One night when I was sleeping, a beast crept into our house. It entered on all fours, its shaggy claws scrapping across the kitchen floor, its nose raised to sniff the air.
Its breath curdled the milk and caused the fruit to shrivel and rot, the cheese to run, the meat to turn, and the gaze of it eyes as they landed upon the gilded mirrors cracked them sending a shower of glass to the floor. Its claws scratched the polished oak stairs as it climbed them.
My parents tossed and turned in their beds, their dreams black and dark like the crow and the baby suffocated under its blanket, its red mouth opened in a violent scream that never came.
When it reached my room, it stopped and sniffed. Long and hard and deep. A single line of spittle fell from its mouth to the floor. It pushed the door open and entered.
As it did so, the books on my bookshelves curled at the edges and the words turned to ash. The dresses hanging in my wardrobe, gay like girls at the prom, slipped from their hangers. The eau de toilette turned brown, the small pink lipsticks crumbled, the glass jewels fell from their settings.
I pretended to sleep, keeping my breath calm even though my heart knocked against my ribs. It climbed on to my bed, on to the silken sheets.
The beast caught the sheets in its mouth and slowly pulled them back so that they fell to the floor. It sniffed me, long and hard and deep, from my feet to the top of my head. Each part of me, it sniffed as though its breath could take an inventory, as though to catalogue each hip, each knee cap and elbow, each mole and freckle, each toe and finger, each auburn hair whether straight and smooth or kinked and curled. It breathed in each small white breast, each eyelash, each toe nail, each ear lobe and knuckle. I felt its breath, hot and sour moving across my thighs and when it reached the hidden hollows between my legs, it lingered there, drinking in the scent as though this were a scent it never wished to forget. I, as in a dream, felt my thighs part imperceptibly, as though I wished the beast to go deeper and drink more, drink more.
It stopped, and I felt it sit back on its haunches and regard me. And then it was gone. Straight through the window, the curtains torn asunder, the blinds twisted, the glass smashed to the ground below. I ran to the window, cutting my feet, sliding on the velvet drapes, and watched the beast run into the forest beyond the house, his hunched high back disappearing into the dark of the trees. Beast, I implored silently. Beast.
But he was gone.
I went to my parents’ room and rid them of their dreams with a cool hand upon their foreheads and a kiss upon their cheeks. I pulled back the blanket from the baby. He sighed and made to cry but I picked him up and hushed him until he slept. I went to the kitchen and threw out the rotten food, swept up the broken glass and locked the doors.
The next night, I sat by my window and looked at the forest. A full moon hung low above the tree tops, a golden goblet of wine. I waited there in front of the open window. Beast, I implored silently. Beast. I fell asleep on the floor, wrapped in a silken sheet, my head upon my hand.
He came. He leapt silently through the open window and into my room, his great claws gouging the white painted window frames and the granite lintels. I woke with a start, but pretended to sleep still, and kept my breath even, and willed my body not to move this time. Stay silent, stay still, I told myself.
The beast dragged the silken sheets off my body as before. I felt his breath once again. He stood over me, on all fours, and placed his nose, his muzzle, close to my navel. He sniffed again, and I felt his eye upon my stomach, watching it rise and fall, seeing the almost invisible drum of my heart beat within it.
Then, he wrapped his great scaled hands around my waist and carefully lifted my navel towards him. He picked me up as though he were picking up a bowl, raised me to his mouth as though he would drink from me.
He held me there, silently, with his mighty clawed hands, and I was raised so high that my head fell back to the floor, and my legs drooped like a rag doll’s, so that all he held in front of him, in front of his fierce mouth was my navel.
He raised me higher, squatting now, and placed his mouth upon me. Fire. Flames burst through me like lava. Every part of me that he had sniffed the night before, every cranny and nook and mound and curve of me that he had catalogued and observed, now burst into flames as if recognizing him. I burned and twitched. His tongue danced over my stomach, leaving a march of red welts as it did so. I felt the fork of it enter the small gnarled hole that twisted into my core, that once housed my the cord of my birth, and felt it uncurling, untwisting, under his touch.
He raised me higher. His teeth, great canine fangs bit into my sides, drawing blood. I felt the strength within his jaw, so mighty that it could rip a man’s head asunder at a glance.
And then he kissed me. Raised my navel to his mouth, his mighty muzzle and kissed me, bearing his mouth down hard, pressing into my stomach. My insides felt as though a rock had fallen on them. I almost cried out. The blood rushed from every vein and organ to where his mouth pressed, leaving my limbs and head heavy and cold and dark. I felt the piercing sweep of his eyelashes across my chest, felt his talons dig further into my back, the wet of the blood as it ran down my thighs.
He placed me down on the floor, and again, sat back on his haunches and regarded me. My eyelids flickered for a second, but in that second, through less that a millimeter of lashed eyelids, he saw me regard him, and his head moved sharply. And then he was gone, down the stairs, across the oak floorboards, through the french glass doors in the salon, tearing through Kashmir carpets, causing the clocks in the hallway to chime in alarm, shattering the ivory keys on the grand piano.
I lay upon the floor, too exhausted to move. Beast, I whispered. Beast. I heard the crash in the forest as he leapt and ran through the leafless wintering trees. I lay there shivering under the silken sheet, until the blood dried, until the moon was just a small white circle alone in a pale blue sky, and then I rose and washed myself. I went downstairs and swept up the glass, and straightened the kashmir rugs, and reset the clocks and closed the lid of the piano.
