UNICORN MAGIC (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zfreelance) wrote2010-12-06 02:27 pm
zfreelance) wrote2010-12-06 02:27 pm
nothin's right
Ahahaha, so I pressured ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zece into posting her latest pornlet, and one outpouring of "MY TORMENTED SOUL ZOMG" deserves another, even if it's written by me and is really, really disturbing. because the fact that I'm writing isn't terrifying enough
This is called Evil Bastard story on my hard drive, so...
A warning to all who read this: This is not a nice story. This story contains graphic descriptions of rape and murder and is probably very, very triggery. So, you might want to think twice.
(Also: Don’t tell my mother.)
Cal knew he was different the day he looked up from his bible, into the watery-gray eyes of the priest in charge of his class for the day and thought, What if there is no God?
That was a startling thought. A bad thought. A sin, blasphemy, a thought that would send him straight to hell. But Cal felt no flames licking at his ankles, no hellhounds chewing on his flesh. He looked at his hands, at the book on his desk, that one little thought echoing through his head.
What if there is no God?
That life-changing thought lead to more, even better thoughts. If there is no God, then there is no Devil. And if there is no Devil, there is no hell. And if there is no hell, what happens to the sinners when they die? Do they go to the same place as everyone else?
And if they did, then what is the point?
An older, wiser Cal would recognize this as philosophy, perhaps even a racial memory that drives humanity to pursue religion with fanatical fervor. Because they were desperately afraid that there wasn’t actually anything else, out there. That there was no celestial reward for the dutiful, no fitting punishment for the wicked. Nothing.
But Cal was a child, and knew none of this. But he did know that he was different from the others, because the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. There was no God. Everywhere he looked, he saw the work of man. Buildings being erected, fields being tilled for the autumn harvest. He saw babies born, men hung for their crimes, and saw no God. Only man.
The priests taught that the good in the world was the work of God, and that evil was the work of the Devil. But Cal wondered, where did that stop? Was every moment of every day controlled by some outside force? Was the movement in his chest, the air in his lungs, the work of some faceless God?
Cal decided to test this. He picked up a rock that almost weighed more than him and walked slowly into the lake, where the water was dark and deep. The weight bore him down and he sank to the bottom, the waves lapping at his trailing hair. His chest began to burn, and it was very, very tempting to let go of the rock, to push himself to the surface and fill his lungs with sweet, crisp air…
But he didn’t. He held on, curled around the rock, letting his chest hurt and head pound.
Save me, God, he thought, as lights flashed in his mind. Do something to save me.
His fingers slipped against the stone, but his legs were pinned, now. He stayed under and felt his strength ebb. His arms were flailing now, a primal instinct to preserve his life. But he heard no voices, felt no ghostly hand lending him aid, urging him to live.
If there is a God, he does not care, Cal realized, and used the last of his failing strength to kick out from under the rock, pushing his head out of the water, filling his leaden lungs with air on his own, all on his own.
God helps those who help themselves, the bible said.
If that were true, Cal thought, his body aching and weak, but his mind wonderfully clear, no one would ever drown.
Cal was sick for days after his experiment, laying in bed and feeling air rasp in his chest. But his mind stayed sharp and he sorted through his memories, paring down the baseless assurances of the church and the bible, searching for something in his life that wasn’t tainted by blind, blind faith.
He found nothing but a phrase that would become his foundation until the day he died:
I can do anything I want.
Cal told his first lie a day later, telling his mother that he still felt too ill to go to bible study. He felt no twinge of guilt, no compulsion to confess the falsehood and make amends. That day, he slipped out of his bedroom window and went back to the lake. The water was still and black. It didn’t care that he had almost died. It just was.
Cal had entered the water, curious and defiant. He’d emerged, renewed and cleansed of the silly, cloying trappings of the weakness of men.
A baptism, he thought, and laughed. He laughed and laughed and there was no one to stop him.
---
Cal left home two days after that, stealing the supplies he thought he’d need, resolving to take more from wherever he was going, when he needed it.
He reached the city a month later, astride a horse and bearing a sack of official correspondents he’d taken off the body of a dead courier. He hadn’t killed the courier; he’d already been long dead when the highwayman ambushed Cal by the riverside, dragging him into the reeds and pulling his shirt up and breeches down. Cal had looked away from the man’s avid face and stared into the blank gaze of a corpse lying in the grass beside them, thrown aside like a broken doll. The air smelled like rotting vegetation and blood.
