It was eight in the morning, the rain came down like nails on the old, rotting roof, and everything hurt. The house itself hurt, the ancient and decaying wood was pregnant with water and mold, doors hadn’t fit properly in years, broken windows stared out at the crumbling road like blinded, broken eyes. The wind seemed to moan its own deep inner pain, weeping its way across the forgotten garden, through the hollow and rusting bones of the old swing set, to pound itself relentlessly and uselessly against a house which has already decided to collapse, needing no extra help. The sky cried endlessly, sometimes the slow, grim drizzle of a greying day, others the hard, furious pounding of an estranged lover, fighting desperately to beat their way back into a closed heart.
Among it all, the monster hurt the most. Every motion was misery, every breath of broken glass, every step on shattered feet, even blinking, and drinking, and thinking took an angry toll. The monster, created out of goodness, created to help, to assist, to ease the pain of a burdened life, had ended up being a creature of ruin, and now dwelt within that very place.
The kitchen table lay shattered below the broken ruins of the creator. One fell night, who knows how long ago, a blow had been struck too harshly upon the monster, and patience was finally lost. Unknowing of its own strength, the monster had lashed out. Claws had rent, teeth had slashed, limbs had pulled, bones had popped, and organs had failed. Eventually, there was silence save for the ever falling rain, the motion of liquid mirrored on the monster’s twisted features as it stared at the wreckage of the only person it had ever known, unsure of how to fix what it had done.
The house began to die soon after. The monster knew enough about the chores to keep some parts serviceable, but the creator had always managed the larger portions. A swept floor did nothing when a tree limb broke outside and smashed through a window. For days, the monster swept the same six foot span of flooring, fighting the ceaseless rains that swept through, the broom making the same swish-swish sound with every pass as more rains fell. Under the passage of the broom, the floor still warped and grew tumorous, uncaring of the tending of the monster’s feeble skills.
One by one, the lights popped and failed, each one letting out a faint click-ting as the filament, strained by years of constant use, finally failed like a tiny, glowing heart that explodes under too much grief. The last to go was the bathroom light, a small curled and spiralled thing that kept on going years after the last of its compatriots had fallen to ruin. That one light allowing the lonely monster the misery and company of its own reflection from a stained and time-greyed slab of reflective glass.
In the dark of the night it was harder for the monster to move about doing the mediocre chores it knew of. Without the small, cheery lights to give guidance, the monster bashed his feet against furniture, breaking toes and eventually putting fractures to larger bones. The monster had tools, and eventually puzzled out some simple splints and reinforcements tied together with the old, unused floral print sheets that had lain mouldering on an unused bed. Walking was still agony, but it was walking.
It was eight in the morning, and the monster sat on the ruined couch, the upholstery so stained with water and rot that the original color was pure mystery. Staring down at both braced legs, at the gnarled, greyed flesh tied together with unfaltering cording, the limbs matching each other as good as possible from such a piecemeal operation, it wondered deep in a grey mind about how it could fix itself. Once, when it had broken a table by accident, the creator had simply gone out and come home with a new table. Could it do the same? Could it replace what had been broken?
Though none came too close to the old, decaying house just outside of town, or in fact any of the other houses around it, the monster had still seen on some grey days the figures of passing people walking wearily at the roadside not far off. Thoughts moved sluggishly behind that great forehead, slow to motion, slow to fit together, slow towards resolution. If a table could be replaced, why not a leg? Why not more than a leg?
The monster looked around in confusion, seeking direction, seeking the creator to tell it what to do, even after so long a time. It stared at the half caved-in skull that rested in the kitchen near the sink, and it knew no answer would come as the black sockets stared bleakly back at it.
Why not a leg?
The monster got up, and began to move.
Ch. 2
The brush at the roadside was thick and tall, and where normally small creatures, both predator and prey rustled or lurked or hopped or ambushed now there was only silence and the wind. The smaller creatures knew Something Was Wrong, and that that something lurked within that brush on motionless, wood reinforced legs.
The wind whistled hollow and the grey sky spattered and spat for four long days before there was motion up the road. A trio of small, brown clad figures crept along the roadside, the motion of two of them easy but slow, the third hobbled and clumsy as the other two tried to help. The monster saw the good legs of the healthy ones, and felt an acute pain deep within, a spark of envy surrounded by the grim fear that this might not work. Wet and grey eyes watched quietly as the trio continued to advance until they were right near it.
