The Beautiful Creatures We Call Monsters

Born to Be

"SHE is given, so we may receive,
Let her blood carry our sins.
In our Empress, we believe
Our lives, she shall mend

Sacrifice, in you we honor.
We shall paint your palms red
And dream of rubies in prayer
The fire your body shall feed

May we prosper in your death, Kindred. Sleep."

The Priestess spread saltwater of the Endless Sea on my eyelids, all that needed to be done finished. The only thing left was the cleansing ritual, and so I waited. I did not flinch at the glare of the dagger, nor did I crumble as I walked through the wild waves of the blessed river. I left two trails of crimson in the white waves, just until the Priestess deemed me clean enough. Had I bled out, she would've had to find another virgin to undergo the ceremony.

But dead girls don't get rubies.

The white robe, saturated with my blood and holy water, held on to my skin like a shadow. I embraced the chill of this night as I was led to the carriage, the soles of my feet leaving bloodied footsteps.  The cuts had bled through the bandages, but it hardly matters now. I would die tonight, in the name of apathetic, selfish beings. My death would be bought, the violence overlooked for the sake of the two blood rubies that will return to this village, placed in the palms of my severed hands. This has been the fate of every maiden chosen, sacrificed.

I will die the same way they did.

In the corner of the crowd, I can almost see my mother. I sense her, the same way one would feel bugs crawling upon their skin. Her smile slithers against my back, her slit-eyed stare following me to my carriage. The Empress awaits.

Everyone of the ground below knew of her magic. She was a God, residing in the clouds where Her palace rested. The mortals could only look upon clear nights and dream of Her.

There are stories spread everywhere, fanatics claiming Her to be the sole reason they live, while others fear the tremendous power She holds, one that could erase us like ants. After all, when you spend your endless life in the heavens, everyone down below eventually starts to look like insects.

I had prepared myself for the use of magic, but it still caught me off guard when sweet sleep took ahold of my head. This unnatural occurrence made my head sit atop my shoulders like a boulder, eager to fall down. Suddenly, almost the exact moment the horses pulled the carriage away, I was filled with an exhaustion I couldn't explain. I fought it as hard as I could, but it only took mere minutes for my eyes to shut and my mind to settle.

Weak. You are weak.

With a newfound persistence, I groggily reached into my hair for the dagger. It's ritual for the sacrifices to wear thin daggers as hairpins, the morbidity of which never escaped me. Perhaps they intended the sacrifices to have everything needed for their death—sufficiency, maybe? I could never understand why.

Fading back into oblivion, I made a sliver of a cut on a finger. The pain, much like a cure, cut into the fogginess like a pinprick. I needed more.

Drawing the blade, I drew a careful line on the side of my hand, along the forefinger down to where the thumb stars. The cut burned, and my daze retreated like a setting sun.

Using a part of my ceremonial robes to wrap around the cut, I peered outside the fluttering curtain door, now that the spell was broken. We were flying, with whole villages beneath us! With wide eyes, I noted we were headed west, to the land of yokai. 

It was forbidden land for humans; the demons made passage impossible. Anyone who set foot in the cursed forest was either eaten or became yokai themselves if enough time passed. Yokai loved the taste of human flesh and souls, even more than they loved devouring each other. But if you managed to survive, the fog would drive you insane. The people who lived near the yokai forests called it "hell smoke" because it was said to feed on your mind—it was not somewhere people could survive with their humanity intact. 

I could feel the carriage nearing, as my throat closed with a familiar feeling. My breaths shallowed and my skin rose into goosebumps. Backing into the wall of the carriage, I held the blade with trembling hands. We were close. 

Beneath me, thousands of abandoned homes stood still. Darkness hovered abnormally as if it were alive, and I knew it was. En'enra was a monster born from smoke and death, and it ate the despair the dead left. Ghosts wander in cursed lands such as this, crying for the life that was stolen from them and their pain that would never end. They would soon forget the reason for their anguish and exist only as a haunting. A chill seized me at the thought. 

I gripped the doorframe tighter and shuddered as a frigid breeze swept through. My sacrificial gown would dry eventually, but would I last that long? Maybe I would freeze to death before we even get there. Perhaps it would be for the best. Nobody knew what happened to the maidens after the carriage took them away, and there was never coachmen present. The unattended wagon came, always led by two nightmarish animals, bigger than the carriage itself. It was said that they loved human flesh, so nobody would dare near it—with the exception of the sacrifices of course. 

I stole a glance at the beasts, expecting their black hooves galloping on thin air. How did they fly? 

My eyes trailed up from a pair of feet the size of men's heads to hairy legs...? With my position leaning out the carriage, I couldn't see the other beast, but this one was fully within my view. It completely bare and had immensely broad shoulders, muscle twitching and straining visibly. It dragged the wagon with its enormous arms, pants of white exhaled from its nose. 

It resembled a man so much I was almost tricked, but men do not pull carriages as large as a house into the sky. They certainly didn't have shiny black ox horns or the head of a bull. 

I jumped inside, hands slapped on my mouth in fear. I could taste my own blood. 

The beast had transformed into its true form and what I saw was none other than Gozu, one of the gatekeepers of hell. The other beast beside him must be Mezu, his sister. With the body of a woman and the head of a horse, she was one of the most notorious yokai in folklore. They were trusted to keep souls in hell, punish the wicked, and tasked to bring any that escaped back to the underworld. 

Dread swallowed me whole. I could only imagine the pain that awaited me at the Empress' castle.