The Beast

It is here. That time. It creeps up slowly today. I rise slowly from my bed. I open my eyes and I see darkness all around. Nothing else.

I stumble around till I find the door. I walk outside. There are woods surrounding my cottage and they are darker still. I spot a moonlit clearing in the distance and run towards it. I stumble. I trip. I almost fall.

I strip off my clothes. There is a rush of blood to my head. I take a deep breath and sit down. Long, red grass surrounds me. I wait. I listen.

A steady chirp of crickets. A frog croaking party. A bubbling creek. Rustling grass as something feline passes through it. The sound of something invisible slithering away from me.

I have had experiences. I have done things. I am a librarian but I have done more than read books.

But, I do not know how this feels. How does someone else see this? What did they think? What came next?

I will soon travel. I will seek wise men and old fools and ask of them a cure. I have heard of clerics in Onsoop who deal with this sort of thing regularly. This curse.

Now, however, I must endure. I must suffer the ignorance. And the fear. The lurking fear that I actually enjoy this. This thing I have become.

Never should have touched that damned stone.

The moonlight hits me. I shift out of my own body. It works as The Inventor said it would. My essence has now been transferred momentarily to a construct from where I am free to observe my own body. The thing I have become.

My body stands up. It rubs its hands together. With glee. The face, my face, grins. A bearded, dark-haired madman stands in the middle of a forest. Naked in the dead of the night.

I panic. My body stands strong.

I experience a prickling sensation across my skin. Something shifts inside me. Something tears at my feeble mind. And I give up. I stop resisting the change. My senses sharpen. My body breathes loudly. It smells things.

A dead snake. A predator nearby. A fearful monkey on a tree behind me. A man’s clothes. Damp leaves. A metal thing. A wary ecosystem.

My body opens its eyes and I sneak a look. My forearms are rippling with some ancient force that seeks to rend them in two. The faint moonlight reveals impossibly furry paws where my legs should have been. Thick black fur sprouts out of me. There is a cracking sound and unearthly pain that soon gives way to the realization of new bones and joints and muscles and claws. My back and shoulders hunch. Uncomfortable anatomical changes abound. 

The beast inside my mind overpowers me for a moment and I feel hunger.

I fight it. Fascinated by the transformation and weakened by my feeble existence I submit to the beast. My fingers become paws. Massive black claws. The night becomes day to these eyes. Everything appears illuminated. A wet, sniffing nose looms infront of my eyes and I realize what I am now.

A predator like no other. The Glass People called it a wendigo. Half man- half bear.

All hungry. I drop down on all fours. My nose picks up the scent of prey. I grin, a lopsided monstrous grin. 

Food, good. Thinks the beast. It smells lively, leaping fish at a water’s edge.

I follow.

First-of-Names

There is a man who stands all day in a shady corner of Lungtown. They call him Storyteller. The Storyteller belongs to one of the native tribes of Lungtown.

He is older than middle age, well past sixty, but trim, sunburned, and looks ancient.

There is a story he tells often. A story of a man. A story of fire.

“The natives have a concept of business. It is one of those things that take a hundred words to explain in the tongue of the common because we do not have a word for it. 

I’ll give an example. Terrible things happen. People die, animals die. Weather dies. Water dies. The inhabitants of most towns pray for rain. Some resort to science. The tribe of the Golden Skinned People do rain dances. The Bitter Leaf tribe slaughter birds. The Glass Makers make glass. They accept. The Storyteller was a Glass Maker and so was First-Of-Names. You see what I mean?

The average Glass Maker takes stock of the situation, understands that he does not have the power to change anything but his attitude to accept the inevitable.

However, First-Of-Names was not an average Glass Maker.

When he was born, somewhere in a hot summer season, his lifegiver wanted to name him after clouds and rivers and such natural things. His father’s father wanted something else and he got it. A name that would mark him for terrible greatness. Like Man-With-Terribly-Long-Name but not like Man-Of-No-Name. They called him First-Of-Names.

