Ruthless love

The Beast

[Flashback - part one] - (Trigger warning, suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, self-hatred)

Circa anno 1698

Zack had been pacing the empty corridors of the manor impatiently for hours, a manic expression on his face and his hollow eyes fixed on the cold stone floor beneath his feet.

After spending the past two centuries in a state of rage, filled with the urge to avenge the wrongdoing of the advisors, he had crumbled and become barely a shell of what he used to be.

His dark raven hair was matted, his skin a sickly gray color with an odd texture as a result of being in an almost constant state of blood rush.

For decades he had attempted to find a way to control it but to no avail.

It seemed that the more he tried to fight it, the more the curse took over his mind and body, leaving him in a helpless state.

He despised what had become of him, trying to cover up every part of his severely disfigured body in a frail attempt to appear normal.

There was nothing normal about it and they all knew it as much as he did.

Word had spread about his murder spree the night after his father's body had been disposed of - or rather, the murder spree of a vicious and vengeful beast that roamed the woods surrounding the manor.

He scoffed coldly as he gazed at his malformed face in the reflection from a nearby window.

He was a beast all right.

His hollow eyes were no longer their usual blue color that had charmed and seduced many young women through the years, instead, a pair of black murky eyes looked back at him through the reflection.

His skin had become thicker and taken on a sickly gray hue almost like a corpse, and the blackened veins running from his neck to the top of his chest and down along his arms, popped out in an unusual manner.

He had become muscular and veiny, like a large bull, tensed up and ready to charge.

This part did not bother him as much, as he had always been strong for his size - one of the few positives about his genetics. He was rather tall as well, towering over most of the people residing in the manor.

The change he had gone through since the passing of his parents, was significant.

"You're disgusting..." he hissed at the reflection in the window, silently cursing his ancestors for allowing the cursed gene to run down through generations.

"Don't you think that's a little harsh, brother?" a voice rang out.

"What are you doing here?" Zack replied, his gaze still intensely fixed on the reflection in the window.

"Thought I would go check on you, see how you're holding up..." Mason replied, not quite sounding like himself.

"Still alive..." Zack said, refraining from adding the word 'regrettably'.

He had attempted to take his own life on several occasions, each time more creative than the last as nothing seemed to work. The one dagger that had a chance of doing the job, had never been removed from his father's chest before the body had been disposed of.

Starvation had brutally backfired and resulted in several casualties by his hand.

He had been in a black-out state and therefore had no recollection of any of it, but there was no denying the fact that when he came to his senses, he was covered in blood from head to toe, surrounded by torn limbs and intestines.