A Mobster Vignette

There was a dim blue light that flickered on and off at one end of the dock and a couple of yellow ones at the corner of two warehouses in front of me. One of the warehouses had a hose and had containers of fish all around it. Shipping containers and smaller goods were scattered about towards the ocean side of the dock; As if the workers had finished up their hours and just clocked out leaving most things unattended.

I stood next to a large shipping container and felt the tiny droplets of after hour sea mist kissing the stubble on my face. I had a nice, wide brim jazz fedora on but it would seem that mist permeates everything, perhaps even my soul. I wore a long beige overcoat and had on black, skin tight leather gloves.

There was a long wooden staircase leading down to the docks from the road above and looking up at it, I noticed the shuffling steps of my contact. He was a jumpy little shit, mid 30's and already thought he owned the world. Hell, he made it longer than most I guess.

He got to the bottom step and tripped a little.

"God damn! Shit! Fucking stairs..."

There was no need for him to swear like that but it did make me feel a little better. He walked out toward the middle of the dock and stood there rubbing his hands together from under a long black overcoat.

His eyes were blue; his hair brown and slightly Auburn in places. It had been greased up but was starting to fall apart in the damp sea mist air. He would pull it back and then continue rubbing his hands together.

I watched him through the cloak of darkness for a bit as I prepared. Walking up, I focused on the sound of my jet black wingtips hitting the boards of the dock.

"Hey! Don't get any closer" He said drawing his gun, a snub nose .38.

"Relax Tim. You're a bit jumpy tonight, ya?" I said.

Putting away his revolver, he said, "Oh. It's only you, D."

"Yeah, pal. It's only me."

Shuffling with something in his coat, he pulled out a curled up manilla envelope and handed it to me.

"D, it's fucking cold out here, you got the money?"

"Just let me take a look at the file."

I began reading through the file and looking at the documents.

"Do you remember when we were 12 and we smoked cigarettes in the little rock cave behind your house?"

"Yeah. What the hell is wrong with you? This ain't no time to be nostalgic," he said, looking both ways up and down the dock. "Say where's your car, D?"

"I got dropped off. Jimmy and the boys are coming to pick me up in a bit."

"How is old Jimmy? I always liked him. That's why I'm helping him now, you know?"

"Has anyone else seen this file, Tim?"

He paused and looked at me with his hands in front of him. "No. Why would you ask that? You know I pinched it, right after the Detective gave it to me."

"Good boy, Tim."

I put my arm around him and told him, "hey, let's take a walk, there's too much light over here by the warehouses."

"I agree. You know I can't get caught. I'm one step away from suspension for what I done for you guys. I think they may suspect something. You know, Amanda and the baby would..."

I pulled my .45 from my side, put it to his head and pulled the trigger in one swift motion.

Instantly, my face was covered in blood and brain matter but I felt tiny droplets of after hour sea mist kissing the stubble on my face. Using my cloth handkerchief which was also partially wet from the sea air, I wiped off the gun handle and tossed it in the ocean. Then I wiped off my face.

Using my foot, I pushed Tim's body into the deep water beneath the dock and watched him sink. I washed what was left of Tim into the ocean with the hose and started toward the road.

Noticing a flicker from somewhere down the dock towards the city, I decided to investigate. By a burn barrel, there was a bum warming his hands. No one else was there but he looked up and saw my face. He didn't even try to run as I used his own shirt to choke him to death; only a slight defiant wriggle to consummate his denoument. Jimmy was waiting by the road in the truck and I hoped in.

"Is it done?" Jimmy asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"Any witnesses?" He asked.

"No," I said.

"Good. WELL... poor Timmy. He was a good guy," Jimmy said.

"Yeah..." I said, looking out at the ocean and the moon just starting to peek out from the clouds.

Breaking the mold

Chapter 9: The difference between father and son.

The voice asked again.  [PLEASE ASSESS HUMANITY AND DETERMINE ITS VALUE TO THE TAYLORN.]

Inside my head the voice was so cold and logical.  Had I really been this way as a being of light and energy? Was it really who I may have to be again?

[DJINN, YOU WERE ALLOWED THIS EXPERIMENT TO EXPLAIN TO US WHAT IT IS TO BE A CORPOREAL HUMAN BEING.  WE EXPECTED RESULTS TO EXPLAIN THEIR CURIOUS BEHAVIORS.  PLEASE EXPLAIN NOW.]

