In this short scene, the narrator recalls his childhood memories of running away from home. One day, he was running past an old man selling fruit when he heard a thud. He screamed at the man to stop talking nonsense and to run after the monster. The man ducked away, and the narrator screamed that he was not a monster because he was born to his mother. The narrator screamed again, and this time the thud was so loud that it made the monster look ugly. He said that even his mother hated him, and that the birthmarks on the monster's arms were the curse his mother had laid on him. He was a monster, he said, because he killed his mother, and everyone stopped staring at him because his birthmarks were so big.