The beast

does a monster wish to die when it realizes it's monstrosity?

I twinkle into the bright sunlight when the soldiers are leading me outside the prison bound in chains. Behind me the priest is walking, the eyes downcast, murmuring silent prayers because I had refused to pray to his god and to >clean my soul<, as he said. On both sides I'm guarded by soldiers who's cold sweat I can smell. Many times I had watched public executions, but this time the crowd is abnormally silent, no rotten vegetable, no muck is thrown on me on my last way, no calls of taunt and no revile. It was quiet, only anywhere a baby cried. People look to the ground, they don't dare to look in the beast's eyes who is gone to come to his well earned end today.

Sure, they are right, I'm a beast, a wild animal, a monster, menacing the lives of everyone until I was caught. As a human I'm aware of this, more than this, I understand their ideas and I agree with them. A monster as I am has to be wiped away from earth. This is the only way to keep the people secure. In an other way the beast living in me is regarding the whole thing.

Desperately it fights against the ropes keeping my arms bound to the back, against the priest's nearly hopeless prayers, and against the prey around me who want me to see destroyed although unable to look into my eyes. The odor of sweat, blood and fear makes me furious and I have to keep control over the beast inside me to anticipate a metamorphosis. No one forces me to walk faster, apparently they'll take time to take my head and show it to the cheering crowd holding it on my long elf-lock while my blood will be running into the dry pavement. In opposite to the people I don't look down.

They may judge me, hate or scorn me, they may wish me dead or to rot in hell, but no one knows what I really am or why I became what I am now. No one can imagine what a man can bring himself to turn into a monster. No, I'm not going to explain myself or to apologize, what for? I'll pay in blood for all the blood I spilled, and this is just fair.

*

My village laid far aside each road, at the edge of the vast forests and mountains. Rarely men came here, since some merchants buying our wood, charcoal or furs of the animals we had hunted. But all changed when the long war started. It's reason was, which priest was going to preach for us and which landlord could take his taxes from us, or better who could burn down our humble huts when we had no goods to give them away as a tax. Soldiers came to our village, even forest and mountain couldn't prevent us from. They robbed our poor supplies, burned our houses and killed our people in the name of persons who don't even know we're existing.

One of these troops took away our women and children. This was the night I went to the forest, to the forbidden site in midst the darkest thicket where Satan is said to walk around. In my despair I knelt down and began to pray. Not to the god who lets happen all these atrocities, but to the other one I hoped to get help from against the murders and rapists. It must have been this desperate wish for vengeance which forced the Other to appear. No, I'm not going to narrate what exactly did happen but I received a gift that was able to help, really help not only the priest's vain phrases.

Suddenly I felt an unexpected power flowing through my body. Senses I didn't know about showed me ways I never had seen before. I transformed and mounted the soldier's tracks. Their odor, their voices, also from the wide distance they pointed to their camp. Like a hurricane I came over them and staggered the celebrating the victory over a handful of peasants, women, children and old folks with a feast. The blood from their disrupted bodies ran to the ground before they could touch their weapons. One or the other tried to defend himself with his bayonet, but that only were scratches that couldn't harm me or stop my murderous frenzy. I hid away from the abductees, I knew my look would have torn them into horror. For me it was enough the soldiers had paid for their misdeeds.

I returned to the forest and waited for transforming again. In my human appearance I went back to the village where the people I had rescued just arrived. They told the others about their adventure, about the shouting, the sounds of bites and rip, about a wild growl and about the shadow of a monstrous creature on the tent's canvas where they had been captured. And about the silence after all and how they escaped. In the chaos around no one cared about me and my blood stained hair. A little time after that other soldiers searched for the missing troop and the place where they had been killed , where I had torn them to pieces was found.

Sure it was to recognize they hadn't been killed by simple soldiers, only the most foolish man could see the wounds hadn't been caused by bullets or blades. But no one wanted to research further, they were afraid of the things that might had been brought to appear by such an investigation and in the report there only was told something about a 'raid by hostile troops'.

But the whole thing wasn't over at all. The soldiers didn't want to get away having time wasted and thought it might have been a good idea to commandeer some supplies and the one or the other woman. I was reluctant to transform to the beast again but I couldn't do anything other. I didn't want to imperil our village, so I waited until the soldiers had pushed along a little before I savaged them. As it was to expect there was no defense, too horrifying was my attack, too fast I was between them to tear them into pieces. With every life I took I felt growing the power of the beast in me, its anxiety for more lives, its wish getting its command over me so it became really hard to turn back into myself after that massacre.