The voice in my head boomed these demands.  No one could hear it but me. As they continued to yell, my Taylorn brain began to grow and try to come up with an explanation.  There had to be a quantifiable way to explain love, hate, fear, anger, FRUSTRATION!

[TAYLORN COLLECTIVE: THERE ARE THINGS WE HAVE FORGOTTEN...]

[WE KNOW ALL THERE IS IN THE UNIVERSE. THERE IS NOTHING WE HAVE FORGOTTEN.]

[YOU FORGET EMOTION. YOU FORGET FEAR.  WHAT IS THERE YOU HAVE TO FEAR WHEN YOU KNOW ALL THINGS?]

[WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND]

[YOU WOULDN'T.  THERE IS NO WHERE TO GO FOR YOU. EVEN DEATH ITSELF HAS NO MEANING TO YOU.  WHAT DO WE VALUE AS TAYLORN]

[WE ARE THE KEEPERS OF THE UNIVERSE.  WE HAVE NO VALUE SAVE EXPLORATION AND THE STUDY OF ALL THAT LIVES WITHIN THIS UNIVERSE]

[THERE IS A BEAUTIFUL SIMPLICITY TO LIFE THAT WE HAVE FORGOTTEN. A FEAR OF OUR OWN EPHEMERAL NATURE CRADLES OUR CREATIVITY AND VISION]

[EXPLAIN VISION, DJINN. THERE IS LAWS AND RULES OF NATURE BUT WHAT IS VISION?]

[VISION IS WHAT HUMANS USE TO FORGE A PATH. TO  TRY THINGS DESPITE THEIR PROBABILITY TO FAIL.]

I would not know it but later would be able to see it through the collective consciousness of my bretheren; My eyes, nose, ears and mouth had begun to bleed. My "spirit" or rather the Taylorn consciousness in me had begun to expand and the body I inhabited was unable to contain it. It would be like a sippy cup trying to contain a nuclear reaction.

[YOU DO NOT HAVE MUCH TIME, DJINN. YOU WILL SOON BE ONE OF US AND YOU WILL BE UNABLE TO RELATE TO THE HUMAN FORM.]

[DADDY!]

[WHA... WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME?]

[DADDY! THIS IS NOT A CONCEPT YOU WILL UNDERSTAND. LOVE IS UNNECESSARY WHEN YOU HAVE NO PHYSICAL BOND TO THAT WHICH YOU LOVE. YOU LOOK AT TIME AS AN ETERNAL CONSTANT AND WHY THEN WOULD YOU RELATE TO A CHILD? DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER THAT I AM YOUR CHILD? DADDY, THERE WAS ONCE A TIME YOU SMILED AND FELT A WARMTH FOR ME. THERE IS NO WARMTH IN THE DARKNESS OF ETERNAL SPACE. THERE IS NO BOUNDARY TO WHAT YOU HAVE TO CONQUER OR EXPLORE. YOU DON'T EVEN SEEK TO CONQUER AS THE CONCEPT WOULD BE FOREIGN AND USELESS TO YOU. MANKIND ARE CHILDREN! THE WORLD IS ALWAYS NEW AND EXCITING TO THEM. THEY BICKER OVER TOYS THAT GET BIGGER AND MORE COMPLEX AS THEY AGE BUT THEY WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO KEEP THE KNOWLEDGE THAT WE HAVE ACCUMULATED BECAUSE THINGS IN THEIR WORLD ARE BOUND BY THE LIMITS OF THEIR FORM AND SUBSTANCE. IT IS THE SAME WAY THAT WE WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THEIR PALTRY BUT MEANINGFUL LIVES. THEY ARE CHILDREN. BEAUTIFUL AND SIMPLE, VIOLENT AND YET HUNGRY AND CURIOUS. WE ARE SO FAR BEYOND THAT, THAT WE CAN NEVER LOOK BACK AND RELATE. TO DESCRIBE TO YOU, DADDY, THE LOVE FOR A CHILD, I WOULD HAVE TO DESCRIBE TO YOU WHAT LOVE IS IN YOUR COLD IMMORTALITY. PERHAPS I HAVE MUCH TO LEARN THOUGH. I WILL REJOIN YOU SHORTLY AND BEGIN AGAIN.]

