|
I cannot make a sound as my stomach bursts open like an overripe fruit and I see it come out; it hurts too much to moan, let alone scream. It breaths air through its canine nostrils and begins to struggle its body out of the place where my stomach once was. The scales click as they are readjusted to allow for its hind foot to pass though, caught on my wayward intestines. As it impatiently shakes them off, I am, once again, wondering at how a monster that big could fit inside of me. I don’t even bother any more to conjecture as to why it comes every night. Whether I know the reason or not, it doesn’t matter. It still comes. Tenderly, oh so very tenderly it picks me up and carries me on its back as wings unfold and cover me like blankets. Even if my spine were intact, I still couldn’t escape. The membrane is like steel, and should I struggle the wings would press down all the harder, increasing my misery. However, at the moment there is still room enough for me to adjust myself so that I can see out. Vision allows a more accurate prediction of the passage of time. Hours spent staring at the veined membranes of the inner wings are like hell, as I learned long ago. An eternity of capture. An infinity of pain. Lying quietly, I feel a tiny prickling at the small of my back. Already, my spine is healing itself. I curse my existence as the prickling grows more and more distinct, telling me that my spine is almost healed. Because of the union between the beast and myself, I cannot be killed by the snapping of my spine or the slitting of my throat. Believe me, I would know. I’ve experienced both and the healing process that comes with it. The beast is moving tonight with a purpose. Usually it simply ambles along the forest hunting deer and rabbits, with the occasional stray dog or cat on the side. It’s moving silently. All I can hear is the familiar clacking of its scales. I learned the hard way that they can repel the sharpest of objects when I hid a pocket knife in my hair and attempted to cut my way out of my prison. The tiny points on the end of the wings had pressed sharply into my stomach, and no matter how loudly I screamed, they didn’t cease their pressure until morning. No one heard me. At least, no one who could help. I had chosen this forest specifically, since few, if any, people ever wandered into it. The climate was much too inhospitable for that. Snow fell straight for almost half a year and the other half it was so thick with mosquitoes that if one wasn’t careful, one could breathe them in. It sniffs the air and flattens itself against the dirt and I wonder what sort of prey it had discovered. It could outrun a deer in a matter of seconds, so it didn’t bother to sneak up on it before it made itself known. The rabbit was much the same. Should it hide in its burrow, the monster would simply dig until it caught it or until it grew bored. It could be a bear, I consider. A bear has claws and sharp teeth. Although it couldn’t kill the monster, a bear could certainly do some damage. Or perhaps it is a pack of wolves. Wolves are tricky and can lead a predator into a previously unknown hole or hidden thorn patch so that it cannot attack them. I had previously thought that all the wolves in this forest had been killed, eaten. Perhaps I was mistaken... A sound. My heart grows as cold as death when I hear the sound of the most dangerous creature of them all; man. A family, I’m guessing. I can vaguely see the firelight about a half a mile away, on top a large hill. In the center of the hill is a clearing that I have slept at occasionally, which would make for a good camp site. The beast growls softly and I can hear children laughing. A girl and a boy, possibly another child as well. I can now see shapes the brush in-between the trees. A large fire is in the center, with what smells like hot dogs cooking over it. Hot dogs! My stomach rumbles at the thought of food. I hadn’t eaten in a little under six months. I had first quit in the hopes of death by starvation, but I discovered that the beast was a part of me, whether I willed it or not. If he ate food, I would digest it. If I ate food, he would ingest it. If I got hurt, the beast would make certain that I would live. The parasite lives only if the host lives. I am the only one safe from its hunger, as laughable as the word ‘safe’ is. I can see each of their faces clearly from my fleshy prison. They are a Hispanic family with three children. A boy and a girl who look to be twins, and a toddler wearing a blue sailor suit. The mother and father are sitting quietly to the eastward side of the site, watching them indulgently, making certain they don’t play too rough. The beast watches them as I do. However, I know that instead of seeing how happy they are, instead of noticing the pride in the parents eyes for their children and the love the siblings share for one another, the beast sees them as prey. It slinks lower to the ground. We are now 20 meters away. The mother smoothes her black hair and says something to her husband. He smiles and says something back, then kisses her on the lips. My heart melts as I realize that they will be the ones killed first; they have the most meat on them. We are 10 meters away now. Knowing the cost of it, I make my decision. I open my mouth and scream as loudly as I can, "Look out!". The beast’s wings instantly clamp down on me, but since I had previously positioned myself so that I could see out, my view is not blocked. The pain isn’t nearly so bad as I had anticipated, but my stomach still feels as though it has a thousand tiny insects writhing inside of it, eating one small bite of my innards at the time and stinging the rest with their poison. The parents have stood up at my warning, but that is not enough. The beast leaps and lands on top of the mother. It tears open her throat with a brutal efficiency and starts for the husband. He has run over the children and is urgently shouting to them in Spanish. I try to close my eyes, but