Monster
I had never planned on losing myself so completely in such shadow as this. The earth breathed to the pulse of night and the heartbeat of death as I wandered, eternally lost in the darkness. Not a sliver of moonlight brightened this accursed dark, leaving me to blunder mindlessly through the midnight.
It did not take long before I found myself in what I knew to be the center of the maze, a small circular room lit by a single beam of moonlight shining in the exact middle. I stood silent by the wall, lost in thought and body, feeling that if I approached that light, something terrible would happen. And so I remained there, petrified, with nay more than the clothes on my back to protect me. A pair of jeans, and a thin shirt frozen to my back – that was all. Frost glimmered on the walls, sparkling even in the darkness, but still my eyes remained fixed only on the solitary beam of vertical light in the middle of the room.
I do not know how long I remained like this, only that I felt ice forming where I had sweated earlier, in my flight from a creature unnamed and unseen. And the fear now returned to me, settling in my belly like a cold stone of dread. My eyes shifted involuntarily to the dark beyond the moonlight as a figure moved in the shadows, coming closer and closer but stopping just out of the light. I could feel its silent gaze on me, and at last it spoke, its voice piercing deep into my heart and seeding fear there as I heart the tones not of a monster, but a little girl. Yet I could not think of it as human, and you, I think, will know why.
For the light in front of it hinted at its miserable form, a vaguely human thing with violently deformed limbs. What I thought were its shoulders were twisted and skeletal; what I could see of its face was gaunt, haunting and more animal than human.
But I knew it was human. There was no denying that childish voice as it lifted a skeletal hand to beckon me into the light.
“Come…here,” the child’s voice whispered, begging me to come closer. And I did, stumbling thoughtlessly into the moonlight. The creature lifted itself up on stunted legs, crippled legs, and its bony fingers touched the denim of my jeans in what I thought to be an envious manner. “Pretty…so pretty…why can’t I have pretty things…?”
The gaunt face turned up to gaze at my own, and it was then that I saw the huge eyes, horribly human, set in a warped and skeletal face almost that of an animal. Shining tears rose in those great eyes, and I could not help but step away, trying to keep myself from the creature’s grasp. Its face fell, and so did its reaching hands, falling to the earth again without a sound, apart form the haunting little-girl voice.
“No pretty things…none want to be near me…am I so ugly…? Do you…hate me so, pretty?” that horribly human voice whispered, its physical body drawing away from me as if I had the plague. Though I wished to speak, to say that the twisted little human was not ugly, the lying words would not come. And so silence reigned once again in the dark chamber, until the beast began to sob, its voice tearing at my heart like a rasping dagger. Filled with terrified pity, I half-lifted a hand to touch it, but the eerily human eyes met mine just at that moment, and flashed unnatural yellow. Terrified, I watched as it huddled away from me, bony, twisted arms wrapped around its skeletal frame. But its eyes remained on me, so that I felt its madness catch hold of me, shrinking and deforming my own body until I was horrible sure I looked much like it. And at last, it whispered to me:
“Monster.”
