Monster (revised version) - Writers Forum

Candrah · 06-12-2008, 01:41 PM

I'm a bit nervous posting this considering the reaction inara got but I need the feedback so what the hell...

I posted the original of this on here a while ago. The first one is floating about somewhere - I just cant figure out how to add a link to it.

Anyway, after a lot of sweating and tweaking and shuffling about, I think I've finally got this to resemble something readable. Still not sure about the beginning and the end so any suggestions on improvement would be much appreciated. Hope you take the time to read and comment.

Monster

I am a monster. That’s what you believe. Right here in the flesh; the myth made real. Just like all the other monsters out there. Because they are real. The stories you were told when you were little about Werewolves and Vampires. They weren’t just made up to frighten you. They came from older truths. From before people hid behind their bright lights and their technology.
But who knows what the truths were? Most people just believe what the legends tell them. What the fairy tales and myths state as a universally acknowledged fact. Don’t go out at night when the moon is full. Don’t go into the forest alone. Don’t leave your closet door open or the Bogeyman will get you, or the creature waiting under the bed. People grow up believing what they read, what they hear. But then a myth is just that; a truth told so many times and for so long, it gets twisted beyond all recognition.
What do you want to hear? The gory details of some terrible act I’ve committed that makes me the monster you believe I am? I could tell you the truth, my life story but I wonder, would you believe me or the myth? I can tell by your face that you’re curious. Alright then, why not? Its not as if I’ve got anything else to do right now. I’ll tell you my story. No frills, straight down the line. Just as it happened. Then, you can decide for yourself. But first, put some more wood on the fire. You must be cold.

My first memory was a terrible screaming sound. I remember it so well because they came and beat me. It wasn’t till I was a lot older that I realised what made that sound. It was a train passing over points on a railway track outside the walls. I must have been screaming along with the train.
The walls belonged to Saint Christopher’s Orphanage and they were the nuns that ran it. It was a 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 at some point, I came to enjoy the sound of those trains screeching and clunking, horns whistling as they headed off to some exotic destination. 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. And the beatings. Usually with a stick. And usually for no reason at all.
There was a room in the attic that no-one but me knew how to find. Whenever I got the chance, I’d sneak up there 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. That room was the only place I could get away from the other children. They knew I wasn’t like them. And since I was small and couldn’t fight back, they would take out their pain on me. Everyone’s favourite punch bag.
I never knew my parents. They told me they died in a car accident. 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 was given to the nuns because no-one else would have me. Too strange they said. Even though I was only six months old. How are you supposed to be normal when you cant even talk yet?
The strangest thing of all was, even though I hated that Orphanage and its nuns and its children, 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 made Saint Christopher’s look like paradise.
Looking back, 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, because 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. I stopped being scared then. Not of the world or other people. For a while I was scared of me. But I got used to it. Like I get used to everything. 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 because 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 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.
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’d ever seen. He had 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?
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 start. 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. Warm and slimy. I snatched my hand away, horrified, 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.
Then 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 now 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. 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. And its easier to find food this way. 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 looked like someone had spread a crumpled white blanket over everything. The snow 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 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 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. I don’t know the answer to that. If I did I wouldn’t be here telling you my story. I asked myself that question a million times over the years. Where did 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. Except I can control it now. Not like before. I didn’t really understand it. I was like those werewolves, driven by the moon. Sometimes, all I am is teeth and claws to rip out your heart. Other times, I look just like you. I feel things like you do. I cry real tears. And you know, I feel much better now I’ve, what is it they say, got that off my chest?
Well now, where were we? Oh yes, I was wondering whether you would taste better roasted or raw…

HippoHead · 06-12-2008, 03:39 PM

lol, what a bizarre ending. I liked the end, it had one f those 'ah-that-explains-everything!' quality to it. I like how she's not just some morbid girl, different from other people, but a friggin dragon XD

*nods*

I liked, I likedd. Twas strange how I could picture it, yet hardly any imagery was used. It wasn't necessary. And a good use of no dialogue. You'll find no negatives from me +D

Candrah · 06-13-2008, 01:43 PM

Cheers hippohead

I'm glad you liked it. Suppose you could call the whole thing dialogue since she's telling her story. I wasnt sure about the ending but it seems to have worked - bizarrely enough

moderan · 06-17-2008, 07:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Candrah

Monster

I am a monster. That’s what you believe. Right here in the flesh; the myth made real. Just like all the other monsters out there. Because they are real. The stories you were told when you were little about Werewolves and Vampires. They weren’t just made up to frighten you. They came from older truths. From before people hid behind their bright lights and their technology.