When the man finished, Cal turned back to face him and smiled, even as the man fit huge, meaty hands around his neck and began to squeeze. Cal kept smiling as he slid his stolen bread knife out of his crumpled breeches and pressed it, gently, into the highwayman’s side. The man squealed like an animal and threw himself away, clawing at the bleeding hole in his side. Cal followed, climbing on top of him and sliding the knife into the man’s chest, first the left side, then the right, and then straight through the throat. He choked, eyes bulging, and clawed at Cal even as he drowned in his own blood. Cal watched as his struggles grew weaker and more pathetic, like a pinned butterfly, and saw the moment when the light left his piggy little eyes.
Cal stayed for a moment longer, memorizing the face of his first murder. Then he sawed the knife, sideways, cutting the throat practically in two. He would have taken the head, but the knife was too dull to saw through bone.
Then he stripped off his clothes and stomped them into the red mud. He pulled the courier’s tunic and leggings off of stiff limbs and belted them with the highwayman’s leather belt. He found the horse tied by the water. It shied from him, smelling the death on his clothes. Cal smiled at it, gentling the creature with whispers and soft touches. The horse calmed and Cal climbed into the saddle, his feet barely touching the stirrups. He nudged the horse forward, following the river.
He rode for the city gates, calmly, smiling at the sheer size of the stone walls surrounding so much humanity. Keeping out as much as it was keeping in. He could smell the musk of hundreds of thousands of people, packed together like cattle. Cal licked his lips.
The guards eyed him, probably confused by his size. But Cal didn’t stop, and they didn’t make him, letting him pass into the city.
The streets were crowded and alive, people pushing against each other and rushing about like blood through veins. Cal felt warm shoulders and creeping hands brush his legs as he rode past. He smiled.
He tied the horse to a water trough and walked away. He let the crowds carry him back and forth, until he ended up in a dim alleyway. He paused, smelling waste and filth, and waited. It wasn’t twenty minutes before a hand closed on his arm and he was dragged deeper into the shadows.
This man actually kissed him before spinning him around and pushing him into the wall. Cal licked his lips, tasting liquor and smoke. Because he was feeling generous, he let the man finish before turning around and sliding the smooth edge of his knife through his throat. The man stumbled and fell and Cal watched him kick and struggle and die. This time he did take the head. His knife was much sharper, now.
He watched the rivulets of blood soak into the cobblestones and thought, stop me, God. Come and stop me.
His breeches were the only thing ruined, spattered with blood. He stepped over the fallen head and found another alley, dark enough that his stained breeches didn’t matter.
Very soon, there were more hands.
This city is drowning, Cal thought. In blood and in lust, it is filling its lungs and sinking into nothing. He licked his lips, chasing liquor and smoke, and smiled.
He could relate.
---
The following year found Cal in another city. The year after that, he’d crossed the border into a country who’s name he didn’t know. That winter he followed a caravan into an abbey, where the friars let him stay, trading work for food. He learned their language by watching and listening, but did not speak. The friars thought him simple and left him alone.
But one particular friar found him staring at a tapestry with unwavering focus and told him that the story woven in thread was woven with words, as well. Cal let the man tell him that story, and others, tucked away in warm towers with piles of dusty books of old histories and even older legends.
Cal watched the friar, carefully, looking for the smallest trace of God in him as he performed his chores, sang his prayers. But all he saw was a man, as quiet and calm as the black lake. Cal lay awake at night, wanting to sink his teeth into the friar’s throat, feel his dying song reverberating against his open mouth, drink down his stillness. But the winter outside howled and snarled, and Cal knew that that was a baptism he would not survive. Instead, he waited, and learned, and smiled.
Spring came slowly, heralded only by wetter, heavier snow and the occasional burst of sun. On a particularly calm week, Cal watched red blossoms form on the bare branches of the trees, bright and hopeful, until a late, bitter freeze stole the life from the petals, browning them and scattering them on the snow like congealing blood.
Cal scooped up a handful of blood and snow and pressed it to his cheek, to his mouth, tasting the cold.
That night he climbed onto his friar while he slept and pressed a hand over his mouth to stop his screams, pinching his nose with the other.