I cannot. It is the first time I have seen humans in years and as much as I try, I cannot keep myself from watching. The beast lunges and bites the mans leg, tripping him as he pushes the toddler as far away as he can. The toddler begins to wail as it’s shoved across the rough ground and I will it to move away. The father screams, high pitched and strained, and pushes the toddler again. "Corre!" He yells as the fangs sink gently into his thigh and pull back slowly, ripping the flesh from the bone. It makes a most terrible sound. I can see the twins running away in the other direction and I am almost glad, until I realize that the only reason the beast hasn’t gone after them yet is because it wants to torture the father, like a cat would a mouse. It can always capture them later. The forest is vast and it is a three day jog to the edge. The children don’t have a chance. As the beast slowly devours the father from the feet up so that he is still alive until the very last moment, I notice that the toddler has not moved from where it was placed. It had stopped its wails and watches silently, traumatized, as its father is eaten before him. After the adult body stops its twitching, the beast looks up from its feast and notices the babe. Snorting, it walks a step closer. Something inside of me twists in a way that is more painful than anything I have experienced and I know I must stop this from happening. Twisting and forcing my arm up through its heavy wings and out, tearing off skin on the rough scales, I reach with jagged nails and tear at the beasts eyes. The results are amazing. I had thought I could not hurt it, due to the failed attempts made when this had first started happening around puberty. But before, I had always attacked its back, its wings, but had never thought of the eyes. It roars in anger and pain, possibly the first pain it has ever felt. As I feel my fingers break the soft outer skin of the eye and dig into the center, the vitreous humor flowing through my fingers, my left eye grows black. There is no pain as sight fades into nothingness, and I realize just how deeply connected the beast and I are. I cannot hurt myself, for it protects me while it is inside me. However, when it is outside... Screaming in crazed triumph, I scoot my arm across its scaled head, peeling off small bits of my flesh. My fingers dig into its other eye and I realize that the reason I am not thrown off and mangled is because it cannot reach me while I am on its back. As the remaining vision in my right eye vanishes, I see two last things: the toddler, looking at us with tears rolling down its cheeks, and a sharp, dead branch hanging just to my left. With a jerk, I force my nails in further down into the fleshy pulp, causing the beast to involuntarily open its wings. I have just enough time to tear at the place where I had seen the branch hanging and snap the stick off. I scoot up to its neck before the wings can come back down and, feeling where the empty sockets are, I place the sharper end of the stick into the area where its eyes were. Taking one last breath of air and noticing for the first time how fresh it is, I yank the stick inwards. ****** Lolita and Enrique Fernandez clung at each other, shivering against the darkness. Enrique pressed his cheek close against his sisters, trying to gather up his courage. His father was probably dead. He most likely was dead. If there was a God, he would be dead and not still alive, incapable of screaming that terrible scream that had echoed through the forest earlier. Swallowing once, he turned to Lolita. "Stay here." He whispered in her ear in fluent Spanish. She grabbed at his shirt, her eyes wide open in fear. "No! Do not go. Do not leave me alone!" Enrique, in the wisdom that every 12 year old secretly possesses, placed his had on her shoulder and smiled a promise that he would return. As Lolita gave a muffled sob, Enrique turned and ran back to the clearing. He didn’t have to run that far. The fire was still lit, but the flames had died down and some of the ash looked as though someone had kicked it. Enrique studied the fire longer than he needed to. He needed something to look at so that he wouldn’t see his mother and father over to his left at the far side of the clearing. An owl hooted and Enrique jumped, frightened. When his heart started beating normally again, however, he noticed a third body over on the opposite side of the campsite, next to a large oak tree. It was the devil woman; the witch who had killed his parents. She had jumped out at them, screaming a warning even as she had cut open his mother’s throat with a jagged rock. Then she had gone for his father.... Enrique had fled deep into the woods with his sister when he first heard his father scream. Then, as they had panted in the dark, they heard their little brother cry. They had left him there, just a babe, with that psycho. Enrique knew then that he must come back, if only to see if Ricky was still alive. They had abandoned their sibling and their dying parents to that bitch with the bloody mouth and observing eyes. No. He kicked the dead woman, hard, and she turned over. The witch was completely naked. She had a jagged branch sticking out of one of her mangled eyes and blood-red tears running down her dirty face. He kicked at her again then stopped as he heard a different noise. Something was moving. Something close. "Who is there?" He asked, the sound of his native tongue comforting him. A small wail answered him and he realized it was Ricky, who was lying just behind the large tree that the devil woman was beside. He stepped over the corpse and picked up his baby brother, who was scratched in several place but was still very alive. "Shhh..." Enrique soothed him, holding Ricky tight to his chest. "It is okay. Everything is okay. The monster is dead. She will not hurt us anymore." Holding his little brother tightly, Enrique set off into the dark forest to find his sister and get the hell out of the woods. |