The sentence structure is a little awkward. Maybe something like: I am a monster. The stories you were told when you were little weren't made up just to frighten you. They came from older truths, from before people hid behind their bright lights and their technology. I am right here, in the flesh, real, just like the other monsters.
The choppy sentence structure continues-I take it that this is what you envision for the character's voice but it's hard to read that way.

But who knows what the truths were? Most people just believe what the legends tell them. What the fairy tales and myths state as a universally acknowledged fact. Don’t go out at night when the moon is full. Don’t go into the forest alone. Don’t leave your closet door open or the Bogeyman will get you, or the creature waiting under the bed. People grow up believing what they read, what they hear. But then a myth is just that; a truth told so many times and for so long, it gets twisted beyond all recognition.

After ...legends tell them, you might be better off with a colon. I would lose the comma after Bogeyman will get you and make the next a new sentence: There's a creature waiting under your bed.

What do you want to hear? The gory details of some terrible act I’ve committed that makes me the monster you believe I am? I could tell you the truth, my life story but I wonder, would you believe me or the myth? I can tell by your face that you’re curious. Alright then, why not? Its not as if I’ve got anything else to do right now. I’ll tell you my story. No frills, straight down the line. Just as it happened. Then, you can decide for yourself. But first, put some more wood on the fire. You must be cold.

My first memory was a terrible screaming sound. I remember it so well because they came and beat me. It wasn’t till I was a lot older that I realised what made that sound. It was a train passing over points on a railway track outside the walls. I must have been screaming along with the train.
The walls belonged to Saint Christopher’s Orphanage and they were the nuns that ran it. It was a 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 at some point, I came to enjoy the sound of those trains screeching and clunking, horns whistling as they headed off to some exotic destination. 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. And the beatings. Usually with a stick. And usually for no reason at all.
There was a room in the attic that no-one but me knew how to find. Whenever I got the chance, I’d sneak up there 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. That room was the only place I could get away from the other children. They knew I wasn’t like them. And since I was small and couldn’t fight back, they would take out their pain on me. Everyone’s favourite punch bag.
I never knew my parents. They told me they died in a car accident. 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 was given to the nuns because no-one else would have me. Too strange they said. Even though I was only six months old. How are you supposed to be normal when you cant even talk yet?
The strangest thing of all was, even though I hated that Orphanage and its nuns and its children, 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 made Saint Christopher’s look like paradise.
Looking back, 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, because 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. I stopped being scared then. Not of the world or other people. For a while I was scared of me. But I got used to it. Like I get used to everything. 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 because 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 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.
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’d ever seen. He had 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?
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 start. 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. Warm and slimy. I snatched my hand away, horrified, 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.
Then 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 now 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. 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. And its easier to find food this way. 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 looked like someone had spread a crumpled white blanket over everything. The snow 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 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 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. I don’t know the answer to that. If I did I wouldn’t be here telling you my story. I asked myself that question a million times over the years. Where did 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. Except I can control it now. Not like before. I didn’t really understand it. I was like those werewolves, driven by the moon. Sometimes, all I am is teeth and claws to rip out your heart. Other times, I look just like you. I feel things like you do. I cry real tears. And you know, I feel much better now I’ve, what is it they say, got that off my chest?
Well now, where were we? Oh yes, I was wondering whether you would taste better roasted or raw…

What you have here is a combination of Gilles de Rais, Larry Talbot, Matheson's Born of Man and Woman, and Lovecraft's the Outsider. It's a reasonably potent combination, and the punch line works. There are some grammatical errors, I'd guess due to an attempt to mimic speech patterns. I'd actually try reading this aloud to get more of a flow to the structure.
Potentially a very good story, certainly I enjoy the attempt to tell the thing from the monster's pov. That's not often done, and less often done well.

Candrah · 06-17-2008, 01:43 PM

Thanks for the feedback moderan

You've picked up on the bits I'm struggling with. The first section was done later so it sounds slightly different. I know what you mean about the awkward sentences. And yes, I was kind of trying to recreate speech patterns. Its a lot harder than I thought. I'll take on board what you've suggested.