“Thank you for your lessons,” he told the friar in his new tongue, savoring the blackness that swelled in the friar’s frightened eyes. He kept watching as the man struggled and flailed, fighting the black water that Cal could taste in the back of his throat.
One of yours, God, Cal crowed. But now he’s mine.
The friar’s eyes fluttered and closed and he went limp.
And Cal released him, feeling the barest stir of breath from the friar’s lips.
Cal pressed a warm, wet kiss to his forehead and whispered, in his own language, “Mine.”
There is no God. There is only me.
He left the abbey that night and headed south, tired of deadening snow and flowers that bled like virgins on their wedding night, passive and slow. He craved warmth, sunlight, and growing, rotting, furious life.
---
Cal was seventeen when he felt the bite of lust. He was nursing a beer in a strange tavern when a small, nervous barmaid nudged his elbow for the second time in half an hour. He glanced at her and caught her fleeting, blushing look as she fled. He felt a pull in his gut and realized that she would be beautiful under him, squirming and breathless and oh so afraid.
He nearly bent the metal mug in his hands as his skin seemed to contract at the thought. But he kept his stillness, waiting for her to venture closer, driven by a slick need that he could smell. The next time she looked, he caught her eyes and held them. She froze, transfixed. Cal smiled.
She smiled in return, quivering and so painfully, deliciously hopeful. Cal felt fire bite him, like the hands, except this was black and hungry and impatient.
That stopped him, that desire to lunge, take, have, nownownow. He knew hunger, and he knew want. But this was different, woven into his bones. It made him wary, wondering if this was God’s work at last.
He wanted her. He wanted to feel her sweat and hear her cry and taste her last, shuddering breath. He wanted to trace her shivers with the tip of his blade and lap up the red trails left behind.
Fornication, he thought. The sin I have not tasted.
The hands took and pushed, and he gave and waited for his turn. But this was something new.
Well, Cal thought, smiling. I’ll try anything once.
And the next time the little barmaid met his eye, he tossed his head at the door and rose to leave. She blushed and hurried to collect his mug, whispering that she would meet him in the hour as she hurried past.
Cal waited by the stables, enjoying the dim shadows. Familiar.
But he enjoyed it more when the little barmaid crept into the light, looking around furtively, face flushed and hands fisted in her apron. Cal waited until she started to fidget, letting the sound of her signing nerves soothe the burning in his blood. Then he shifted, deliberately, and she jumped with a squeak.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, when she saw him. “I didna see you there, m’lord.”
Cal smiled and said nothing.
The maid recovered herself and sidled closer.
“Was th’ dinner to your liking?” she asked, voice a whisper.
Is she trying to sound coy, Cal thought? Or must she talk to keep from losing her nerve?
He tested his theory by reaching out, fast, and snatching up her little wrist. She gasped and Cal felt her nerve almost break. He smiled at her, and pulled her close, stroking her face with gentle fingertips, calming her as he would a spooked horse. She twitched for a moment, and then melted into him. The fire bit like a snake, and Cal let his smile turn, let a little of his stillness show. The maid sensed the change and shifted against him.
“M’lord?”
Cal spun her and pressed her to the wall. She gasped but arched against him, even though her eyes were still too wide. Cal continued to smile with only a sliver of his desire showing through, and stepped closer. The maid bucked against him with animal sounds, voice high and wavering. Cal wanted to hear it break.
He pressed fingers into her flesh, feeling give where he knew he had none, and she sighed. He pushed at her skirts and she let him, little hands clenched tight on his shoulders. It was warm and soft, underneath, and she hiccupped when he pressed closer.
He withdrew and tasted his fingers. Warmth and salt and musk. Too sweet, too cloying. He froze.
The maid rocked against him, oblivious, her sounds becoming more and more piteous. She reached up, took a handful of his hair, and tugged.
“Please,” she whispered.
Cal felt his smile slip and he shoved her back, into the wall. She gasped and her eyes flew open. Startled, confused. Afraid.
The fear started to override the sickly scent of her, and Cal smiled, again. He shoved her, again, knocking her head against the wall. She winced, a little hurt sound sliding out of her throat. Cal did it again, harder, and the sound was louder.
“Please,” she whispered, begging now, but for a different reason. Cal felt the fire swell and pressed closer, one hand on her throat, holding her down. She flailed, weakly, trying to push him away.
He could still smell her.