[YOU ARE WRONG, SON. EVER HAVE I HOPED FOR YOUR FULFILLMENT. I SEE YOUR LIFE DIFFERENTLY THAN THAT OF A MORTAL BUT FOR THEM I WISH THEIR ENTIRE SPECIES LONG LIFE. WE WATCH HUMANS WITH DISTANT "EMOTION." HOWEVER, WE CAN APPRECIATE THAT THEY HAVE IT. WE ARE ETERNAL, SO WE HOPED TO UNDERSTAND THROUGH YOU. YOU CANNOT EXPLAIN TO US ANY MORE THAN WE CAN SEE IN OBSERVATION. THIS IS A PITY BUT NOT UNEXPECTED. WE WILL PROTECT THEIR RACE AND PERHAPS, THROUGH YOUR FORCE REJOINING US, WE WILL BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND, JUST A LITTLE BIT.]

My body began to seize and I fell over in my wheel chair by the window of the Tall Oaks Nursing home. The official cause of death was massive cerebral hemorrhage. The doctors would tell each other they'd never seen anything like it before and write papers on it. A few of the nurses would even try to create failed religions around it.

Overall I rejoined my people and went back to keeping the universe the night I died, the night sky would glow with color that no one would ever understand or be able to explain.

The human experience is like that of a father and son. One thinks they bear the weight of the world, the other actually does. Neither will understand each other because neither are each other. That's okay. We all have our roles to play. Yours, human, is to make your world a little bit better, every day.

Sincerely,

Djinn, Second of the Taylorn collective.

The wayward Taylorian

Seeing her from across the room, her exquisite beauty moved me.  In forever, there is no beauty.  There is no pleasure or sin or pain.  I am nothing like the vampire of legend though: craven creatures who avoid death by stealing life.  Neither am I like the immortal master of magic who seeks immortality as a means to an ends.  Power, most of the time, being that end.

In any case, it amuses me what humanity thinks up to explain the immortal.  That we have to have some sort of driving force or reason to exist.  Sometimes, however, we do not. I could not describe to you the wisdom of the universe because you would never understand.  I could not describe to you what the feeling of being able to be everywhere at once feels like but as a literal part of what you call god, that is a piece of the knowledge I am imbued with. The burden, however is not the moments that I live as an angel: omni-present and part of a collective will that makes up existence itself; but the moments like now: where I sit on a crooked stool, in a seedy bar, staring across the room at a being they consider divine.

She has no idea, either. She came here as a being of pure light and energy and truncated to be in this form.  She sought a creature of the same strength and ability.  They both forfeit the existence they led, one on the path to experimentation, the other on the path to companionship.  A movie I once watched... or was it a show? Or a book perhaps? It doesn't matter. The media's character stated that sensory inputs can be adapted to what we expect to be true and in time, they are even missed.  That's the feeling an immortal feels for another as an, "angel." every once in a while, however, we get to be flesh and blood; which is the greatest gift and the most heavy burden.  So you can understand why I wanted to make the most of the time I had here.

Her flowing red hair was like fire in colors I'd never seen before. the curvature of her form was equally as impressive and enticing.  When you live among all creation you see patterns in the way of the universe and like fire or the fluctuating plasma of a living star, the human form is capable of such personality; especially in a vibrant woman of about 28 years of age.

The powers that be might punish me if they cared about such an encounter but I wanted to know her before I'd come here to do what I'd come here to do.  I moved across the room without a sound.  To be perfectly honest, I'd forgotten how to walk and so i surreptitiously floated across the floor to where I stood behind her and then sat down next to her.

She turned to me and looked me up and down.  In my human form, I was an echo of my angelic form in the best humanity had to offer.  I stood at around 6'5" and my musculature echoed someone who was bursting with vitality and health.  It is easier for an angel to put itself in a body that embodies perfection because it is what "god" designed angels to be.

She gazed up at me and said, "Well aren't you a tall drink of water?"

"Beg your pardon?" I responded.

"Well, there are 6 other empty stools at this bar and you happened to choose the one next to me. I don't think you are ashamed or looking for anyone or anything else," she said.

I let out a guttural seizure which I would later remember was a laugh, as I spoke, "No ma'am.  I am not looking for anyone else.  You are exactly the mo... person I am here to see."

She must not have noticed my slip because her eyes became hot with desire. "I am no easy ticket, mister.  I hope you know I won't go quietly."

