Ok, I'm taking the plunge!
I've been lurking around the shadows in here for a couple of days, but not had the courage to post a story yet, until now. Basically I told myself, if you don't do it now, you never will!
So I've got this horror/monster/with a twist piece that I'm working on and I would love to hear any thoughts and or constructive criticism. Also, any ideas where I might submit this?
This is my first time, so please be gentle...
Monster
So, you want to know about me? You want to hear my story? Some terrible thing that makes me the monster you think I am? Fine. I’ll tell you a story. No frills, straight down the line. Just as it happened. Then, you can decide for yourself.
When I was young I was scared of everyone and everything. My first memory was of a horrible screaming sound. I remember I was screaming too and then they came and beat me for making so much noise. It wasn’t till I was a lot older that I realised what made that sound. It was a train. I was even scared of a goddamn train.
So I grew up in an Orphanage. This tall three storey brick building that hulked at the back of a concrete yard. I hated that building. It loomed over you like it wanted to swallow you up. There were bars on the windows and pull down fire escapes on the outside. My childhood prison. The back of it looked out onto a set of rail tracks four wide. Trains ran past all day and night. The trains that had me screaming once upon a time.
But it got so I liked listening to those trains screeching over the points outside. The noise soothed me, I suppose. Better than the noises people made. Screaming insults. Always shouting. I hate shouting. It sets my teeth on edge. Whenever no-one was looking I’d sneak up to the attic and sit by an old casement window and watch the trains go by. I dreamed that one day I’d be on one of them heading for some beautiful faraway place where no-one could hurt me ever again.
It was the only place I could get away from the other kids. From the adults who were supposed to look after us but didn’t. They didn’t care about a bunch of useless orphans like us. They beat us every chance they got. And since I was small and couldn’t fight back, the other kids used to take their pain out on me too. Everybody’s favourite punch bag.
I never knew my parents. They told me they died in a car wreck. I was six months old they said, strapped in the back in one of those baby seats. My parents died. I didn’t. Instead I got dumped in that stinking Orphanage cause no-one else would have me. Too strange they said. What? I was only six months old! How are you supposed to be normal when you cant even talk yet?
Thing was, even though I hated the home, I was more afraid of the world outside it. I knew one day I’d have to go out into the noise and the madness. Into a world where people did nothing but shout and scream all day long. Honking their horns and yelling at each other like they wanted to kill someone. A world that made that Orphanage look like a goddamn paradise.
Maybe I was so scared because I knew, deep down in the bottom of me that I was different. As different from the people around me as rocks from trees. Don’t ask me how I knew, I just did. The way a dog knows it’s different from a cat. I was going to grow up into something those people would be terrified of. Maybe something they’d hate, try to kill, maybe. Like those kids in the Orphanage, cause they knew I was different too. That made me hate everyone right back.
But at the same time, more than anything in the world, I just wanted to fit in. I wanted to be normal. I wanted to be just like everyone else. I wanted to wear pretty dresses like the girls who sometimes walked past on their lunch breaks. I wanted to have nice jobs like they did and meet for lunch with friends like they did. I wanted to have friends.
I only started realising how different I was when I turned thirteen. Things started changing quite a bit after that. Funny thing is, I stopped being scared then. I left the Orphanage the first chance I got and just kind of drifted around, looking for something or someone like me. Someone who liked me and didn’t hate me the minute they saw me. Sometimes someone would stop long enough for us to get talking, but then something would happen and their eyes would change. They’d see the real me and run.
I couldn’t handle that so I just wandered around, following the roads wherever they took me. I never spent long in one place, never stopped to make friends with the people I met. As I got older I started getting lonely, so lonely I used to cry myself to sleep at night cause there was no-one I could talk to, no-one in the world I could tell my story to. The second I let them get close they’d freak out. Some of them tried to hurt me. Some of them I hurt, but only by accident and never bad enough to get in trouble. But mostly, they just ran away and left me alone again.
It was when I was like this, more sad and lonely and pathetic than I’d ever been, that I met him. I’d been hiding out in a bar out in the Badlands. This run down affair that kind of hunched next to the highway like it couldn’t decide if it wanted people to come inside or if it just wanted to fall down and be done with it. It was one of those days when it was so cold, the ground was hard as concrete and it hurt to walk on it. People’s breath froze before it even got out their mouths, the air was so cold. It looked like everyone suddenly started smoking.
Anyway, I’d been sitting in the corner of this scruffy old roadside bar all morning trying to get warm. I wasn’t thinking about much of anything, just watching smoke swirl in the dirty shafts of light filtering through two tiny windows. And in he walked. The most beautiful man I ever did see. He had this black hair, shiny like a crow’s wing and the darkest blue eyes. They reminded me of the colour of the sky on midsummer night. And it seemed like he noticed me as soon as I noticed him so I encouraged him with a smile and he came over with his drink. We spent the rest of the afternoon talking, finding out about each other, laughing.
