Veronica's Demon - Writers Forum

Beethoven · 08-30-2007, 03:00 PM

I WAS devastated—no, outraged, when the news of Veronica’s death reached my ears. When the doctors (those damned charlatans) attempted to imbue my mind with the absurd notion that she was dead, I daresay I was grossly incapable of concealing the anger that overcame me; but the mere word ‘anger’ does not suffice to wholly describe what I truly experienced, for the strange sentiment that I then waxed was both beastly and superhuman—so unnatural that the bile within the caverns of my stomach hissed and choked me, causing my eyes to shed tears of a reddish hue.

After hearing her fraudulent death sentence, I raved for many hours, and while I did so, I felt and saw myself transforming into something grotesque and sinister. I ran upstairs to my bedroom and began to foam at the mouth with hatred. I broke everything that caught my eyesight: Chairs, lamps, glasses, windows, tables—all of it obliterated by my wrath. After I had broken everything in my room, I bent over double and began to tear my hair out. It was a wolfish, fiendish hysteria; and it progressed into something horrifically fantastic.

While pacing back and forth in my bedroom, I looked down at my feet and noticed that they appeared to be cleft in the middle, like that of a Billy-goat’s; upon seeing this enormity I shook my head in defiant disbelief, and it was then, while whipping my head to and fro, that I then noticed another peculiar discovery: a most repulsive morsel of black hair was swinging about my chin, like a pendulum. The sight of this new facial feature flustered me and intensified my anger. And it was then that I began to growl and to spit out black saliva. I discovered that the more I raged, the more disfigured I became. It wasn’t long until my tongue became long and pointed, my teeth elongated, and my skin turned swarthy and red. In essence, I began to look, and act, like a demon.

This spell that befell me, this stabbing, fiery intoxication that swathed all my senses, thrilled me with the urge to kill, to mutilate those who brought me the tidings of her death—those who smote her with the injustice of pronouncing her dead.

Now, I can understand that what I have just written in the preceding paragraphs may seem like ridiculous exaggerations, but allow me to avow, to you, reader, that they are not. It is important for me to proclaim that, during the while that this transformation took place, my reason never once left me: I merely allowed my reason to dictate and materialize my rage. Now I know that some cunning psychologist may claim that this transformation strictly took place within the mere confines of my own fantastic imagination; and I am willing to admit that this may be true, but now that I have made this admittance, allow me to say this: it was the face of each person that witnessed my transformation that gave me the testimony needed to provide you, reader, with the aforementioned description of myself; in other words, it was their distorted, horrific faces that provided me with the vision of the demon that I had become.

Many may conclude that I was obstinate, that I wilfully hid myself in the gloomy shade of ignorance. But this was not so, no; this was not the case all. I knew the truth of the matter, knew it better than anyone else. It was they who were ignorant, and not I. They were the ones who proclaimed (with their black tongues) that she died from influenza! God help me and smote these lying blackguards! Whoever heard of such a thing as a young girl dying from influenza at the age of 20? Absurd, I say! I have seen many black things in my lifetime, but never have I seen anything blacker or more repulsively gooey than the filth that issued from their lips. Had I the chance, I would have ripped their tongues out, ripped them straight out with no remorse or qualm: I would have ripped their tongues out with burning, metallic tongs, and I would have taken delight in their screams for mercy.

That day, my parents asked me on numerous occasions what the matter with me was. The audacity with which they approached the matter, the foxy cunning with which they instigated to solve my dilemma infuriated me. How dared they? Oh confound them, confound my begetters! As if those dunderheads possessed the capacity to understand my delicate, complex sentiments! Oh, to recall how they tried to placate me is an insufferable torture—a burden that burns the heart and leaves the brain feeling asunder. And the pity! Oh the pity… The pity that oozed forth from their mouths and splashed upon me felt like molten lava—a liquid so insufferably hot that I am convinced that it had been uprooted from the very darkest pits of Hell. And their voices! The softness… the panicky worry! How brutal it all was!