"I wasn't expecting you to, my dear," I said. "Dolph."

"Karen," She responded. "Isn't Dolph one of those German names? Very abrupt and strong but to the ear it's almost offensive."

"I'd hate to offend you, Karen; However the consonance in the beginning of your name, could be construed to be just as perceivably vexing. To violate the human sense of dignity is rather simple in my humble opinion. One could even say that to assume the name that was more salacious, simply because of the advantage one would get from having it, is the work of psychopaths and sycophants."

"Easy tiger," She said, "you got the win.  No need to go in for the kill."

"Ah but the hunt always ends with the kill, doesn't it?"

She looked hard into my eyes and I may have used a bit of angelic power to put her racing mind at ease but as she settled back into her seat, she said, "well you are something special, ain't ya?"

The streets were empty when we left the bar and there was a warm fog rolling through the quarter.  It might have been a perfect hunting time for any preternatural beast of the night but I was no beast and I was not one they'd get anywhere near were they to choose to let themselves be known right now.  No trick in the movies, television shows or anything else matches the power of existence itself so I walked the slender street without fear.

When we got to her apartment I held her in my arms. Her green eyes beamed through the yellow street lamp outside her window and the vacillating colors of the various lights permeated the room like fireworks.  She attacked me like a hungry lion and I would bring the force right back. the sensation of her dress slipping to the floor, the sound it made as it slid off her body like covers tucking one into bed. The silken feel of her skin as my fingers felt pins and needles as they drew across it.  Not to mention there was the slight bit of floating just off the ground as I held her in my arms and kissed her body from every direction.

The great din of her passion was the loudest noise of the whole thing.  Her hot breath on my neck as we moved into each other like bantering Beatrice and Benedict, was more intoxicating than the whiskey I had sampled earlier that night. The undulating passion of the night and its glowing lights matched ours with such reverberation that it felt like a great win of some battle for true freedom. As we reached the climax of her pleasure and mine; as the world seemed fluorescent, I took her from the body she'd inhabited and let her slip away dignified into death.

The coroner would later determine it a heart attack but the spirit that left her would remember who it was as it had lived through many millennia of thoughts and experiences.  The unfair part of this death was that the person who she was as a human being was gone.  Everything that made her exciting and new was dead.  Immortality comes at a cost: immense knowledge and cosmic understanding but the trifles that make life so interesting: feelings and curiosity, fade away.  She was now the immortal that her race had become when they converted themselves to energy.  She would not die a human being but her "spirit" would grow and multiply in the form of energy and become as it was before she stole this human life: pure energy and the consciousness of a Taylorian.  That however, is someone else's story to tell.

Breaking the mold

Chapter 8: humanity

In my slumber, I communicated with my people and was able to expand my mind as wide as it would go; however, during my days, I had no memory of my Taylorn existence. Even now, only bits and pieces come back to me.

It is strange how memory works. We can go our entire lives as angry young men and in the impotence of dementia, we seem to only remember the most poignant of memories.

To give an example, it has been years since the dark times in the human body but I remember a girl. I was 10 or 11 perhaps but she ran around the playground with flowing wavy, blonde hair. She wore a pink windbreaker and smelled of strawberries.
In retrospect, I'm not sure if she actually smelled of strawberries or if it was simply my favorite of the human smells but she was perfect in the light of the dawn. That mid-morning light when children go to play without the luxury of complicated playground equipment and rather a wood chip floor with a metal ceiling to accompany their demure fragility.

There she was and there I was and she was in love with another little boy as I stood on the outside looking in. I was the child who couldn't remember how to ask to go to the bathroom in Spanish so the Spanish teacher let me wet my pants. I was the kid who put periods between words as I had not mastered the intricacies of the English language and yet... Ah, the immortality of that bubble in my shapelessness now.

I remember as a young man, I once stopped at a stop light and in a day dream, I accidentally unlocked a smidgen of my Taylorn consciousness.  For a moment, not only did I feel like I didn't belong in this world but I felt disassociated from my body as well.  Think of a time that you were at a party that some friend had dragged you to and then left you with people you didn't know or recognize.  Now what if one of those people was yourself?

Life was a blur to me. So much violence and recklessness. I remember trying to destroy my mind with drugs as a young man. The strain of philosophy and complex algorithms I did not understand weighed on my mind as they had on my form as an energy creature.