He said he didn’t do things like this often. Things like picking up strange girls in roadhouses. He talked about how lonely he was. He said he was an orphan too and he’d never been able to settle down or fit in so spent most of his life on the road. Just like me. He was friendly and sweet and it wasn’t long before we left the bar for the privacy of a motel room across the highway.
Later that night I sat on the bed and watched him sleep. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay in that grubby motel room with its orange carpet and mustard drapes forever. My world focused into one moment in which I lived a whole lifetime. A life with him. A life where I could be myself and he loved me anyway. I rested my hand on his chest and felt his heart beating. A slow steady thump, thump. For a second I thought my own heart would burst from sheer happiness. Sounds stupid, I know, but back then I was lonely. And needy. Haven’t you ever wanted someone to love you? Tell you everything would be okay?
Anyway, he opened his eyes and looked at me, his lips spreading in this lovely slow smile he had. I smiled back and leaned over to kiss him, but his expression stopped me. He looked surprised, like he was trying to say something but couldn’t get enough air to speak. He coughed and I frowned and looked down and realised why. My hand where it lay on his chest, had changed and the nails had punched through flesh and bone and pierced his heart. I hadn’t even noticed. Hadn’t felt a thing. Nothing like this had happened before. I’d always known when it would happen. The change. Like a tight feeling in my stomach. How could I not have felt it?
I felt it now. The grating of bone against my hand, the feeling of a moving, pulsing heart between and around my fingers. I snatched my hand away but it was too late. Blood came out with it. It was on my fingers, under my nails. It dripped onto the white sheet. I remember being fascinated by the contrast of red on white. It seemed so clean. Pretty.
He grabbed my hand like he could bring himself back to life that way. But he couldn’t. There was nothing I could do. Nothing anyone could do, so I sat with him and he died in front of me, his face changing from fear to hate and back again. I watched those lovely blue eyes glaze over. He died with a look of surprise still on his face.
I left him in that motel room and ran. Ran as fast and as far away as I could get. Away from what I had done. I kept away from people after that. I hated myself. I’d been so lonely. I thought I could find happiness. But I couldn’t even get that right. Once I even tried to kill myself. I didn’t deserve to live, I told myself. But I couldn’t do it.
Funny thing, guilt. It sneaks up on you. Eats you away from the inside. I’d murdered the one person I might have loved. That might have loved me. Like that spider, the Black Widow who kills her mate. But she does it deliberately, instinctively, for survival. So her young get enough nourishment from her to grow big and strong. I did it by accident. For no other reason than I got a bit excited.
So I’m out here in the middle of nowhere. As far north as I can get where it’s cold and I’m alone and it never gets dark in summer. It’s a beautiful thing to see, the sun hanging on the horizon in a bath of gold. It hovers there for a while then just heads right on back up into the sky again. No-one lives out here. I can be myself at last. I spend all my time in my own skin. It’s so cold that if I didn’t, I’d freeze to death. Funny thing is, the more time I spend this way the less I want to be human. I’m already starting to forget. Not him though. I don’t think I’ll ever forget him.
This morning I went outside and stretched in the new sun. After the long dark winter it felt good on my skin. I flexed my shoulders, bunched my hindquarters and spread my wings out full. I swear I could hear the joints clicking and cracking. Like I was an old crone. Been inside too long. I needed to fly, so I jumped out from the cliff and let the updraft catch me. My wings boomed like drums when I caught the air coming up from below. I glided in spirals till I was so high the world spread itself out in an endless carpet of brilliant white.
The ground always looks better from above. It was still covered in snow and ice and looked like someone spread a crumpled white blanket over everything. It glinted and sparkled in the low yellow light and I chased my shadow over it. A long thin shadow with wings that spread forever.
I soared around like that for hours not thinking about anything. Inside, I’m quiet now. The wind and the silence took everything, my guilt, my loneliness, everything. I think I got confused. I believed I could be like other people. But I’m not. To them, to you, I’m a monster. A freak from a fairy tale. I’m just me. And I saw you looking at me like you saw a ghost maybe. What? Did you think Dragons weren’t real? Hell, I’m as real as you are. And I’m no freak. I just don’t belong with you.
Bet you’re wondering why I look like you. Thing is, I don’t know the answer to that. I asked myself that question a million times over the years. Where’d I come from? Who made me? I didn’t have anyone to explain it. Why I’m so different. Why I look one way sometimes and a different way other times. I mean my parents were human right? Or maybe they weren’t my parents at all.
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never find the answers. The why of it. All I know is the how of it. The change. Don’t ask me to explain it. I just know how to do it, the way you know how to breathe.
Maybe if you find some answers, you’ll come back and tell me someday. So anyway, I told you my story, or bits of it since I been around for a while. You’re the first one I told it to. The only one who hung around long enough to hear it. Tell me something, now you know how I began and what I’ve done, do you still think I’m a monster?
Monster
