There is a house at the end of Jasmine Street.
If you ever walk through that neighborhood past the old bakery with its cracked blue shutters, past the mosque where the call to prayer echoes five times a day, past the iron gate that always hangs slightly asked you will see it. The other house.
It doesn't look like a monster. That's the cruel trick of it. It looks ordinary. Beautiful, even. White stone walls, climbing with bougainvillea vines that bloom a violent shade of fuchsia. Wrought iron balconies where pigeons gather at dawn. A front door painted a deep, welcoming green, the paint peeling just slightly at the edges, as if the house itself is sighing.