his father and turned him into Seraph by using their own creation against them.

“Turning away from Seraph isn’t good if it means leaving people to be devoured.”

Benji wrestles internally with the concept of goodness and what he was taught by the cult versus what he knows through his own wisdom. While his father always told him to suppress the monster within, Benji now believes that he can use that monster to do good and defend his found family.

“I’ve never met another trans person before.”

Benji spent his adolescence until now living in an isolated and extremist religious cult. He has never met anyone who deviated from that ideology and now is surrounded by people who have had similar experiences and who understand him. Benji experiences a period of mental adjustment upon meeting the members of the Watch and finding out that he does not need to feel alone anymore.

“I’m watching Faith from the corner of my eye, the shaved stubble of her head and the scars above her low-cut tank top. That kind of outfit would get her torn to pieces in New Nazareth. There’s so much freedom here.”

Benji pays close attention to the physical appearances of the people at the ALC, enthralled with their sense of freedom and the way that they insist upon Staying True to One’s Identity. The strong contrast between the ALC and New Nazareth creates the foundation for Benji’s personal growth away from religious indoctrination.

“The fire of Seraph chews through my stomach, and it hurts, but it hurts like growing. Like setting a bone, or popping a joint back into place.”

In this simile, Benji compares the transformation process to a process of growth. Rather than seeing himself as doomed or dying, he foresees a future in which he has become something more powerful and self-assured than what he is now. Benji is growing up and growing into Seraph, all at the same time.

“It looks like a teenager, it sounds like a teenager, it acts like a boy exactly his age, reflecting his worst nightmare back at him, desperately grasping for a friend, and Nick cannot be that.”

Nick grapples with his conscience and the disconnect between the person he knows Benji is and the monster he wants him to be, speaking to the theme of What Makes a Monster. Nick wants to use Benji to achieve his goal of defeating the Angels, and he pushes down any thought or feeling toward Benji that humanizes him. Nick’s initial treatment of Benji causes a rift in their friendship when Benji finds out.

“We’re silent for a moment together. Just eating, catching juice that rolls over our chins. Someone barks with laughter and claps a hand over their mouth in apology. The food settles in my stomach, and I feel warm. Not burning, but warm, like I’m somehow sitting next to the fire even though I’m all the way across the courtyard. Gentle. Cozy.”

Benji is in the midst of Finding Home and Finding Family with the people at the ALC. The group enjoys a moment of levity and warmth before their next attack, and Benji feels as welcomed and included as anyone. This sense of community and belonging is something that Benji had always lacked and needed in his life.

“In a place like the ALC, after Judgment Day, it’s easy to forget you’re trans. Or maybe a better way to word it would be, it gets easier for me to forget the pain of being trans. Being transgender is who you are, and the pain is what the outside does to you.”

Benji is overwhelmed by the entirely new and much more understanding set of circumstances and people that now surround him at the ALC. He reflects on how it feels, correcting himself as he attempts to describe what it’s like to be around people who do not expect him to be anything other than what he is. He insists that being trans is not the problem; instead, others’ responses to his transness are the source of Benji’s trauma.

“Seraph is here, and it’s inside me, and—just like my dysphoria holding my head underwater, demanding to be acknowledged before it drowned me—it’s only getting worse.”

Benji compares the existence of Seraph inside him to his dysphoria and notes that both must be confronted since they cannot be outrun. Benji acts with courage in the face of these intense changes and knows that in Staying True to One’s Identity, he can maintain himself as Benji even as Seraph takes hold. Benji’s story acts as an allegory for the trans experience and for the feelings of isolation and powerlessness that often accompany it.

“Our faces are so close, his body is so warm, and I missed him so much. I missed him. I missed him. No matter what he did. I am disgusted with myself.”

Benji craves acceptance and belonging, and when Theo pretends to offer it, Benji helplessly but temporarily falls into the trap. Benji’s thoughts become a whirl of chaos and repetitions in this moment as he attempts to reconcile his own conscience and what he knows about Theo with his craving for closeness and love.

“What kind of monster do I want to be?”

Benji knows now that What Makes a Monster is not appearance nor origin but the choices that a person makes. He determines to stay on the side of good and to help the Watch defend themselves against the Angels who are trying to kill what few humans remain. Benji believes that he can learn to control Seraph and use these new powers to his advantage.

“Bright white flame shines in shards of glass on the road, on abandoned cars, doubled in storefront windows, hemming me in like the Lord casting us from Him. Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.”