In the age of dust, The Rulers denied the people of The Outer Regions a lot of rights. The Rulers were harsh and cruel. They restricted a flow of supplies to The Outer Regions and the people suffered. There was a call for change and revolution and blood and all the younger people answered it. First-Of-Names was a reasonable man but he wished to impress a particularly beautiful female and so he decided to undertake his own foolhardy quest.

A quest to bring fire to the Glass Makers. A fire that would not go out and a fire that would not be a slave of The Rulers. A fire of glory.

First-Of-Names, the champion of the people, with his wily wit and the blessing of the gods stole fire from The Rulers. He gave it to his tribe. He brought glory to Lungtown.

But, alas! The Rulers punished him for his crime. They sent their cronies and they had him arrested. The held him in a tower of black rock.

It is said that a great mechanical bird guards the tower and there are men in white coats inside the tower who try science on First-Of-Names. The Rulers came down harder than ever on The Outer Regions.

They created the District and sealed us all in here. They left us to die but the fire of glory blazed in all our hearts and we survived and rebuilt an existence out of the dust.

The fire is lost now but the people know it still burns for them.”

“That is a fine story, Storyteller. I thank you for telling me this story. Here is your coin. Now, tell me where to find this fire.”

The Storyteller merely chuckled. “I am sorry, sinjoro. There is no fire. It is but a story that I tell to earn a living.”

“That so? Vloek! My name is Grijs and this is my contact card. If you ever feel like not lying to me, give me a call.”

"I had a client."

I had a client.

She wore a brown suit, all businesswoman like. Underneath, a mannish shirt and a blue tie. Real expensive walking shoes. Sheer stockings, the kind that men like on women. I couldn't see as much of her legs as I would have liked though. She had some fashionable hat on. I never really had a thing for hats.

“No, need to get up,” she said. She must have been used to men with manners. She wrinkled her nose at the faded wallpaper that lined the wall behind me. I was seated in of the two easy chairs this office could afford. The other one had been partly disintegrated by an angry bio-grunt’s blaster. That was a different story and possibly a more interesting one. There were curtains for her to wrinkle her nose at. I also had a small library behind my desk but not because I was the reading type. 

“Your office is exceptionally unclean.”

I smiled. “My name is Lydia Cole-Greenwood. I have a case for you. I can pay you good.”

She looked a little flustered and stressed, but she looked like a girl who liked being flustered.

“Hi, Mrs. Angela Owens. Wife of Harvey Owens. He is missing, yes. I am, Detective White. My office and manners may not be much but I would ask you to respect my abilities and credit me some brains too."

She stood up and said: “I had to check. There are a lot of such shams in the District, Mr. White. Perhaps I was rude.”

I opened a door to the inside of my real office and held it for her. We went inside. The room contained a grey carpet, nine filing cases, an advertising calendar showing some of those AniTex models rolling around on a red glass floor. AniTex, "for the animal inside you". They did biotic re-assimilation and it made me sick to my goat bladder.

I sat in the usual squeaky swivel chair.

"You don't put on much of an act," she said. I threw my hat on the coat stand. I missed.

"No and that is because I am genuwine." I said and chuckled at my wit. "I make fair money at this game by being honest."

"Oh—do you? How is it? Being honest?" she asked and opened her bag. She picked a sim-cig, out of a fancy case, rested it between her red lips, dropped the case back in. Sim-Cigs, for the rich smokers who want to smoke but who don't want to poison themselves.

"Painful. I am a oneiropath, Mrs. Owen. I saw you coming in my dream last night. I know what you are going to say. I can find your husband, Harvey. If that is what you want."

"Yes. That is what I want. I will pay you, of course. Handsomely. Harvey was a food critic. Recently, he had some professional setbacks and was not very happy with life. He was last seen near Chinatown Abbey."

I did not get much cases. I made whatever honest work gets you in the District. There was nothing for me to do this morning apart from tracking a briefcase for that gray guy. 

I needed this and she need not know that.

I nodded, all professional. I had my e-note take all this down. I already had a pretty fair idea of where Harvey was. It was going to be easy money. I assured her that I would find Harvey. She left.

All nice and straight. Except for one thing. She had not smiled since she walked in.

Odd.