My parents, convinced this was the work of burglars, searching for the safe that held the diamond necklaces, the paper stocks and Wall Street bonds, the priceless first editions, called the police who came and searched the house and the grounds. They knelt under my bed and produced, by means of a pair of long metal tweezers, a single hair. As hard as guitar string. It belonged to the beast.
You gotta dog? they asked me.
I shook my head and walked away. On the tip of my finger I held the scale they had missed. A single shimmering scale, the size of a coin, now green, now violet, now black.
My parents, upon the advice of the police, engaged a strong-arm. His name was Cliff and he walked around the house as though it were now his, regarding me through dark glasses even though it was winter. His muscles bulged under the white t-shirts he wore. He patrolled the perimeters of the grounds with a pistol on his hip, and he slept in the downstairs study which had been turned into his office, a war room with police reports and cardboard boxes of bullets.
I retreated to my room, and waited for the beast. I prayed he would. I prayed he wouldn’t. I sent him telepathic messages begging him to stay away, to leave me alone, to come now, right now, tonight. I stared at a pencil on my dressing table for an hour, willing it to move, testing my telepathic powers.
Night came and went and Cliff patrolled and the winds blew strong and snow fell upon the lawns and still I sat by the window, wrapped in blankets, a book at my feet, the pages open and unread.
At night I dreamt of the beast. He crawled and slithered across my skin, turning it to scale, pricking at my pores, a soft dry drag of leathered fingers and palms across my flesh, the crawl, the crawl. He sat upon my chest and drummed upon it, drawing my soul up and out through my ribs, turning pearls to slurry, sleep to fury. I cried out, and once was found by my mother walking through the corridors dragging my bloodied nails along the radiators. He was the minotaur deep within the labyrinth of my dreams, and no matter how I turned and ran I could not escape him, no more than the day could escape the night.
One night, the moon shrouded in cloud, Cliff came to my room. He stood at the foot of my bed. I woke with a start. He smiled a thick sneer, and placed his hands upon my ankles. I sat upwards. He released my ankles and pushed me back, a hand over my mouth, another on my chest. He looked at me in the eye and I stared back. You can’t have me, I mumbled, the spittle from my mouth collecting in his sweaty palm. I kicked him in the groin, and ran to the window. The clouds cleared, the moon was a speckled silver egg. I could almost reach out and touch it.
Cliff lunged, grabbing me around my neck. His fist met my mouth. I spat blood and teeth. I clung to the window ledge, my fingers finding the same gouges that the clawed hands of the beast had made when he entered my room. He pushed up my nightgown roughly so that it lay around my shoulders. Beast, I cried. Beast.
I smelt his scent before I saw him. The wind carried my plea to him and I smelt his musk his odour like an invisible silent message in reply. It rustled through the bare bone branches in the forest, across the tiny tight-packed heads of winter foliage. His smell caused the berries on the trees to wither and drop, and the golden carp to float from their sleep belly up, trapped under the ice. I heard the crash of the gargoyles as they grimaced their last and fell to the terrace below. I felt the chimneys, all ten of them, shudder and belch, covered the fine venetian furnishings with soot and pigeon droppings.
Cliff continued to push into me, trying to position me against the window ledge, fumbling with the belt on his jeans. He smashed my face into the window glass.
The beast now climbed the stairs. I could hear his claws scraping the oak polished stairs, the rent of canvas tearing as our ancestors slid from the gilt frames. His breath came hard. His strike was hard and fast, and I felt Cliff’s hand release me, the thud of his body as it slumped to the ground. The beast gave a deep violent growl, so deep that it seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth.
I turned. His face was only millimeters from mine. I felt his breath upon my face. His eyes were green and hazel, flecked with gun metal, slanted like a cats. We stared at one another. I reached out and touched his cheek. There was blood upon my hand. I felt the bulge of his fangs beneath the fur.
And then he was gone, leaping through my bedroom window once again, his great hulk bounding across the lawns, small pools of snow still upon the ground. In front of him lay the forest. His world.
I ran, as fast as I could, as fast as I had ever done, faster than the races at school, faster than in my dreams when I was being chased. Down the stairs, over the fallen ancestors, over the carpets covered in soot, out the front door, past the pond where the fish floated belly up, across the grass. My nightgown stuck to my wet feet and ankles, my hair matted and bloody on my head.
Beast, I shouted. Beast.
He stopped at the edge of the forest, and turned his head to look at me. He was on all fours, his haunches high, his ears pricked and quivering.
Beast, I commanded. Beast.
He sank to the ground. He was wider than a bear, taller than an elephant. He sank to the ground, and I jumped on his back. I dug my hands and my nails deep into his dun-coloured wolf fur to get purchase. And then we were off. Crashing through the forest to his lair of rock, to his castle upon the moon.
Sometimes I return to the house, and I creep inside, through the kitchen door and climb the stairs to my parents’ room where I smooth their furrowed brow from dreams black and dark like the crow, and I pull back the blanket from the baby and hush it to sleep. My mighty hands leave red welts upon my parents’ skin, and my claws rip the silken blankets, but I do it all the same.
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