I endured great pain at the hands of mortal villains because of my awkwardness. I simply tried to enjoy the fruit of humanity without focusing on the bitterness of it and was often ostracized for my troubles. Some line in the Sand that humans would always draw between each other and then tell me that I couldn't cross it because it might make someone uncomfortable.

As years passed in my human form I crammed myself full of everything they had to offer and it was never enough. Books seemed dull and they missed their obvious motifs; equations missed a denominator or variable which would inevitably unlock the universe to them. I never shared with any of them my findings. I realized that they were too young and in my 73rd year of life, I began to awaken. My human mind began to die and with it, it released my Taylorn thoughts more and more.

The irony is I would sit by the window looking out into space and would secretly be imbued with such knowledge of the universe, even if I could relay the message to younger humans, they would never understand.

This race was too focused on its selfishness on the things that made them different to ever understand how they could be pure energy that observed the laws of strict relativity.

In my wheel chair, I sat by an open window. A nurse sat by close at hand. I felt the breeze and heard a voice. It was Taylorn and called to me for an assessment of humanity.

The swoon of war

The preternatural fog came rolling in over the hills from the cannon fire still shelling the mainland over the not too distant hills. Fuille stood next to the door in a shed that barely stood next to a half-standing house.

Through the fog of war and poison gas, shock troops came with flame throwers and bayonets burning and stabbing or shooting the survivors of this recently shelled village. Fuille had lost his pistol and his rifle in the struggle of escaping an enemy platoon but he still held strong to an 18 inch survival knife. He considered it lucky as he was Jewish and the number 18 was sacred to him. It was his pride and joy and he expected it to save him today.

The extermination squad drew nearer as Fuille's heart began to beat harder till it felt like it would explode. Sweat ran down his exposed back from where a grenade had burned his shirt off from the collar to his trousers.

The only light in the air was red with flecks of yellow flames and he could see them now as he ceased sharpening his knife to conceal the noise of it. The black gas mask shown through the dim light as the majority of the enemy passed by the shed where Fuille was hiding.

A few troops stood around smoking a cigarette, laughing and breaking glass and rock. They spoke in a foreign tongue that stung his ears with hatred. The soldiers began to move off and he slid down the shed door in relief as he heard their voices moving off.

Fuille looked into the void of the shed and pondered how everyone he knew was likely dead and possibly just missing. He pictured their faces and began going through his memories of them and let out a small whimper and a tear before tightening straight up.

Someone was still there. Fuille could hear his foot falls among the sound of flames coming towards the door. As the door slowly squeaked open, Fuille could see the front of the gas mask which he grabbed and broke the glass in the eye holes, pulling the soldier's back against his chest.

Plunging the 18 inch knife under the soldier's ribs slowly, he began to struggle and the gas mask slipped off. Underneath was a boy of about 20. His innocence caused a swoon as Fuille spoke, "shhh shhh shhh."

The life slipped from him and Fuille held him like a father holds a sleeping babe. Romantic wasn't completely the feeling but there was a romance to death. As Fuille guided him to the floor, he held him and cried in fear, anger and remorse for humanity.

Fuille sat in the mud holding the dead body in his arms and in what he would later find was mental shock, he drifted into the darkness holding his victim.

Life after death

Contessa wandered the chaotic crowd with the blood of a demonic immortal on her. Roedric's naked body lay motionless on the floor. People ran left and right in front of her eyes as they rammed into each other and some even got trampled to death.

There was a calm in her soul despite the chaos and evil permeated her with all the times he'd made love to her and roughly. She had no idea that evil had infected her too but she was glad to be rid of him.

All of a sudden she became painfully aware that things had changed for her. The people around her seemed to move slowly. they moved so slowly that when she moved through the crowd time seemed as if it would stop and then begin slowly again when she stopped.

She reached out and would circle men and women who ran with fear on their faces from some unknown terror that drove men mad. It wasn't the monster anymore because the monster was dead but rather the lack of monster that left good men to their own devices and left a void for a great evil that had to be filled.

She became painfully aware of the ground beneath her feet as she realized her shoes had melted off. Great cobblestones which should have hurt but the pads on her feet had grown thick and she began to realize that it was not her feet that she now walked with.

"Even in death, you plague me, Roedric," she mumbled.

A voice came from the dark recesses of her mind and spoke.

"You've invited me in sorcerer."