Also my next decision wasn't that easy. I decided to leave my home, most to endanger the villagers not more, also because I couldn't know if the beast inside me would get strong enough to get control over me and to search its prey among the people here. So I pretended I had been killed by the soldiers, what was really easy, because the horrified villagers didn't look to close and as fast as possible went away.

*

So I started waltzing. I hadn't to be afraid from robbers and for comprehensible reasons I didn't dare to come too close to other groups of ramblers. In this time streets were full with all kinds of people, craftsmen, pilgrims, gleemen and jugglers, shavelings and nuns, homeless peasants searching for work in the towns, beggars and thieves, merchants, naturally soldiers, w****s and more merchants. Most of them all I liked the robbers, wild folks hiding in the forests living on raiding wanderers. No one recognized when one or the other gang disappeared, villagers only thought they had changed their territory, no one would imagine them as victims of a monster's hunger.

That time the forests were dense and ample, scarcely anybody dared to intrude those territories further. Not only for the gangs of robbers they were shelter but also for me. Inside me the beast grew on, fed by the blood of my not really innocent victims, and I calmed my ego, which was becoming weaker and weaker telling myself that there were only murderers I killed. The freedom I enjoyed at this time nearly was unlimited. I was the master of the forest, in my beast-shape I ranged my empire and I took whatever I wanted to have. Often the bandits had collected considerable riches I carried together when I had eliminated a mob. In a lair deep inside the woodland, in a cavern under a highly looming cliff I collected a treasure some lords or cloisters would have been proud about.

Oddly enough also the beast inside me knew wealth was useful, perhaps because the demons my gift was given to me knew it as well using riches for their own evil purposes. Among my loot I had found books too, and thanks to our village priest I had learned to read them. So I began to learn from the books. Disguising as a traveling journeyman I started to move among other humans and began to study their conventions. Like a sponge I absorbed knowledge instead of water. The long time I had spent at the forest and my peasant parentage were obstacles, but my quick intellect together with the beast's exorbitant senses helped me to get over this.

On a looted horse and a matching dress I took from my treasure I was able to appear as a simple country nobleman and become more familiar to higher circles of society. Although I lived on in the woods I bought a domicile and furnished it fashionable at that time.

War disappeared as had been coming and all the waifs found their places in society again. I did this also, telling war has taken most of my properties having saved only a few values for my personal support. More often I was to find in the town and I hired some servants who cared for my home. I named myself 'deBrusse', which means 'from the forest' and was an adequate name, I thought. I got a crest by a well known painter showing a tree guarded by two wolves and I started to become settled.

Nevertheless, there was enough to do at the woods, the bandits and outcasts seemed not to become less and the regular forces fought at their last stand, but I could take care, the plague didn't grow too much. So I could be both, the nobleman having festivities, facilitating art and science and the beast hunting at the woods.

But the animal inside me was voracious. No, it wasn't the hunger for flesh or blood to be allayed, only the appetite for taking lives in my beast-shape, the urge to hunt and to kill. Since a time I didn't aliment myself using my prey, in fact they were a feast for bear, wolf and lynx, who also lived there in the forest. For me, or better for the beast in me it was enough to hunt down my loot. There were no troubles at all, even I fell a nice bouncing farmer's girl instead of an ugly robber, people thought wild animals or bandits were responsible for. And partially it was right, although they didn't know the beast lived among them.

*

But I had a worse problem. Like all the gifts received from that from beneath there was a snag. I couldn't die. When I was wounded, for example when a bandit in panic fired his gun at me the wounds quickly healed on their own and not even a scar stayed. And, most of all for others, I didn't grow old.

So it was on me to make some plans for the future. I planned to make a long trip to the colonies and, after a suitable time to return as my own son. Preparations quickly were done, my baggage was brought to the harbor by a carriage, I thought to follow a few days later. But destiny had other plans.

The ways I followed never more were the simple paths of the former times, they became plastered roads to make easier journeys of the merchants on their barrows. Nevertheless they weren't save at all. Robbers still walked abroad to effort the country constables' defiance.

