Cobra

          “Happy birthday, Richard!” My sister Katie grinned, tumbling in through my front door, closely followed by her daughter, Rosie. Katie and Rosie both had chestnut brown ringlets and pale skin, like my mum, and Katie looked absolutely adorable in her new, deep red dress and shoes.

            “Hey, Katie.” I smiled grimly as Rosie ran off into the garden to help herself to some cake. Rosie was only six. So young. I was just twenty-one today but she just made me feel so old.

            I paused and sat down, shutting my eyes and listening to the noises around me. The chatting, the laughing. They were all so happy. Had they forgotten Mary already? Had they forgotten my wife?

            Mary had gone missing last year. On my birthday. She’d been nineteen too. We hadn’t been married for long, as mum had strongly disapproved of such a young marriage. I’m sure dad would have backed me up. I never met my dad. Mum said he had sandy hair, like me. He died in the war before I was born.

            A hushed silence fell upon my guests. I opened my eyes and it took me a second to find them.

            A large crowd had gathered in the garden and I heard someone sobbing and screaming near the front. Everyone else was quiet, frozen with shock, or fear, or even both. What was wrong? What happened? At this point I swore I would never have a birthday party again.

            Frightened and panicked, I pushed my way to the front of the crowd, and stopped still in my tracks. Ringlets that were brown like chestnut were splayed across the fresh green grass of the lawn in startling contrast. A snowy white, child-like hand was curled up like claws. A chalk ribcage jutted out of a bloodstained, silky, red dress. Flesh, blood and guts were sprawled across the lawn.

            Rosie, in a moment when no one had been looking, had been ravaged by some kind of vicious creature, and transformed into an almost unidentifiable, mangled, wretched corpse.

            I gently placed a comforting arm around Katie and attempted, with shaking hands, to wipe away the excessive flow of my own tears. Rosie had been so young. So innocent. Why me? Why does everything bad have to happen on my birthday? It was child-like, my thoughts. I was throwing a childish tantrum inside my brain only. First Mary. Now my niece. Please, I begged silently to the sky, hoping for once that someone would be up there, no more. I really don’t know if I could handle any more.

 

            It had been two day’s since Rosie’s death. Three more people had died: Mrs. Turner, a woman around my age who lived just across the road had been ravaged in the middle of the crowded marketplace. The marketplace has now been closed for safety; Little Abigail Bromley was victimised at her nursery school. The other children were rushed home to safety and the nursery has closed; Old Miss Crumplebottom on ‘The Eco Bus’ on the way to the local Bingo hall. Bingo didn’t happen that day and the bus stop has been closed down.

            The creature is savage and vicious. It’s victims are always bloody, mangled, twisted and were always almost unidentifiable. Almost. The strangest thing was that it always leaves a beautiful scent like honey and roses behind. A beautiful smell, unlike that of any animal known to living man. It was frighteningly stunning in comparison with the gory mess of it’s victims.

            The council had set the stronger men on building a secure wall around the village to keep the creature out, or if the creature was in, to keep other people out. We were hoping it was going to work, but we had no idea what sort of thing the creature could do. For the first time in my life, I thought I was truly terrified. Scared for my life. It isn’t a feeling many people survive through. I was so helpless and vulnerable. I was finally the child I had once wished to be.

            I was betting that the creature had killed Mary. That night she went missing. She probably had ventured into the forest where we’d been earlier, having forgotten something. The wrong place, the wrong time. The first victim.

 

            Four more days had passed and twelve more people had died. I’m not even going to bother listing the people anymore; there were far too many lost souls. Half the village had died in just a week, in both crowded and secluded places. I had made so many great friends there. All my family had lived there. I had felt torn with grief. Shockingly devastated.

            The many deaths had made me think of the starving people in the poorer countries and the helpless animals that had been abused and tortured by twisted people. I’d never been much of a charity man. I felt guilty now. In surviving this, I was going to become a vegetarian. I still had my whole life ahead of me. It was settled. No matter what, I was going to survive this.

 

            It had been six days and I was the only one left. Except for my mate, John, that is, but ever since his daughter Morgan died, he went into a state of depression so terrible it was like he was dead. I wondered if that was what I’d been like a couple of days ago, when my family was dead and at least half my friends. Unlike John, though, I had gotten over it. I had thought it had felt like it was just I then. I felt dreadfully alone. I’d barricaded my house from top to bottom, but although it seemed to be working, I knew that that’s why it hadn’t come yet; the creature.

 

            When I woke up that morning, John was gone. At first I was troubled, worried for him, but my mind soon put the pieces together. Suicide. I turned my head and stared out the window blankly, emotionlessly. I think I had become immune to fear, to sadness. I was a monster in myself. Honey and Rose scents fluttered around my nose from the mangled, gruesome body outside. I could almost see the smell, millions of tiny, glittering, sunset coloured clouds.

            I didn’t feel sick as I had previously but looked away anyway, judging, analysing the progress. This was the first completely unrecognisable body in the whole village. I could have been the last person in the world at that point, but I really didn’t care.

            It was at that point that I spotted the ballerina feet by my bedroom door. Literally on the tips of it’s toes and without heels. It was like the end of a pin, that leg, but with toes. So elegant, but yet alien, terrible, deformed. This must be the creature, I thought, no human could possibly pass my barricades. I scorn myself now for calling it a creature.

            I glanced up and smiled with the last of my happiness. The angel coming towards me faltered briefly for unknown reasons. My angel. It was Mary, come to take me up to heaven, or wherever it was we were to go. It was a quick death, painless. I caught a whiff of the honey and rose perfume she used to wear and inhaled deeply. It was intoxicating. She continued to approach me, gracefully. So gracefully you could have thought she was flying. Maybe she was. Angels fly, do they not? Her sapphire blue eyes shined beautifully, deep as the ocean and yet delicate like they could break at any moment. Delicate like her. She was so beautiful. Mary.

            It was all over in under a second, but it was the most painful experience of my life. It still is, a perpetual pain constantly clawing at my heart. I had never even considered for just a second that Mary would be the killer; that Mary would leave me to become a revolting monster. Not that she is. I couldn’t ever call Mary revolting with any true honesty. I still struggle to believe she killed me.

            I had thought that death would be different, too. I had thought I would go to heaven and be happy or something like that. A better place is what they said. Maybe this is heaven. A strange, twisted, unidentifiable heaven like how my body must be now. But then maybe it’s hell. I don’t see what I did to go to hell, but as they say, nobody’s perfect, and if you think you are, you’re not. Wherever I am, though, it’s a terrible place. I’m falling. Falling through a black void of loneliness. So alone. I’m all in one piece but it still feels like Mary is digging her teeth into my flesh again, tearing me apart again. It still feels like she’s thirsting for my blood, thirsting for my flesh, for my empty heart again. I hope she’s happy as she continues eating people alive. I don’t mean that sarcastically. Even after all the pain she’s caused me, I can’t help but love her. My Mary. I don’t know how long I’ve been here now. It feels like centuries, It could have been millennia.

            For a second before I died, we connected, Mary and I. I felt what she felt. Nothing. A nothing far worse than mine. She was like some kind of snake. No emotion. Emotionless. No fear. No sadness. No happiness. Not anything. A cobra, I’d say. Rearing back her beautiful head to strike. Painful. Poisonous.

Author's Note

I would appreciate some commentation on the fact that I am writing from a male point of view, even though I am female. Thankyou :)

Reviews

[EMF]

The only thing I could possibly suggest is to expand it. You have a hell of a story here. A cracking phraseology and a marvelous pace, but you're good enough to write it longer. I could happily have spent an hour or so with the story. A wonderfully dark story. Great job