In the scene of the ALC fire, rich imagery conveys the sense of chaos, despair, and vengeance. Fire as a tool of destruction, and punishment is a prominent symbol in the Bible and is used by the Angels to imitate God’s wrath.

“I stand by the twisted, burned mess of bodies lying in the lobby, right in the midst of the broken front door, and I press my lips to my knuckles. I pray until Nick comes over, brushes my shoulder, and nods for me to follow.”

White conveys Benji’s inner thought process with detail and precision, allowing the reader to feel each emotion and consider each possibility right alongside the story’s protagonist. Alongside Benji’s internal thoughts is the constant and unavoidable reality of death and gore surrounding him.

“So much coming up, clumps of wet flesh, red and black and slimy, leaving trails all over my chin and across my hands as I peel them out of my throat.”

White uses graphic and disturbing descriptions of gore to illustrate the brutal transformation that Benji undergoes, as well as to emphasize the horror of being affected by something that is totally outside of one’s control. These descriptions provide strong imagery for the reader to imagine exactly how gruesome Benji’s appearance becomes.

“I am His wrath made flesh.”

Benji was turned into Seraph by a religious cult that sees Seraph as a weapon of God and vengeance that will save the Angels and destroy what remains of the non-believers. After being used and controlled, Benji takes his power back and uses the Angels’ weapon against them.

“Consciously, Nick…knows this thing is Benji. This thing has Benji’s hair, Benji’s tiny body, Benji’s clothes. This thing looks like Sister Kipling took out all of Benji’s insides and sewed a wolf under his skin, and it’s only now that Nick is seeing it for the first time.”

Nick attempts to reconcile what he knows is his friend, Benji, with the new form that Benji’s body is taking as he transforms. Despite the way that Benji’s body and appearance are almost totally altered, there is still some remaining essence that allows him to remain who he is. Being around Nick and the other members of the Watch, who love and accept Benji, is largely why Benji is able to stay true to his identity.

“This is the first time that I’ve gotten to hold something with my colors.”

When Nick gives Benji the trans bead lizard, it is a symbol of friendship and of Finding Home and Finding Family. Nick struggled to accept or understand Benji at first, but now they have become an inseparable pair. Nick affirms Benji’s transness and shares a symbol of pride.

“Theo presses his face into his dusty, torn-up palms. He’ll be lucky if his punishment is just execution in the culling fields. He’ll be hung from the gate. He’ll choke on his own intestines. Or maybe his father will drown him in the river like an unwanted newborn, hold his head underwater until his lungs flood and he slowly, slowly stops struggling.”

During the one chapter that devotes itself to Theo’s perspective, the reader is given a glimpse into Theo’s internal world and the cycle of self-shaming that occurs in his mind. Theo grew up with the cult and does not see or understand anything beyond what he was taught. He sees the punishments that he is likely to suffer as justified.

“Something else is screaming too, and I realize it’s me.”

As the transformation into Seraph reaches its completion, Benji experiences a period of disconnect between his former self and current self. He has to adjust to the new body and, for a time, does not recognize himself at all.

“Something can be beautiful and monstrous at the same time. Like Mom. Like the Graces.”

What Makes a Monster is not necessarily in appearance but can also be in ideology, personality, and actions. Benji is physically transformed into a monster known as Seraph but does not view himself as the monster, instead giving that title to his mother who used and rejected him.

“If they want me to be a monster one step closer to God, that’s fine. In what world was their God ever a benevolent one?”

Benji toys with the religious concept of God’s benevolence and the contradictory nature of this claim. While God is often said to be benevolent and loving, God is simultaneously said to bring about floods and destruction and also eternally punish those who do not obey his command. Benji uses this irony to his advantage, becoming the vengeful God that the Bible describes.

“She’s never looked at me like this, especially not since she found out I was a boy.”

Benji’s mother rejected the fact that he was a boy, which was one of the major motivating factors in his decision to leave New Nazareth. Now that she believes she has him under her control again and is under the delusion that he is the Angels’ savior, her attitude toward Benji shifts.

“This is how New Nazareth falls: in the wails of Graces and stench of blood, the same screams that must have come when Sodom and Gomorrah collapsed under the weight of their sins.”

The story’s dramatic climax is compared to the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, a story in the Bible about two cities that fell to the ways of sin and are then destroyed by God’s wrath. Benji considers himself to be the living example of what God’s wrath means because it was a false belief in a vengeful God that created Seraph in the first place.