It was happening again.
This time I’d had my doors barricaded shut from the outside – made a lot more sense since they open outwards anyway. Before I’d tried just piling up all my stuff in front so I couldn’t get to them, but I’d always break and start flinging chairs and dressers aside just so I could get out.
Not this time. Tonight I was going to overcome my baser instincts. Tonight I would be better.
I curled in on myself, lying on my side on the mattress in the corner of my room – the bedframe I’d once used had broken years ago, and I couldn’t exactly go and get another. The beast within growled, clawing at my insides. I clutched my stomach tight, biting my lip to suppress the animalistic whine that attempted to slip through my grit teeth. With my free hand I clutched at the crucifix tied around my neck on a rope. The fine silver chain it had once resided on was long gone.
It came in waves. Each one worse than the last. At first merely tucking my knees into my chest and whispering prayers was enough, but before I knew it I was pacing the room, half of my mind on a Hail Mary, the other half fixated on the door.
It was barricaded – forced shut by piles of the heaviest furnishings we could find. Wardrobes. Grandfather clocks. Boxes full of god knows what. But maybe – maybe if I had a running start, I could- no!
I slammed my fist into the wall, leaving cracks in the brick and causing the framework of the room to shudder as if in fear. No- I wasn’t leaving. I was riding it out this time. I’d promised I would. Besides, even with what little running start this cramped room would give me, there was no way I was strong enough to move all of that stuff. Right?
No way to know unless you try.
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, amen.
This pacing was just burning energy I didn’t have. I forced myself to sit, back to the wall, head rested uncomfortably against a windowsill. Focused on the slats of light leaking through the boarded-up windows, like tiger stripes, breaking up the darkness of the floor.
The beast inside yowled louder. I shoved a fist into my mouth to choke out the growl lurking in my throat.
My room was three stories up, so back before I’d boarded them up, I’d had a pretty good view of our garden from the windows. A sprawling expanse, once well maintained, now running wild with overgrown greenery and thorns. I could still picture it in my mind’s eye – statues with literal and metaphorical grey faces, looking down on me disapprovingly from where they perched between rows of peas, tomatoes, peppers, carrots and beetroot. A fountain long since run dry, its basin caked in dried mud and leaf litter. The occasional rustle of feathers – birds taking flight. Less and less of them every year. Skinny little things they’d been, barely a mouthful, stringy and foul but warm-
I yanked my hand from my mouth. I’d bitten solidly into it, blood pouring out of puncture wounds and matting grey fur. I could taste blood on my tongue. I hastily spat it out, a globule of reddened spit landing on the floor and sinking in to join the other bloodstains. But I spat just a little too late – the smooth, metallic taste lingered on my tongue and in my mind.
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, amen.
I stuck the crucifix between my teeth, slotting into the indentations I’d left from the last time and the time before that I’d needed something, anything, in my maw. The taste of silver was a poor substitute, but it would do. It would have to. I kept my arms by my sides, claws digging into floorboards. If I wanted to – really wanted to – I could probably dig through this floor. Sure it’d work my fingers to the bone-
NO. I’d made a promise. I was better than this – I was better than this thing, this monster locked within me. I could beat it. I knew I could. I just wasn’t trying hard enough.
Because that was the point, right? This was meant to make me better. I was meant to be better. Why wasn’t I getting better? Why had that bitch- why had that lady made me like this if not to make me better?
Another stabbing pain in my gut had me doubled over, the crucifix slipping from between my jaws as I let out a caterwauling cry of need. My limbs were shaking. I grabbed at my upper arms, and fur came away in handfuls. My toes curled, and now the claws on them were sinking into the rotted wood beneath me. It hurt, oh god it hurt-
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and the hour of our death, amen.
Breaking out the window wasn’t an option – I was three stories up and there was no way I could climb down sheer stone walls, and I wasn’t leaving goddamnit! I had almost everything I needed here. There was just one reason to leave. There were hundreds of reasons not to.
I shut my eyes tight. Tried to imagine I was anywhere but here. I was racing the butler down the hall, laughing giddily. I was holding my parents’ hands, my fathers in the left, mothers in the right. I was traipsing through the woods, when a deer bolted out in front of me, froze for a moment under my astonished gaze, then leapt back off into the wilderness.
There were no deer anymore. The royal huntsman had, well, hunted them to extinction, in order to satisfy my parent’s cravings for veal. Now the neighbouring village was reliant on chickens, pigs, and whatever berries they could scrounge up from the desolate forest.
And sure, trade with the villagers wasn’t exactly an option anymore, but it didn’t need to be – not when we had a perfectly good garden overflowing with produce that, sure, turned to mulch in my mouth and that I would inevitably spend hours heaving up later, but it was food and I should be grateful to have it. Temperance is a virtue, that’s what my parents taught me, and sure they’d glutted themselves on veal and partridge and caviar, but now they were dead and I was the only one left and I could be better than them, would be better than them, even if every fibre of my being cried out for just one morsel of meat, just one drop of warm fresh blood-
My arm was in my mouth. I ripped it out and ripped a chunk of my own flesh out with it, and before I could spit up I swallowed and it hurt so goddamn much but it tasted so good
Holy Mary mother of god pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death amen
I needed to – needed to stay in here, but – I needed to go. I needed to get out – I needed to feed – just one more time and then I’d be satisfied, just once and then I could be better once and for all- no, no, this had all happened before and if I didn’t control myself now- I needed to eat, I needed to eat right fucking now-
Door wasn’t an option. Window? Too high. Floorboards? Floorboards were weak. Floorboards were an option.
holy mary
I clawed desperately. Clawed and clawed until my fingers bled. Clawed until the wood gave way and the plaster beneath cracked open and I crashed into the room below.
mother of god
I ran down corridors. Took stairs in leaps. Found myself at the front door. Locked and bolted. Not well enough.
pray for us
The chain snapped open. Night air whistled through my fur. I bolted for the forest.
sinners now
Scampered up a tree. Waited. Waited. Waited.
and at the hour
Bushes rustled.
of our
I pounced.
death
The next time my head felt clear I was holding the severed arm of a man who looked to be in his forties. It was hard to tell. There wasn’t much of his face left. My own face was damp, with blood or with tears, I wasn’t sure.
I had failed. I always failed. I was meant to be good, meant to be better, but I just kept failing because I was always too weak. Too weak to control my urges. Too cowardly to let death take me. Too afraid to let a poor old lady in at night, and now I’d got what I deserved but the man who’d once owned the body I devoured through sobs sure as hell didn’t.
It was getting light. The household would be searching for me. They already knew of my failure. They’d probably expected it, and I couldn’t blame them.
Weeping like a child, I lifted the carcass and carried it home with me. Maybe- maybe if I prayed hard enough, by the time it was reduced to bone I’d finally be better.
Or maybe it would all happen again.
amen.
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