"<i>There was once an invisible man</i>, the monster continued, though Conor kept his eyes firmly on Harry,<i> who had grown tired of being unseen</i>.
Conor set himself into a walk.
A walk after Harry.
<i>It was not that he was <b>actually</b> invisible</i>, the monster said, following Conor, the room volume dropping as they passed. <i>It was that the people had become used to not seeing him.</i>
"Hey!" Conor called. Harry didn't turn around. Neither did Sully nor Anton, though thet were still sniggering as Conor picked up his pace.
<i>And if no one sees you</i>, the monster said, picking up its pace, too, <i> are you really there at all?</i>
"HEY!" Conor called loudly.
The dining hall had fallen silent now, as Conor and the monster moved faster after Harry.
Harry who had still not turned around.
Conor reached him and grabbed him by the shoulder, twisting him round. Harry pretended to question what had happened, looking hard at Sully, acting like he was the one who'd done it. "Quit messing about," Harry said and turned away again.
Turned away from Conor.
<i>And then one day the invisible man decided</i>, the monster said, its voice ringing in Conor's ears, <i>I will <b>make</b> them see me.</i>
"How?" Conor asked, breathing heavily again, not turning back to see the monster standing there, not looking at the reaction of the room to the huge monster now in the midst, though he was aware of nervous murmurs and a strange anticipation in the air. "How did the man do it?"
Conor could feel the monster close behind him, knew that it was kneeling, knew that it was putting its face up to his ear to whisper into in, to tell him the rest of the story.
<i>He called</i>, it said<i> for a <b>monster.</b></i>"

I knew it,” Conor grumbled. “These kinds of stories always have stupid princes falling in love.” He started walking back to the house. “I thought this was going to be <i>good</i>.”With one swift movement, the monster grabbed Conor’s ankles in a long, strong hand and flipped him upside down, holding him in mid-air so his T-shirt rucked up and his heartbeat thudded in his head.<i>As I was saying,</i> said the monster.

There came a point when Harry stopped trying to fight back, when the blows from the monster were too strong, too many, too fast, when he began begging the monster to stop.

"But how do you fight it?" Conor asked, his voice rough. "How do you fight all the different stuff inside?"

<i>By speaking the truth,</i> the monster said. <i>As you spoke it just now.</i>

<i>Never invisible again</i>, the monster said, finally letting up, its huge branch-like fists curled tight as a clap of thunder.
It turned to Conor.
<i>But there are harder things than being invisible</i>, it said.

"Conor looked down at his hands, finally unclenching them. "Because what I thought was so wrong."

It was not wrong, the monster said, It was only a thought, one of a million. It was not an action."

"I couldn't stand the waiting anymore. I couldn't stand how alone it made me feel."

And a part of you wished it would just end, said the monster, even if it meant losing her.

And the nightmare began. The nightmare that always ended with -
"I let her go," Conor choked out. "I could have held on but I let her go."

And that, the monster said, is the truth.

"I didn't mean it, though!" Conor said, his voice rising. "I didn't mean to let her go! And now it's for real! Now she's going to die and it's my fault!"

And that, the monster said, is not the truth at all.

"Here is the hardest hit of all, O'Malley," Harry said. "Here is the very worst thing I can do to you."

He held out his hand, as if asking for a handshake.
He <i>was</i> asking for a handshake.

Conor responded almost automatically, putting out his own hand and shaking Harry's before he even thought about what he was doing. They shook hands like two businessmen at the end of a meeting.

"Goodbye, O'Malley," Harry said, looking into Conor's eyes. "I no longer see you."

Conor O’Malley who wants to be punished,” Harry said, still stepping back, his eyes on Conor’s. “Conor O’Malley who <i>needs</i> to be punished. And why is that, Conor O’Malley? What secrets do you hide that are so terrible?

I didn’t mean it,” Conor said. You did, the monster said, but you also did not. Conor sniffed and looked up to its face, which was as big as a wall in front of him. “How can both be true?” Because humans are complicated beasts, the monster said. How can a queen be both a good witch and a bad witch? How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour? How can an apothecary be evil-tempered but right-thinking? How can a parson be wrong-thinking but good-hearted? How can invisible men make themselves more lonely by being seen?

<i>You must speak the truth and you must speak it <b>now</b>, Conor O'Malley. Say it. You must.</i>

Conor shook his head again, his mouth clamped shut tight, but he could feel a burning in his chest, like a fire someone had lit there, a miniature sun, blazing away and burning him from the inside.

“It'll kill me if I do,” he gasped.

<i>It will kill you if you do not,</i> the monster said. <i>You must say it.</i>

Nietzsche: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

"<i>Because humans are complicated beasts,</i> the monster said. <i>How can a queen be both a good witch and a bad witch? How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour? How can an apothecary be evil-tempered but right-thinking? How can a parson be wrong-thinking but good-hearted? How can invisible men make themselves more lonely by being seen?</i>

"I don't know," Connor shrugged, exhausted. "Your stories never made any sense to me."

<i>The answer is that it does not matter what you <b>think</b>, the monster said, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day. You wanted her to go at the same time you were desperate for me to save her. Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.</i>"

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.