The Creature
Short story, very dramatic and VERY fun to read aloud...for me XD
The darkness has faded, but it is still cold. My heart beats a marching rhythm, as if it were to lead me into battle. The air is still, and smells of freshly washed linen. The sound of my master sleeping in the other room is comforting; his deep, slow breathing, sometimes audible. But his new man I cannot hear. He slumbers, yet he makes not a sound, still he is as a corpse. His eyes are pools of blackness that I cannot gaze upon for fear of losing my sanity in them. He brushes me and my skin prickles, rises in goose-pimples. He is cold, and it makes me cold. His voice is choked and breathy, like the whisper of storm-winds before a threatening occurrence. And when he speaks his thin, cracked lips barely move. The sound comes from within him, as if from his blackened soul.
It is early, too early to be awake, but here I sit, having stolen a torn piece of paper from the wastebasket. I have my own ink, and have forged myself a pen from a broken shaft of wood. Yet without wood or ink, I would write still, for I could use my broken nails as a pen and my own blood for ink.
He has killed me. He has taken my flesh into him and destroyed my soul. He thought to kill me, to begin with, but he found he could not. I am a great deal larger than he, though he be of such terrible strength I could not fight back, however it was I who held the weapon against his throat, I who bargained for my life. But he only smiled. He smiled, and his sharpened teeth cut into his own lips so that the blood fell upon my bare chest.
A mad man, they would say. You are simply dealing with a mad man. For all, they would say I myself am mad, until they saw him. But, mad as he may be, he is not a man. He is no creature of this world, no thing created by God. When they see his eyes, when they feel his touch, when they look at him and watch his erratic, uncontrolled manner, they will know. He is not man; mad, but not man.
I hear a stir...It is my master. He stirs, but sleeps still. But that he knew the danger he is in! Yet I cannot tell him, I who am bound to silence, I who have suffered still and will stay as such until my death. Oh, what death can be more robbing than this! He has taken me, taken my flesh, taken my soul, taken my very tongue so that his evil should not be told of in any corner of the world. How many others? How many men have fallen victim to his rage, to his insanity…
It is not life. He is not alive. He is a dead thing, in a way that suggests he was never alive. His flesh rends under my nails when I scratch at him. His bones penetrate him to cut at me. Oh, God! What devilish work is this! How can such an unholy thing be allowed to exist upon God’s divine earth! And his breath is the stench of decay, of every thing one could imagine rotting, dying. Am I being punished? Have I committed an unknown crime upon the world to which the only proper retribution is the sacrifice of my own sanity? How can it be so! When he falls upon me, when his lips brush mine, when his teeth tear chunks out of my very skin, is that justice? Is that justice!
I feel unwell. An improvement, from dying. My body goes cold, my limbs are weak. I find it increasingly difficult to write. My brain swims. I see shades, blurs, time
It stirs. The being stirs. Oh, heavenly God! Save me from this madness! Save my soul, if you cannot save any of me otherwise. Help to preserve my master. I hear its shuffle, the dragging of its feet. It sounds as though it scrapes at the door. Mercy! The blackness! I cannot stop writing! I must report! I must let them know! Do not flinch! Escape! The creature is r