#inthebeastsshadow

I stabbed and I stabbed, for there was nothing else to do.

For days I stayed still, catatonic, under the shade it cast. For days there was a glimmer of hope that they would come for me.

My brother, my uncle, my countrymen. Someone would come with a plan, someone would come with a care.

But the reality of my life has always been the opposite. No one ever comes. No one ever cares. So I grabbed a sword and walked to its massive foot. Whatever fear I had ever had was a distant memory. I was hungry. I was tired beyond belief and besides it all, I was hung over. There was nothing else to distract me from my heartbreak. From the perfect knowledge of the human I had grown to be, a stark opposite to my father.

I stabbed it. I stabbed its foot for an hour, but it did not react. It did not kill me. It probably did not know how to hurt me without killing me, it still needed me to escape and lead it to another city. The only reason I got through his skin, that I managed to draw blood, was because it ignored me. It took me hours and ten blades, but eventually, the rock cracked and opened to show flesh and blood.

I knew the hour was coming when it would be too hungry. It would eat me and try to make its way back to the oasis. The idea of being eaten was horrifying, but what was horror after you’ve been forced to familiarize yourself with the sight and smell of a city of corpses? Of all the vomit and excrement, and now the blood of a monster.

I was so thirsty. So hungry. So...out of it.

Before I knew it, I was bent down. Biting into the flesh of this gigantic killer. I knew I was no more of an ant, but if it ignored me so, I would at least eat.

Why I did not kill myself, I will never know. It is an odd mentality to have, to throw yourself at death and yet refuse to bring it in yourself. But at that moment, something occurred to me. As I looked down at the negligible wound on its foot, I thought back to a soldier I had seen die from a splinter to the finger.

It had gotten infected. He had gotten sick.

I grinned.

With bloody teeth inside a parasitic mouth, I grinned. I grinned with all the passion of a murderous psychopath, looking up at its patient stoic expression with slimy hair grabbing onto my forehead. I will never live down what I did that day. I snatched cockroaches, bugs, I caught a rat, and I shoved them into the wound. I grabbed a piece of a corpse that was more fly than meat, and I scraped the bare flesh with it. For what felt like hours. I grabbed a spear and passed it over multiple corpses, across puddles of dried up blood and maggot-filled meat, I infected it as much as possible, then I went back to stabbing. I stabbed until my arms were dead.

Laughing maniacally the whole time. I had gone mad. Crazy.

“You keep me in the shade,” I would yell out, “you ignore all that I do, and all that I am” I screamed. “That will be your downfall!” It barely felt me, it hardly cared about me, but I had gone insane. “I WILL BE YOUR DOWNFALL!”

I was an ant, biting at a titan. At a god monster destined to slaughter us all but I did not care, I just laughed and spiraled worse and worse. And as much as I laughed that day...it was nothing. Nothing compared to two days later...

I was lying down, having given up...my mood again flattened, my tears again running. No one was coming. No one cared to come for me. And then I heard it. It was like a thunder, always like a thunder, only this time it wasn’t intimidating or scary, it was actually exhilarating. Maddeningly exhilarating. 

The corner I hid in was filled with the sounds of my sobbing and its slow patient breathing. It waits for me to move. It waits for me to lead it.

If anyone can read this, know that the beast has learned to listen!

It first attacked us during night time. We thought it had been unlucky, we blamed the smell of the dejects amassed as we had been lax to handle the disposal. None of us who survived its attack were brave or courageous, we immediately fled to the nearest city.

It attacked the city the next day. I was left behind, assumed dead, but I woke up hours later to find the beast in waiting. It was the first thing I saw and fear gripped me so tightly I could not move. I did not move.

It waited for long hours before is suddenly started to walk, and I recognized the direction, it had been towards the nearest city.

It has learned to discern our footsteps. Our voices. It did not hear me once it was moving but if it stands still, it can do this!

I fled to another city, a farther one. Four days later, runaways from the city I had seen it walking towards arrived, and sure enough, one day later, it arrived. That was when I realized it was following the survivors to the next city.

I panicked. Its attack was stronger than, I think, it expected. Few people were left. And me. They all tried to escape, all five of them, but I used the crossbow! I had to, they wouldn’t listen to me, they would just lead it to the next city, I had to!

But now here I lie. It waits for me to move. It stands still. I walked out for a few hours, went around, next to it, came back, and still it stood like a giant flag.

It was then I stopped, and for more than a day have I lay immobile in this bedroom floor, hoping every second that the ground will tremble as a sign it is leaving...doing something beyond my power. A hope unfulfilled.

I want to run away. But I can’t. I don’t know what to do, I wish you were here, brother, you would know what to do. But me? All I can do...I think of running to the next city and attempting to evacuate everyone before the beast arrives, but we all have to go somewhere, we can’t keep walking and even then, it can just be impatient and get us on the move. I can grab a mount and just race through everywhere, but on the other hand, it is now currently stuck. Because I am not moving, it is stuck.

No...I have to stay, I have to hope it can’t hear me writing this and I have to stay, if there’s one thing I refuse to fail at, it is at dying.