My horse slowly trotted on while the sun set behind the trees as I heard a distant call for help. My senses, or better the beast inside me recognized the shout of a woman just as the rough voices of some men. I lead my horse into the brush and dismounted, then I ran a piece of way before I transformed. With a roar of lust the beast burst out and took the prey's track. Like a flash I rushed through the wood until I found the reason for the noise. Bandits had assaulted a carriage. They had shot the coachman and an armed guard and torn out a young woman,who had shouted and an elderly man. The leader of the gang menaced the woman with a long, jagged knife while an other one held a pistol's barrel in front of the man's face.

Meanwhile it became dark beneath the trees so I could capture the scenery only with my beast-senses. I appraised my chances to free the victims from the raiders before they could react, then I burst out the brush. With one hit I broke the neck of the man with the gun. The man with the knife turned his head to look for the sound and straightly looked onto my closing ivories. When his blood splashed into the girl's face she fainted.

To cut a long story short, I killed each one of the robbers before the man, who still stood pressed closely to the coach even could see much more than a shadow from me and disappeared. I ran back to my horse when I had washed the blood off my body and face in a pond nearby. I dressed again and mounted the horse. A little before I reached the location where the hold up has happened I let my horse walk a little faster.

Naturally everything was over, the corpses of the bandits lay around the carriage and the man tried to awake the girl. I stopped my horse and sanctimoniously asked what had happened. Copiously the man described the incident. I offered him to steer the carriage to the nearest town, but he told me his estate was nearer. So I bound my horse to the carriage and drove to a large property near a small village. Servants pushed the gate open when they saw their master's wagon. In front of a curved flight of steps I stopped, jumped off the coach box and opened the car door.

The girl still was very pale but a beauty I never had seen before. Her slightly sloped eyes nearly shone green from excitement under an unruly black shock of hair hardly kept by a white silk bonnet. Furthermore she moved natural in a way townswomen had lost long time ago. Although her head was bent down modestly she could manage to flash a kittenish glance to me while her father asked me to enter the house.

I entered and wonderingly stopped at the threshold. Apparently the forest has given some riches to the man. Furniture and the building itself told about money and influence. The massive walls were covered with precious wooden panels or expensive tapestry. Carpets, thick as grass lay on the floor and where the parquet lay open it was to see it was made from perfectly fitted shelves. Two armors, from his ancestors I supposed stood both sides of the hall, weapons from former times hung on the walls.

The man introduced himself as chevalier de Beauterre with his daughter Geraldine. And again there was her promising glance under the black hair. The chevalier invited me to stay in his home for the night which came to her darkest hour. He didn't want me to travel on at this situation. He called for his servants to serve some late sherry and to bring me to my room.

Again he thanked for my help, although he didn't know it was me who killed the robbers, then I went to rest. A footman guided me through an aisle and upstairs to a more than generous guest room. A broad canopy bed, tapestry made from red velvet, carpets from Bukhara and precious carved furniture showed all my host's wealth. Behind the curtains large windows opened onto a broad balcony that seemed to reach round the whole house.

I undressed myself and went to sleep, the broad bed was too inviting and in only a few minutes I fell asleep.

The change inside the room I recognized slowly. Stealthily the door opened and someone slipped in quietly. The door was closed again. Silent steps flitted er the carpet. I felt the feather bed heaved a little and a body slipped underneath. My awaking beast-senses greedily breathed the female odor which only could come from Geraldine. Her arms wrapped around me when she pressed herself on me. I turned round and kissed her. Our passion cared what was to do more.

The girl has fallen asleep in my arm as the door was pushed open and de Beauterre escorted by some servants rushed into the room. Obviously the girl hadn't been that silent as she had thought and the chevalier or one of his footmen had recognized what was going on. With a rapier in his right and a pistol in the other hand he stood in front of the bed shouting at me because I had abused his hospitality. The girl has jumped out the bed with a yell so the chevalier had room to shoot. He fired his gun with an awful bang and hit my breast. As usual the wound closed quickly and the eyes of the nobleman opened wide with terror.

I transformed, the beast broke out and attacked the servants, the girl's father I didn't want to hurt anyway. But then I had a new experience, I was hit by a bullet made from sanctified silver. It hit my leg and threw my to the ground. Pain I had forgotten long ago ran over me and the beast withdrew.

*

The rest is told quickly. With the help of a priest and chains he had hallowed I was taken prisoner and brought to the magistrate. A fast enlisted tribunal decided rapidly and savagely and now I am here among the crowd that will cheer about my inglorious, and for them liberating death.

Though I have the idea it is the beast triumphing. Not only my soul is going to get to the site I deserved, but it also has managed to relay it's heritage. The beast will live on.