The brush made no sound until the massive hand swept through it, creating a crackle crunch of breaking reeds before it clasped the shoulder of the largest figure in a titan’s grip. As the monster rose with the inevitable certainty of tomorrow’s dead grey dawn, the large of the other two shrieked and grabbed at the wounded one, trying to hustle to safety as the larger male fought the iron grip.
The monster stared down at the person and grey, stitched lips pulled back in what it knew to be a smile and failing with utter certainty to calm the individual held tight. The words were muddled shouts, dimmed by the mold growing in ancient ears, but the creature knew the captive was telling the others to run. Why should they run? It didn’t mean any harm, it just wanted to fix itself. It just wanted to heal.
Old, fractured bones and strained wood creaked under the additional weight as it struggled back up the hill with a frantic burden held in one huge hand. Blows rained down from malnourished fists, pummelling dead flesh as unshod feet slipped in the mud and tore up the ground of the steep hill leading up to the dying house. At the top of the hill, the cries grew more frantic, and it looked down at the captive again, those hollow eyes finding a trickle of blood brought from the pierce of one careless claw. In the depths of rotting, grey brain the memory of the creator’s death flared, and those emotions came rushing back from a still beating and unholy heart held deep within cracked ribs. It saw the worry of the captive, a man. It saw the man’s loss written on his face as bright as a signal fire. The old neck creaked, the stitches bunching and straining as it turned and looked at the two small brown figures huddled on the other side of the road, one weeping and one howling. The old heart pounded, the feelings coming from it anything but good or warm, and it sought again the pleading and now quiet brown eyes of the man in its grip. Tears streamed down that dirty face, lost quickly in the drizzling rain, and soon the monster’s own eyes grew wettened from within.
With a soft nod of apology, the monster set the man back down on his feet, and took a half step back, shoulders slumped in defeat, head hanging loosely on broad, mismatched shoulders.
It began to cry in earnest as the man turned and sprinted for his family, rag clad feet slipping on the churned soil of the hill before he reached the road. The reunion was short and heartfelt before the three of them made themselves scarce at all the speed they could muster.
Upon the ruined hill next to the dying house, the ancient monster continued to weep.
Ch. 3
The heart hurt. Every beat within those chipped and strained ribs brought pain and the memory of the loss on the man’s face. The monster could not make the hurting stop. It roared, it cried, it smashed the old walnut tree out back, it ripped down the old swing set and hurled it end over end towards the horizon, casting it so far that no sound came if it ever landed. Massive, knobby, rotting fists pounded resolutely on its chest, trying to beat the pain out, but nothing worked.
So it stood and cried some more, staring at its reflection in the bathroom mirror, the room lit by the faltering afternoon light. It had never noticed the stitches on its chest before, the Y shape making a silent query as to the contents and purpose of the cut.
But suddenly it knew. Suddenly, somehow, it knew that through that stitched area lay a solace from the pain. It brought a monstrous hand up, the claws raking at its chest and digging furrows, but unable to break the stitching itself. Dim thoughts fired back and forth, old eyes swept around before landing on the rusty straight razor left lonely beside the basin in front of the mirror.
Grey fingers, one still marred by the pale strip of a years-lost wedding band, closed around the handle and raised the rust-spattered blade. Zip. Zip. Ziiiip. The rusted and uncared for blade moved easily through the strands of sinew, cutting free the lashings that held the chest together. Cold, sluggish black fluid seeped out slowly for a moment before stopping and oozing back within the cavity, held in place by strong sorceries.
It knew that if its heart didn’t hurt, it could do what it needed to fix itself. Without that pain, it could heal, and without that pain, it could do what it needed to have done. A knobby hand began to push through that black and rotting cut, old and clawed fingers seeking deeply past the ribs, past the squamous things that took up life near such unholy magicks as held it in thrall, over the unused lungs, and finally to that soft, pulsing, leathery sack of pain.
Those old and clawed fingers slipped slowly around it and clutched down as the heart continued to beat a regular rhythm, seemingly untroubled by the new neighbor. The monster sat there, feeling its own heart in its hand for a few moments, puzzling over it, before it gave a harsh, sideways twist of its wrist and wrenched the organ free of the fell cavity.
Ch. 4
After some very painful and troubling trial and error, the monster discovered that it could live as long as it kept the heart in a sack on its hip. If it strayed too far from the heart, the magicks began to crumble, and it was compelled to return. To keep it safe, the monster found an old, floral print jewelry box that had survived the ravages of time, and placed the heart within before stowing both in an old plastic sack that still held the name of a trader named Joe that must have passed so long ago. Within the box, within the sack, hanging from its belt, the heart kept the monster alive but was unable to make it feel the emotions most troubling. The emotions that would keep it from fixing itself. Beating quietly, the heart kept on, just out of reach of pain.