And it scalds the very lobes of my brain to recollect their questions, their probing and nosy questions. One after another the questions came at me like pestering flies, and I was evidently in no state of mind to satisfy the trivial curiosity that troubled their fancy. And so, with the intention of ridding them from my company, I faced my inquisitors and answered their petty questions with unintelligible outpours of agony, howls so loud in pitch that I firmly believe they shook the very foundations of our little abode, never mind the hearts of my dear parents.

Naturally, these fantastic outcries of mine induced my parents to run away from me, and for the rest of the day I was left alone in peace. By this time the strength in my muscles had been fully exhausted. In the midst of my bedroom’s wreckage I sat down, cross-legged, and I attempted to ponder the sentiments that pumped through my heart. But sparks of derangement flashed before my eyes and sizzled every thought that passed before my scrutiny. Out of disgust I began to knead my face like a madman, and soon I started to flinch and jerk. I felt like a fettered beast, waiting impatiently to exercise its killer instinct. My hands began to open and close on their own accord, and it wasn’t long until the urge to strangle someone overcame me. Now, I don’t want you, reader, to misunderstand me: I am not a killer, and never have been. But as I then looked upon my quaking hands, I became scared and truly started to doubt my own virtuous heart. Indeed, I became so scared that, lest I should strangle someone (my mother was the first candidate that came to my mind—what with her supple, gaunt neck), I repaired myself to the attic of my house, and there, within its gloom, I stayed for several hours, thinking about Veronica. Yes, Veronica. Every object that I looked at inside the attic was fraught with Veronica. Every thought that galvanized my brain was interlarded with that single entity alone, Veronica. Oh how quaint and beautiful is the name? An innocuous nibble on the bottom of your lip, followed by the issuance of four magical syllables: I can’t stop myself from uttering it as I pen this. Oh my, the ecstasy!

Now, being myself an arrant man of honour, I will take it upon myself, very quickly, to vindicate Veronica—to rescue her from this slough of madness, from this awful quagmire of falsehoods and deceit that she had been so brutally, so indecently and inconsiderately cast into. Oh, what pain it brings me to think how those filthy liars marred her pristine skin and defiled her name! But now my heart can be at peace; with a sincere and immaculate conscience, I will set things right by telling you, reader, the truth of the matter.

This fit of mine occurred a few days ago, and it was then that I resolved to prove to myself (even though I had never doubted myself once) that she did not, in fact, die from influenza. And reader behold! I was unerring in the construction of my supposition, for Veronica is very much alive. In fact, she is sitting beside me right now as I scribble down this little narrative, and she looks more beautiful than an incipient spring—But wait, that may be an overstatement, for at the moment, though I hate to make the concession (as I said earlier, I am an arrant man of honour, and that obviously precludes me from telling or writing lies), she seems to be much more pallid than an incipient spring, and a lot more frigid too. But this is merely a transient blemish, a blemish that is, in essence, all in all minor, and that can easily be ascribed to her tenacious loss of appetite of late. But to hell with my fastidiousness!

I plan on reading this little narration to her later on when she wakes up; I hope she will be pleased with it. Oh, if only you could see, reader, how calm and at peace she looks at this very moment! Indeed, you would almost think she is dead.

lazerbeak · 09-03-2007, 08:15 AM

I like it. Very Poe. Plus, you have an excellent line in insults...

Blackguard

Dunderhead

Anyone who uses these words gets a salute from me.

Some niggly things...

There was a couple of lines I thought didn't need to be there -

'In essence, I began to look, and act, like a demon.'

'Indeed, you would almost think she is dead.'

I thought these things were already obvious from what you had said, and didn't need to be explicitly stated. In fact, the second hints that your character might already be aware of the fact she is dead?

When you talk about the parents, and upstairs bedrooms etc., it hints that your character is a different age, and from a different class/period than his tone of voice suggests? Maybe that's just me...

When you say that he has not killed anyone immediately after describing his impulse to do just that, it takes away some of the tension I thought.

With that in mind, I thought it would have been nice to get him out of the house in his enraged state, maybe to hunt down Veronica?

snorrie · 09-03-2007, 02:46 PM

This was just too purple prose for me. Though I think if you could tone it down a bit you may have something here. It did have it's moments but it was all quickly washed away by the purpleness. I can see you have a lot of energy and feeling and if you can harness them, then your piece will be great. Good luck.