Creepypastas

Wolfsbane and Roses

Your Majesty, I do not mean to interrupt.

I do know that today is a day of celebration. That this feast you have thrown has been in my honor. But I bid you give me the floor.

For there is no cause for celebration. You celebrate today for the death of a beast, and yet I aim to make amends.

For you see, the beast lives on.

I can see by the look on your face that you are confused...and perhaps you feel you are owed an explanation. If it pleases Your Majesty, I will give you just that.

It all starts with her.

She was always a quiet one. Withdrawn, I guess you could call her. She spent her days in the archives; the old stone library on the edge of her village. Her charming little nose buried in some book or another.

She was different – not quite like the other women I had come across in my travels. They were all so preoccupied with finding husbands, starting families. She loved research – Guidobaldo del Monte, Leonardo da Vinci, Michel de Montaigne...these were only a few of the endless trends in her studies.

The world is changing, she had told me once. Women were no longer prizes to be won. They were human beings...equal to any man.

...I was never a well educated man.

It was for that reason that it came as no surprise to me that she showed little in regards to my advances. She seemed destined for greatness, whereas I...

Well, as you already know, I am a hunter – as my father before me.

It is a noble profession...

After all, people need to eat. Being able to track has other benefits...often I found myself employed even by yourself, Your Grace. You have always been generous, paying me well...to track criminals, or, sometimes, to take care of wild beasts.

And so when there came tells of that foul creature stalking and killing villagers, livestock, and traveling merchants in the shadow of Le Crêt de la Neige in the Jura Mountains; this troublesome fiend that had taken to traveling from the peak into that quaint little village...

Because winter had been harsh and the townspeople couldn't really afford to have such a meddlesome creature preying on their livelihoods – and, indeed, that's what it had been doing. Because they had petitioned you – pleading you to save their town...to save them...

Because they had sent many of their own to kill the beast and found no success. You, once more, turned to me. As you have in the past.

And for four weeks I waded through frozen streams and snow. I remember it well. L'année sans été – that's what the townsfolk have taken to calling it. Food prices had risen further than I have ever seen them. Tales of catastrophe spread throughout the continent – famine, death, riots. One traveler I crossed paths with spoke of an ice dam high in le Val de Bagnes giving way – killing hundreds.

T'was a grim time, indeed, but I digress.

Even through this terrible winter without end...I tracked that creature down. Encountering it first near on the road to Thiory – near an overturned carriage. The sky was alive that night – lit up by the light of the moon. It was so bright that I didn't need my lantern for my travels. So bright that I didn't need my lantern so see the overturned coach and horse that lay slain...to see the creature muzzle deep in that poor soul's stomach.

I approached the brute from downwind – my Modèle 1777 at the ready. I had the creature in my sights – the musket buried deep into my shoulder. I gently squeezed the trigger. The crackle of my musket should have been the last sound that beast ever heard – its head should decorate the mantle above my fireplace.