She instantly recognized Roedric's pet name and voice. They had been in the magicians guild together and she was no stranger to magic, however things were happening to her that were not in her normal repertoire.

"I killed you, monster."

There was a laughter in her skull as she felt her self moving away from the town at such incredible speed that the terrifying momentum became like a great vortex that tore her clothes from her.

In the spinning darkness, she saw something come through and run a gaunt gray finger up her naked side.

"You killed the possibility of good. For no man is an island once he's become what we are," said the dark creature in Roedric's voice.

"You see, Contessa, Man is given a second chance only so many times."

"I gave you second and third and fourth chances and you blew them all, Roedric!"

The great laughter reverberated through her again.

"Is that who you think I am?"

There was a silence as she was struck deaf.

"Roedric is dead. You killed him. All that's left is in your mind. You have a construct of what you remember about him but being infected with the disease he had, I am now you. I sound like Roedric because that is what you know to call this disease but your soul fights itself now."

There was a silence when she realized that she could no longer blame Roedric for the way she felt inside. The demon turned into a plague of fingers that crawled up her legs like thousands of spiders. They permeated her skin pours, they lapped at her sex. They caressed each sinew into growth as she began to rise a new.

The phoenix is said to rebirth from flames and the vampire sees each blossom of the night as if he were seeing heaven but this was neither. This was a rage that permeated her newly preternatural soul.

It writhed inside of her like a great snake that struck her heart with a fatal blow filling it with venom.

At twelve feet tall she was only a few feet above where Roedric stood but she was ten times as fierce. Her hunger for blood was fueled by what he had done to her and where she was once broken she filled the holes with rage.

The town stood quiet as a few kingsman went round picking up and fixing the destruction wrought from the earlier scene. It had been two days and there was still blood around the village that could not be scrubbed off.

"Out out damn spot..." sang a village custodian in bemused irony.

The royal blue and ashen flags were no longer waving but rather an eerie calm had struck the town at this moonless night.

There was a slight breeze but they only caressed the banners as much as a poor player whose jokes were told to a deaf crowd.

The giant doors that stood at the entrance to the town looked out into the woods like sentinels guarding a gold filled keep. From the woods, there were noises that befit the night and some that did not; however there was none like the explosion that came from a woman scorned and a demon born.

What thrust itself towards the great stocky doors was not, by any means an average Were. It had the body of a wolf but the wings of a bat and the head of a dragon. It was as if the changeling virus that permeated your average Were had mutated into what the scorned mind could make it.

Each transformation into Were was different as any hunter of them would tell you. That is why the legend varies from place to place but she was more dragon than wolf and as she slithered from the tall oaks, the doors seemed to cower in fear as the rocked back and forth with the wind that came from her movement.

There was first a loud crash as the bolt behind them fractured but held. Then the second crash blew them off their hinges and crushed half a house that stood not 10 feet away. Those inside were killed instantly not from rubble but from the shock wave which shook their nervous system loose and destroyed all life within them.

Her violence permeated the village as some ran from their houses and others simply stayed inside and prayed until they too were crushed from reverberations and falling debris.

Her siege lasted hours as she destroyed the village that failed to warn her. The people that failed to stop her from Roedric's charm.

As the siege ended and the town lay burning in rubble, all 12,000 souls who lived there lay dead in a barricade of rubble.

She sat at the center of the destruction and seemed taller than when the transformation first occurred. The fur burned off of her and the scales of the dragon formed underneath it to protect her from the flames.

By morning a full grown dragon sat atop the rubble and began to slowly shrink to a naked woman lying atop a pile of ashes. Not a soul had told so not a soul knew but as she lay atop the still warm heap of a life she had just burned to the ground, she felt alive again.

Not every fairytale has a happy ending

Royal blue sigils on ashen black cloth sighed atop wooden thatched houses around a stone square.  The worst kind of animals shouted from the open windows and around the circle of buildings hungry for the blood of the creature that was now dragged through the crowd and tied to two posts with thick rope.  The thick smell of the animal fat on the torches and in the fire pits around Eden permeated the air and his face looked just like any of theirs except frightened.  He wasn't afraid of the fight he might have.  He wasn't afraid of the people, but the hatred burned him to his core and made his skin shiver.

A hooded man walked out with a whip.  The magistrate stood on the stone alter that he was tied to and read off his crimes.  They were but dissonance among the jeering of the crowd and when he was done reading, there was a deathly silence that ensued.