He pulled out his knife and delighted in the rush of terror in her eyes for just a moment before shoving the blade deep, deep into her.
She made a choked sound and kicked at him, but he was holding her too close.
He slid the knife out a little, before pushing it back in, a sick mockery of the violation of hands and breeches and dim, slick alleyways. He did it again, and again.
The little maid shook with every thrust, her hands fluttering and weak now. All Cal could smell was blood. He licked his lips and then licked hers, tasting copper and death. The little maid let out one little sound, a sad, soft sigh, and then slumped in his hold.
Cal pulled away from her and let her slump to the ground. She wasn’t dead, not yet. Cal’s body was thrumming, alive. He didn’t want her.
He licked his knife, everything to his wrist slicked black with gore. The blood was bitter with the taste of her insides. He spat it back out. He didn’t want that, either.
He left her there, in a growing puddle of her own bitter, disgusting fluid, stole a horse, and continued south.
---
By the time Cal was twenty-five, he had another name. Eater of the Dead. A black wraith that haunted the shadows of good, God-fearing towns and carved into the bodies of the poor men who crossed his path. The Eater always took something, cutting off heads, sawing off fingers, carving out eyes. Pieces of his victims to feed his dark, evil appetites.
The nickname amused Cal. Yes, he took trophies, but not to eat. His hunger never pushed him that far. He started calling himself the Eater when he was out hunting, searching the dimness for the hands that would push and claw and press, foreplay for the main event, when Cal could glut himself on his own power.
There is no God, he would cry, scream, howl. There is only this.
But it was not just bloodlust that drove him. Cal was searching. He followed ancient trade routes through forbidden mountains, daring something, anything to stop him. He broke into temples and robbed them of their greatest treasures.
Their knowledge.
Cal once found a temple carved into the face of the mountain, itself, home to some of the oldest and most forbidden tomes of lore. He climbed the stone gate and killed the monks, throwing their bodies over the edge of the mountain, into the abyss. He spent the winter there, poring over book after book of ancient stories of wars long past, generals and kings who rose and fell, empires that burned because of men. All of it, the work of men.
There was only one book, the one book, that declared God a reality, and in a fit of nostalgia, Cal read it cover to cover once, twice, and then threw it into the abyss. Maybe it would keep the monks company.
---
I weird myself out, sometimes.
zece into posting her latest pornlet, and one outpouring of "MY TORMENTED SOUL ZOMG" deserves another, even if it's written by me and is really, really disturbing. This is called Evil Bastard story on my hard drive, so...
A warning to all who read this: This is not a nice story. This story contains graphic descriptions of rape and murder and is probably very, very triggery. So, you might want to think twice.
(Also: Don’t tell my mother.)
Cal knew he was different the day he looked up from his bible, into the watery-gray eyes of the priest in charge of his class for the day and thought, What if there is no God?
That was a startling thought. A bad thought. A sin, blasphemy, a thought that would send him straight to hell. But Cal felt no flames licking at his ankles, no hellhounds chewing on his flesh. He looked at his hands, at the book on his desk, that one little thought echoing through his head.
What if there is no God?
That life-changing thought lead to more, even better thoughts. If there is no God, then there is no Devil. And if there is no Devil, there is no hell. And if there is no hell, what happens to the sinners when they die? Do they go to the same place as everyone else?
And if they did, then what is the point?
An older, wiser Cal would recognize this as philosophy, perhaps even a racial memory that drives humanity to pursue religion with fanatical fervor. Because they were desperately afraid that there wasn’t actually anything else, out there. That there was no celestial reward for the dutiful, no fitting punishment for the wicked. Nothing.
But Cal was a child, and knew none of this. But he did know that he was different from the others, because the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. There was no God. Everywhere he looked, he saw the work of man. Buildings being erected, fields being tilled for the autumn harvest. He saw babies born, men hung for their crimes, and saw no God. Only man.
The priests taught that the good in the world was the work of God, and that evil was the work of the Devil. But Cal wondered, where did that stop? Was every moment of every day controlled by some outside force? Was the movement in his chest, the air in his lungs, the work of some faceless God?
Cal decided to test this. He picked up a rock that almost weighed more than him and walked slowly into the lake, where the water was dark and deep. The weight bore him down and he sank to the bottom, the waves lapping at his trailing hair. His chest began to burn, and it was very, very tempting to let go of the rock, to push himself to the surface and fill his lungs with sweet, crisp air…
But he didn’t. He held on, curled around the rock, letting his chest hurt and head pound.
