THE MONSTER INSIDE OF ME

"who are you?" Fallen Angel Yeosang

"Ugh, it's still so warm." you mumble as you're walking through the night, on your way home from your night shift at the movie theater. It's in the middle of summer and the city is still heated up from the day. You're only wearing jeans shorts and a tshirt because everything else would make you melt at these temperatures. You have your earphones plugged in, listening to some music as you're walking down the street, heading for an alley you have to cross to get to another street. You never really liked this alley since sometimes there are some weird people hanging around when all the shops are closed. At daytime, this alley is quite loud since you can find various little industrial workshops here, mostly working with metals for many kinds of objects. So it's not surprising that there is a lot of discarded metal stored outside the stores, waiting to be picked up for recycling. It can be quite dangerous if you're not cautios enough. You enter the alley, some lanterns are lighting this place up but you begin to feel weird. You lower the volume of your music as you believe to hear voices. Is there someone talking? Laughing? You walk down the alley quietly, past another alley that branches off of yours and you can see some guys out of the corner of your eyes, standing in this other alley, looking at you. You immediately feel uncomfortable and walk a little faster when suddenly you hear these guys laughing and quickly walking up to you. "Hey, wait!" you hear from behind you and you start to jog, but you don't come far as one of these three guys grabs your wrist to hold you back. "Where do you want to go? Why don't you just stay with us?" You turn and look at them, unplug your earphones. They exemine you from head to toe and it almost makes you want to throw up. Men can be so disgusting! "What..What do you want?" you ask and try to pull your arm out of the grasp of that one guy. "I don't know, what do you have to offer?" he asks and his grasps tightens as he pulls you a little closer, the other two surround you, also coming closer. You heart is breating fast, you look at all of them, one after another. You swallow and you feel how your knees become weak. "Let me go..." you say quietly, almost begging, still trying to free yourself. "Wouldn't that be too easy?" one of the others says as he lays a hand on your shoulder, strokes your hair back and just lets his hand rest there. Now two guys are touching you and you get extremely nervous. Your heart is pounding, your throat gets all dry. You rip your hand out of the grip and back off two steps, the guys just laugh and step up to you, push you while nudging your shoulder a few times. You walk backwards, further and further while the tears are coming up. You are scared, afraid, you already see yourself getting abused by them. You don't even notice that you are walking up to such pile of discarded metal. "What's wrong, sweetie? Are you playing hard to get, huh?" They keep laughing and pushing and suddenly a sharp pain rushes through your body. You twist your face and go down immediately. Sitting on the ground, you look at your leg which is bleeding like hell. The blood is running over your skin, dripping to the ground. You grind your teeth and breathe heavily, holding your calf. The guys are laughing again and one crouches down to you. "Aw, does it hurt? Too bad." he giggles when you suddenly hear a dull sound. You see one of the guys going down all of a sudden and another guy standing behind him with a metal pipe in his hand. The two others turn, the one who's crouching gets up quickly and backs off. "Leave her alone and get the hell out of here." this random guy says with a voice so cold that it makes chills running down your spine. The pain still makes you breathing heavily and you start to get a little dizzy with all the blood you're losing. It's a deep cut caused by the metal right behind your back. The two guys look down to their unconscious friend, then back at this random guy. "I'm not saying it again." he says. He sounds calm but you can tell that he's not joking. The two back off further, one of them grabbing the others arm. "Let's go!" And they start running, leaving their friend behind lying on the ground right to your feet. You look after them as they're running down the alley to the street, then you look up to that mysterious guy with the pipe. You are shaking a little because of the shock and all the blood that slowly creates a little puddle around your leg. You can't help but start crying, you're not sobbing very hard but tears are running down your face. The stranger lets the pipe drop to the ground which makes a loud sound and he slowly walks up to you, crouching down as soon as he reaches you. "Looks pretty bad." he just says with this cold, calm voice. No shit! He looks at your face, looks at the tears on your skin, sparkling in the light of the