#FridayFlash: The Monster

Again, I open the door.

Again, I turn on the light.

Again, I descend.

The knife in my hand is heavy, but the balance is so fine that it seems to float at my side. The steel is a surgical-quality molybdenum alloy; the handle is hand-carved Sumatran rosewood. It's an excellent knife, capable of severing thigh-thick meat and bone with one swipe. I can't remember how I got it, just that I paid dearly for it, with money and with more than money.

How I hate it. How I hate everything.

I reach the bottom of the stairs and turn, eyes closed. After so long, I don't need to see it to know where it is. I don't need to see it, don't want to see it, wish I couldn't see it.

In the darkness behind my closed eyes, I step forward. Six paces will bring me to it. There is nothing else in the basement, nothing between me and it. No matter how many times I've tried to wall it up, to hide it, to bury it... it is always there.

Six paces.

Eyes closed or eyes open, it is at my feet. I can hear it rasping, hear the sucking, tubercular rhythm as it balances on the edge of its own kind of death.

I open my eyes, pretending to be brave in the confrontation.

Pretending I have a choice.

But you do have a choice, don't you?

Its voice licks at my mind like a split tongue, covered in weeping sores. Wrapped in the filthy, years-unwashed blanket, pale gray eyes stare up at me from the inhuman folds of flesh. Too human they look... too human...

Ah, but you know I AM human, on the inside at least. No matter what form I wear, I am as human as you are. As human as you allow me to be.

No, I want to shout, no, no, NO!

A mouth of fang and gore splits wide, the chest convulsing in what it means to be a laugh.

Have you forgotten? You made me from your own flesh. You are my father and my brother, my creator and, if you wish it, my destroyer. You disgust me, father, but I can do nothing to you. Do I disgust you? Then kill me.

I raise the knife, the perfectly balanced, perfectly beautiful knife.

The laugh presses against me again, the silent wetness of it filling me with loathing and disgust, bringing acid gorge to my mouth. Half-choking, I swallow it back down, as I always do.

You coward. Kill me and you kill yourself. Go on... do it. You are nothing without me. I give your pathetic life purpose and meaning. Am I the burden of this house? Am I the monster under the stairs? You know that to be a lie.

I am no burden; I am your blessing. I am no monster; I am your muse.

In the light and shadow, the knife gleams.

Feed me. NOW.

I hold my left hand waist high over the gaping mouth. The excellent blade slices deep into my palm, so deep and so quick I feel nothing. As ever, I feel nothing.

My blood rains down onto the thing on the floor, splashing on and around it, covering the face of it with a spattering wash of coppery slick. The tongue, impossibly long, snakes out and laps around, smearing and wiping from the spurs of broken bone on its crest to the black talons of its feet. I clench my fist and the blood pulses through my fingers, running down and away in a stream.

For as long as it takes, I stand and bleed. More than minutes, less than hours.

Enough.

My hand is cold and numb; I pull it in close to the warmth of my chest. The blade is still in my right hand, still hanging at my side, still perfect, still excellent.

Its eyes are closed. Soon, it will sleep. I retreat to the stairs and begin to climb.

There will come a week when I will challenge it. When I will withhold my lifeblood and watch it die crying. When I will slice the blade down and sever its grinning head from where its shoulders should be. When I will deny the truth that binds us together and embrace the lie that will set me free.

I will die when it dies. I live because it lives.

I die because it lives. I will live when it dies.

I live, and I will live.

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