Save me, God, he thought, as lights flashed in his mind. Do something to save me.
His fingers slipped against the stone, but his legs were pinned, now. He stayed under and felt his strength ebb. His arms were flailing now, a primal instinct to preserve his life. But he heard no voices, felt no ghostly hand lending him aid, urging him to live.
If there is a God, he does not care, Cal realized, and used the last of his failing strength to kick out from under the rock, pushing his head out of the water, filling his leaden lungs with air on his own, all on his own.
God helps those who help themselves, the bible said.
If that were true, Cal thought, his body aching and weak, but his mind wonderfully clear, no one would ever drown.
Cal was sick for days after his experiment, laying in bed and feeling air rasp in his chest. But his mind stayed sharp and he sorted through his memories, paring down the baseless assurances of the church and the bible, searching for something in his life that wasn’t tainted by blind, blind faith.
He found nothing but a phrase that would become his foundation until the day he died:
I can do anything I want.
Cal told his first lie a day later, telling his mother that he still felt too ill to go to bible study. He felt no twinge of guilt, no compulsion to confess the falsehood and make amends. That day, he slipped out of his bedroom window and went back to the lake. The water was still and black. It didn’t care that he had almost died. It just was.
Cal had entered the water, curious and defiant. He’d emerged, renewed and cleansed of the silly, cloying trappings of the weakness of men.
A baptism, he thought, and laughed. He laughed and laughed and there was no one to stop him.
Cal left home two days after that, stealing the supplies he thought he’d need, resolving to take more from wherever he was going, when he needed it.
He reached the city a month later, astride a horse and bearing a sack of official correspondents he’d taken off the body of a dead courier. He hadn’t killed the courier; he’d already been long dead when the highwayman ambushed Cal by the riverside, dragging him into the reeds and pulling his shirt up and breeches down. Cal had looked away from the man’s avid face and stared into the blank gaze of a corpse lying in the grass beside them, thrown aside like a broken doll. The air smelled like rotting vegetation and blood.
When the man finished, Cal turned back to face him and smiled, even as the man fit huge, meaty hands around his neck and began to squeeze. Cal kept smiling as he slid his stolen bread knife out of his crumpled breeches and pressed it, gently, into the highwayman’s side. The man squealed like an animal and threw himself away, clawing at the bleeding hole in his side. Cal followed, climbing on top of him and sliding the knife into the man’s chest, first the left side, then the right, and then straight through the throat. He choked, eyes bulging, and clawed at Cal even as he drowned in his own blood. Cal watched as his struggles grew weaker and more pathetic, like a pinned butterfly, and saw the moment when the light left his piggy little eyes.
Cal stayed for a moment longer, memorizing the face of his first murder. Then he sawed the knife, sideways, cutting the throat practically in two. He would have taken the head, but the knife was too dull to saw through bone.
Then he stripped off his clothes and stomped them into the red mud. He pulled the courier’s tunic and leggings off of stiff limbs and belted them with the highwayman’s leather belt. He found the horse tied by the water. It shied from him, smelling the death on his clothes. Cal smiled at it, gentling the creature with whispers and soft touches. The horse calmed and Cal climbed into the saddle, his feet barely touching the stirrups. He nudged the horse forward, following the river.
He rode for the city gates, calmly, smiling at the sheer size of the stone walls surrounding so much humanity. Keeping out as much as it was keeping in. He could smell the musk of hundreds of thousands of people, packed together like cattle. Cal licked his lips.
The guards eyed him, probably confused by his size. But Cal didn’t stop, and they didn’t make him, letting him pass into the city.
The streets were crowded and alive, people pushing against each other and rushing about like blood through veins. Cal felt warm shoulders and creeping hands brush his legs as he rode past. He smiled.
He tied the horse to a water trough and walked away. He let the crowds carry him back and forth, until he ended up in a dim alleyway. He paused, smelling waste and filth, and waited. It wasn’t twenty minutes before a hand closed on his arm and he was dragged deeper into the shadows.
This man actually kissed him before spinning him around and pushing him into the wall. Cal licked his lips, tasting liquor and smoke. Because he was feeling generous, he let the man finish before turning around and sliding the smooth edge of his knife through his throat. The man stumbled and fell and Cal watched him kick and struggle and die. This time he did take the head. His knife was much sharper, now.