lanterns. He is wearing all dark, a black tshirt and dark grey shorts. His black hair is parted and as you look closely, you seem to see a little birthmark next to his left eye. He is..beautiful? But intimidating at the same time. The longer you sit there, the dizzier you feel. "We should stop the bleeding first." he says and suddenly takes off his shirt. What the...?! You look away, try not to stare at him even though it's pretty hard. He makes his shirt into a roll and gently lifts your leg a little, places the shirt a few inches above your wound and ties it together very tightly. You flinch and squeak quietly because of the pain as he tries to apply pressure with the provisional bandage, so you won't bleed as much. Then he gets up, reaches both hands to you to help you up too. "Can you walk?" he asks and you shrug. "I don't know.." You don't feel well, in fact, you feel really sick. All the blood loss made you sick to the stomach and the dizziness makes you want to throw up. You feel weak but you don't want to show it, so you grab his hands and pull yourself up. Just as you come to stand, you black out for a second. On impulse, you lift your arms, throw them around his neck to hold onto something but everyting gets black and you slump down. But instead of falling back to the ground, he catches you, holds you around your waist and presses you against his warm skin, waiting for you to come to yourself again. It takes a few seconds until you open your eyes again, you blink a few times and lift your head, find yourself in the arms of this half naked guy and you startle. He just looks you in the eyes. "Are you okay?" he asks and you swallow. Are you really standing here in an alley at night, a half naked, beautiful man holding you in his arms and an unconscious guy lying next to you on the ground while this stranger just seems to be staring into your soul? He didn't even smile once. He seems so cold, so distant, yet so caring...Why does he seem so mysterious? Your arms sink down a little as you're looking at him and you nod slightly. "I think so...Thank you." you say quietly, examining his facial features. Where did he come from? He looks down to your leg. "We should bring you to the hospital now." Your hands sink a little further down his neck to his back and as they lightly stroke his skin, you can feel something weird under your fingertips. In this moment, he looks you in the eyes again, holding his breath for a second. You just quietly look at each other for a whole while. Why is he reacting that way? You decide to carefully let your fingers glide over the same spot a second time and you feel this weird texture on his skin again. "Don't..." he just says so quietly that he's almost whispering. You look at his lips, then back into his eyes. Does it hurt if you touch that spot? Does it feel uncomfortable? You would like to take a look at it but how weird would it be to ask? Also, his warm skin under your hands feels so good that you almost forget about the pain and the dizziness you feel. You stay quiet for a moment again, then you finally open your lips. "Who are you...?" you ask with a quiet voice and he's now the one looking at your lips, keeping silent for a few seconds. "No one but a monster." he whispers and looks you back in the eyes. A monster...? What does he mean? Didn't he just save you? How can he be a monster then? "It will bleed again if you walk, so..." He hesitantly lets off of you but holds your arm so you won't fall, then he turns around and crouches down little, wanting for you to climb on his back so he could carry you to the hospital. As he turns around, you take a look at his back and you flinch a little. You can see two big scars between his bladebones, they seem so symmetrical that it's almost scary. So you're just standing there, staring at these scars. "I won't be sitting here like that forever, you know?" he says and you blink. "Sorry.." you say and get on his back before he gets up with you. You carefully wrap your arms around his neck as he starts walking up the alley. You stay quiet for a minute before you ask: "What happened to you...?" He sighs quietly and takes a quick look up to the nightsky. "Let's say I was a sinner..." he answers. A sinner? What sins? And how would this be able to explain where these scars come from? "What do you mean?" You ask as you really want to know but you don't seem to get any details tonight. "Just...don't." is all he says. It really seems to bother him and all in all he doesn't seem to be the brightest person you ever met. "Sorry..." you say, ashamed of your nosiness. You wouldn't even have thought that he would be able to carry you since he doesn't seem to be very strong but apparently you were wrong. "It's okay..." he just simply answers as he's carrying you through the night, on your way to the hospital. Will you ever get to know his name? Or even anything about him after this night? Nobody knows...