The hunt had taken many days before the monster found a body it desired, a tall and reedy creature that moved with quiet swiftness down the game trail near which it lurked. A crude arrow nocked in a timeworn bow, the creature padded slowly closer and closer, covered mostly in mud that clung wet beneath the constant rains.
Step, step, closer with every moment as the monster watched, the land around silent due to the wrongness of its presence. The creature felt it too, the monster thought, as it slowed down more the closer it came. Nearer, and nearer, the monster would have held its breath if it needed to take any. It waited, one massive hand ready to clutch. The creature stopped, and began to turn away. Perturbed, the monster shifted, causing a tiny branch to snap below it. The creature turned, sighted down the arrow, and fired into the brush the monster sat within.
The shot was random, but well placed for the intent. It pinned through the ribs, through the back, and through the vacuum that once held a beating and unwholesome thing. Shocked into motion, the monster exploded forward, one massive hand coming out to swat the bow aside as the other hand planted a rotting palm over the face of the creature and lifted straight up, prying it from its feet. It struggled, the creature did, small nails ripping gobbets of long dead flesh from old bones as it raked at the arm behind that rotting palm. The monster simply held on, dangling the creature as it slowly smothered. At some point, a boot knife came out and drove clean through its forearm without a drop of black blood shed or even a twitch on the face of the monster. The screams were muffled, panicked, and fell still without much of a wait. As the monster had guessed, it felt nothing. Inside a small floral print wooden box within an old plastic sack, something hammered. Something struggled, and pounded, and in vain fury tried to reach the monster, to insistently point out that this was wrong, that this was not the way things were meant to be. But the monster, as it intended, felt nothing. It had problems to fix.
Slowly, the monster turned for home.
Ch. 5
Every time the creator had worked on a new project, everything had to be cleaned relentlessly. The floors spotless, the tables equally so, each tool cleaned and polished and buffed to a mirror shine, the creator had even been careful to clean the air itself by making it smell funny. The monster didn’t know how to do these things. It swept, and swept, but the floor was still stained and bent and weathered from age and abuse. An old pillow was used to wipe down the table with some rust-colored water from the toilet. The monster got it as clean as he could. What tools the monster could find were spotted with oxidization, and most were dull, or creaked when they moved. Even though its nose was long gone, the monster was relatively certain the air still smelled of rot, and was not clean.
The creature he captured was laid out on the kitchen floor, inert. A feeble light fought through the broken windows and the rain, throwing sparse shadows behind the two forms that dominated the kitchen. The monster crouched above the body, making his way one by one through the tools, testing each one to see what it did. Eventually he happened upon the scalpel, and with slow determination began to pass it through the flesh in the shape of Y on the torso.
Once done, a crude hand ripped open the flesh, tearing it across the body. Why didn’t it come free so easily as its own ribs had done? Maybe this was the way of things, the monster was uncertain. Out of a small, floral print box came a leathery, weakly beating thing, the color grey and lifeless and lacking hope. Using brute force, the monster crushed a single rib near the sternum and forced the dead but beating organ into the new chest cavity. An odd and distant wailing whisper began to rise from the lips of the thing below.
Maybe it was a trick of the light when the kitchen began to fade. Maybe a cloud moved across the sky. Maybe it was something else. Black ooze seeped from deep wounds and old, rotted holes all over the monsters body. Small, wriggling, squamous things fought just under the flesh, seeking a new place to live with an abundant food source. Old eyes closed, and a shard of a smile touched the remnants of lips long since kissed.
The light began to fade from the room, and the monster felt so very tired.
Ch. 5
Our eyes came open, staring into the rotted face of what we once were. With horror, we realized the beating heart was still clutched in a death grip, attached to a massive arm, weighed down my a mismatched and tremendous body. We struggled, we fought, we tried to draw breath and were paralyzed by the pain of the broken rib which braced the wrist of our old husk. When we could, we raised our hands and struck at the dead weight ineffectually, still trying though we understood the rational futility. Pinned there, possibly for eternity, slowly we began to talk, and to understand, and to accept each other in our small prison.
And as we did, part of us, the younger part, thought of the outside world in which it had lived. Of the creatures, and the plants, and the people, and those that continued to struggle to survive in a world wasted by magicks and technologies too horrible to name. The soft rains continued to fall, pattering all over the now dead house, as timbers creaked and shingles slid free, and small things scuttled here and there.
We closed our eyes, and prayed for scavengers to come clean up the mess that pinned us motionless, unable to act except for speech within our own mind.