He watched the rivulets of blood soak into the cobblestones and thought, stop me, God. Come and stop me.
His breeches were the only thing ruined, spattered with blood. He stepped over the fallen head and found another alley, dark enough that his stained breeches didn’t matter.
Very soon, there were more hands.
This city is drowning, Cal thought. In blood and in lust, it is filling its lungs and sinking into nothing. He licked his lips, chasing liquor and smoke, and smiled.
He could relate.
The following year found Cal in another city. The year after that, he’d crossed the border into a country who’s name he didn’t know. That winter he followed a caravan into an abbey, where the friars let him stay, trading work for food. He learned their language by watching and listening, but did not speak. The friars thought him simple and left him alone.
But one particular friar found him staring at a tapestry with unwavering focus and told him that the story woven in thread was woven with words, as well. Cal let the man tell him that story, and others, tucked away in warm towers with piles of dusty books of old histories and even older legends.
Cal watched the friar, carefully, looking for the smallest trace of God in him as he performed his chores, sang his prayers. But all he saw was a man, as quiet and calm as the black lake. Cal lay awake at night, wanting to sink his teeth into the friar’s throat, feel his dying song reverberating against his open mouth, drink down his stillness. But the winter outside howled and snarled, and Cal knew that that was a baptism he would not survive. Instead, he waited, and learned, and smiled.
Spring came slowly, heralded only by wetter, heavier snow and the occasional burst of sun. On a particularly calm week, Cal watched red blossoms form on the bare branches of the trees, bright and hopeful, until a late, bitter freeze stole the life from the petals, browning them and scattering them on the snow like congealing blood.
Cal scooped up a handful of blood and snow and pressed it to his cheek, to his mouth, tasting the cold.
That night he climbed onto his friar while he slept and pressed a hand over his mouth to stop his screams, pinching his nose with the other.
“Thank you for your lessons,” he told the friar in his new tongue, savoring the blackness that swelled in the friar’s frightened eyes. He kept watching as the man struggled and flailed, fighting the black water that Cal could taste in the back of his throat.
One of yours, God, Cal crowed. But now he’s mine.
The friar’s eyes fluttered and closed and he went limp.
And Cal released him, feeling the barest stir of breath from the friar’s lips.
Cal pressed a warm, wet kiss to his forehead and whispered, in his own language, “Mine.”
There is no God. There is only me.
He left the abbey that night and headed south, tired of deadening snow and flowers that bled like virgins on their wedding night, passive and slow. He craved warmth, sunlight, and growing, rotting, furious life.
Cal was seventeen when he felt the bite of lust. He was nursing a beer in a strange tavern when a small, nervous barmaid nudged his elbow for the second time in half an hour. He glanced at her and caught her fleeting, blushing look as she fled. He felt a pull in his gut and realized that she would be beautiful under him, squirming and breathless and oh so afraid.
He nearly bent the metal mug in his hands as his skin seemed to contract at the thought. But he kept his stillness, waiting for her to venture closer, driven by a slick need that he could smell. The next time she looked, he caught her eyes and held them. She froze, transfixed. Cal smiled.
She smiled in return, quivering and so painfully, deliciously hopeful. Cal felt fire bite him, like the hands, except this was black and hungry and impatient.
That stopped him, that desire to lunge, take, have, nownownow. He knew hunger, and he knew want. But this was different, woven into his bones. It made him wary, wondering if this was God’s work at last.
He wanted her. He wanted to feel her sweat and hear her cry and taste her last, shuddering breath. He wanted to trace her shivers with the tip of his blade and lap up the red trails left behind.
Fornication, he thought. The sin I have not tasted.
The hands took and pushed, and he gave and waited for his turn. But this was something new.
Well, Cal thought, smiling. I’ll try anything once.
And the next time the little barmaid met his eye, he tossed his head at the door and rose to leave. She blushed and hurried to collect his mug, whispering that she would meet him in the hour as she hurried past.
Cal waited by the stables, enjoying the dim shadows. Familiar.
But he enjoyed it more when the little barmaid crept into the light, looking around furtively, face flushed and hands fisted in her apron. Cal waited until she started to fidget, letting the sound of her signing nerves soothe the burning in his blood. Then he shifted, deliberately, and she jumped with a squeak.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, when she saw him. “I didna see you there, m’lord.”
