To Become a Monster - ONC 2024

Chapter Four

The boy was drowning and he would drown alone for as long as he wished. Little pebbles held him to the river's bed, soft as a gentle caress but always pinning him in the dirt. He breathed in the water, crystal clear fluid burning his lungs like a pyre to a life he could have had if he was not underwater. But he was drowning, and he would remain there. 

He rolled his head over, eyes tired and spotty from glaring at the flaming sun all his life. A corpse stared back. Its face sang of decay and rot; its peeling and puffy skin addled by spots, its black eyes gouged out and devoured by fish and whatever other creatures profited in this wretched river. Shiny white bones peered out from underneath the rags it had been afforded whilst its fingers tried desperately to cling to any dignity it could find. 

The boy blinked. The obsidian eyes of the skeleton copied. He sat up, tilting his head. Once again, the corpse followed like a jolting and rusty marionette. A flicker of gold glimmered in the corner of his eye and he looked away from the body just long enough to see that it was an ornate frame. Slowly, carefully, he raised his arm, though his wasted muscles fought every movement, and tried to press it to the corpse's face. The melting flesh he expected was not there, and neither was the false smoothness of bone and teeth. No, he touched the bone-thin fingers of the body to find the reflective silver sheen of a mirror. 

The boy screamed, and the river swallowed up the sound before it could even make a ripple. 

The next thing he knew, he was on the grass, basking underneath the glorious heat of the sun. He was somewhat aware that his skin had returned, that he was more than just forgotten ruins. This must have been before he had fallen into disrepair- before his walls had crumbled and he was cast aside to sink and sink endlessly. But there was still a strange water-like pressure residing in the air. The sunlight seemed to come in waves; one moment he was warm and the next he had never felt such icy emptiness. 

A bird danced past, breaking the cerulean clear sky with a trail of blood. It hung there for a moment, that crimson rain streaming down like a punishment from the heavens. He should not be here. He should not have been happy here. This place had been sacred and he had defiled it with his presence. The boy should leave. 

The sky turned stormy; the scent of petrichor crashed into his body. The green of the scene overwhelmed him as the plants began to grow wildly. He tried to make them stop, tried to pull them off him and the body he had only just regained. 

He was sinking again, sinking into a pile of flesh and blood. The plants still pushed him and their desperate roots clawed at his skin. Soon they had pierced it, and rivulets of red spread like wildfire to join the greater pool. This, however, was not something to scream at. Even as the plants began to enter his throat, tear past his nostrils and fill his lungs with pretty little pastel blooms, he did not need to fear. Some sort of artificial numbness had filled his body, and he would rot and be repurposed for something better with no need to think about past or future pain. Something found its way into his skull, caressed his brain, and dove straight into that useless meaty chunk. 

A swirled face appeared before him. He tried to see past the distortion, but the more he tried to focus on a single feature, the more it faded to starry spirals. The boy would have run, or at least that's what he told himself, but leaves weighed his arms down like bricks. He didn't even deserve to escape anyway. 

A single tear dripped down his face. Well, it could have been more blood, given the stems that burst from his irises, but he couldn't see beyond the lime-green leaves. 

"Keep searching and you will end up with a fate worse than death. Leave the bodies to rot. A new age will dawn under my lead and you will be safe as long as you stay out of the way."