"One!...."

A sharp pain tore into his back and rippled through him as Roedric cried out in pain.  His face stretched forward, morphing into the demon he kept inside and ripples of the wolf within him permeated his skin.

"Two!..."

The pain shot through him again and he saw their faces. His body transformed into a 10 foot tall beast that crossed man with wolf and he looked on the crowd through a red tinted hue.

"Three!..."

The faces of the virgins he had consumed flashed before his eyes and the lust for their bodies and flesh stunk like rotten meat between his teeth.  His memories of all those he had consumed and the absent pleasure it had given him ate away at his soul as that lash reverberated through his body like a knife.

"Four!..."

He saw his dearest Contessa in the crowd and heard her cries from the night she had caught him attacking a young girl of seventeen and though his eyes were that of the Were, she knew who he was and went to run.

"Five!..."

He watched her running from him and he could smell her blood through his nostrils and it drove him mad with lust and pain and shame that he desperately tried to end by grabbing her to show her that there was two inside of him; including the one she loved.  It was not him who attacked those girls...

"Six!..."

The pain shot through him and the anger arose within him that he could be so stupid as to not seek a cure earlier for the condition he had been in; if for nothing else than for Contessa.  For his love who his lust for blood could have been cured by her love if he had let it.

"Seven!..."

He swore that he would not be the beast anymore.  He swore that he could control the Were within him if he was just given another chance.  If he could just be given the time and means to seek Necromancy or any of the cures that could bring these girls back and reverse the damage he had already done.

"Eight!..."

God! if it would only end, he thought.  Roaring out in pain and tears towards the crowd.  His soul sank and he submitted to the death happening within him as he realized no one could see his tears from the wolf's eyes and he could think of nothing more; save the pain from a broken heart as she stared at him with a cold gaze.

"Nine!..."

It would appear that depression was where he would live for now as his world faced him and spat at him and threw literal jibes and rotteness at him.  He fell to the platform and thought of nothing as...

"Ten!..."

"Eleven..."

"Twelve!..."

Half the crowd thought the thirteenth lash would kill him as a demonic creature of magic and evil but he was laying there on the slab not moving and gathering a storm of darkness that could break with...

"Thirteen!...."

The ropes snapped free and he arose on his hind legs as his giant claws hung at his sides and a pair of wings erupted from his back to fill the square.  He grabbed the rope and threw it down and howled at the crowd who understandably assumed their deaths were imminent.

A silence fell over them and people literally froze with terror mixed with his force of will that forbade their bodies of movement.  Before any of this had happened he had been a skilled magician and that power to captivate people into freezing was apparently only amplified by the Were within him.

He threw the whip down and concentrated.  He concentrated harder than he ever had before till his form began to change again.

Standing before the crowd was a naked man whose clothes had ripped from the transformation.  He looked out on them and wanted to hate them but he had accepted who he had become.

"You have hunters among you who could hunt me.  You have those among you who will still hate me once you learn what I have to say.  I am an immortal.  You cannot kill me thought you can wound and capture and enslave me.  You can torture me and throw me in a pit and I wouldn't fight you because I have accepted what I did to your town and..."

He turned to Contessa.

"and... a.. and to you, my love.  Ropes and chains can bind me and I would allow you to hold me accountable for what I have done but I am not the monster inside of me.  I will not let it define me no matter how powerful it is."

He sighed and sat down as the holding spell took a lot out of him and he began to lose a grip on the crowd as he let some of them go.  They stood still and listened to him.

"I have the power to fight the monster and it took thirteen lashes for me to even try.  I've been with it longer than many of you have been alive and though years of loneliness and monstrosity commanded my soul, for 5 of those 700 years, I have been happy."

He turned away from Contessa and to the crowd as more of them began to drop from his spell.

"There has always been a monster within me but for a moment in all my years there has been a light and for that, I am ready to kill the demon to live among you as any of you are."

"There is not a man who is without his demons and not a woman who has seen the torment of the soul.  I beg of you only mercy and love and forgiveness.  Should you seek to have a way to hold me accountable for my testament, I stand ready to submit."

The crowd fell deathly silent and he too fell the same way to look into their eyes as he dropped his hold of everyone including Contessa.  That was the moment she took the magistrate's blade and cut off his head.