Cal smiled and said nothing.
The maid recovered herself and sidled closer.
“Was th’ dinner to your liking?” she asked, voice a whisper.
Is she trying to sound coy, Cal thought? Or must she talk to keep from losing her nerve?
He tested his theory by reaching out, fast, and snatching up her little wrist. She gasped and Cal felt her nerve almost break. He smiled at her, and pulled her close, stroking her face with gentle fingertips, calming her as he would a spooked horse. She twitched for a moment, and then melted into him. The fire bit like a snake, and Cal let his smile turn, let a little of his stillness show. The maid sensed the change and shifted against him.
“M’lord?”
Cal spun her and pressed her to the wall. She gasped but arched against him, even though her eyes were still too wide. Cal continued to smile with only a sliver of his desire showing through, and stepped closer. The maid bucked against him with animal sounds, voice high and wavering. Cal wanted to hear it break.
He pressed fingers into her flesh, feeling give where he knew he had none, and she sighed. He pushed at her skirts and she let him, little hands clenched tight on his shoulders. It was warm and soft, underneath, and she hiccupped when he pressed closer.
He withdrew and tasted his fingers. Warmth and salt and musk. Too sweet, too cloying. He froze.
The maid rocked against him, oblivious, her sounds becoming more and more piteous. She reached up, took a handful of his hair, and tugged.
“Please,” she whispered.
Cal felt his smile slip and he shoved her back, into the wall. She gasped and her eyes flew open. Startled, confused. Afraid.
The fear started to override the sickly scent of her, and Cal smiled, again. He shoved her, again, knocking her head against the wall. She winced, a little hurt sound sliding out of her throat. Cal did it again, harder, and the sound was louder.
“Please,” she whispered, begging now, but for a different reason. Cal felt the fire swell and pressed closer, one hand on her throat, holding her down. She flailed, weakly, trying to push him away.
He could still smell her.
He pulled out his knife and delighted in the rush of terror in her eyes for just a moment before shoving the blade deep, deep into her.
She made a choked sound and kicked at him, but he was holding her too close.
He slid the knife out a little, before pushing it back in, a sick mockery of the violation of hands and breeches and dim, slick alleyways. He did it again, and again.
The little maid shook with every thrust, her hands fluttering and weak now. All Cal could smell was blood. He licked his lips and then licked hers, tasting copper and death. The little maid let out one little sound, a sad, soft sigh, and then slumped in his hold.
Cal pulled away from her and let her slump to the ground. She wasn’t dead, not yet. Cal’s body was thrumming, alive. He didn’t want her.
He licked his knife, everything to his wrist slicked black with gore. The blood was bitter with the taste of her insides. He spat it back out. He didn’t want that, either.
He left her there, in a growing puddle of her own bitter, disgusting fluid, stole a horse, and continued south.
By the time Cal was twenty-five, he had another name. Eater of the Dead. A black wraith that haunted the shadows of good, God-fearing towns and carved into the bodies of the poor men who crossed his path. The Eater always took something, cutting off heads, sawing off fingers, carving out eyes. Pieces of his victims to feed his dark, evil appetites.
The nickname amused Cal. Yes, he took trophies, but not to eat. His hunger never pushed him that far. He started calling himself the Eater when he was out hunting, searching the dimness for the hands that would push and claw and press, foreplay for the main event, when Cal could glut himself on his own power.
There is no God, he would cry, scream, howl. There is only this.
But it was not just bloodlust that drove him. Cal was searching. He followed ancient trade routes through forbidden mountains, daring something, anything to stop him. He broke into temples and robbed them of their greatest treasures.
Their knowledge.
Cal once found a temple carved into the face of the mountain, itself, home to some of the oldest and most forbidden tomes of lore. He climbed the stone gate and killed the monks, throwing their bodies over the edge of the mountain, into the abyss. He spent the winter there, poring over book after book of ancient stories of wars long past, generals and kings who rose and fell, empires that burned because of men. All of it, the work of men.
There was only one book, the one book, that declared God a reality, and in a fit of nostalgia, Cal read it cover to cover once, twice, and then threw it into the abyss. Maybe it would keep the monks company.
I weird myself out, sometimes.
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Powerful.
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