"I creep, I sleep, I stab, I eat."
As a boy he'd been taught the ways of the assasin by his mother. After a long day of training sessions out in the yard, she'd gently stroke the beak that protruded from his face and encourage him with soft words.
"One day you will join the ranks of assasin soldiers. You will pass the hours of your day enveloped in the sweet, scented embrace of Spring flowers. You will rest easily under blue skies and warm rays of sunshine. But you will also experience beauty interrupted and broken apart by sudden violence, and you will defend it with your life my son. Understand that. It is our way. We are an assasin clan. We are born to it, we breed to it, and we die for it. It is our way." and he would fall asleep to her soothing words every night. He loved her beyond measure.
One day he woke up and she was gone. No note, no message, no reason. He cried till all his legs folded beneath his body and crumpled under the weight of his immense grief. He scratched at the soft green leaf he'd fallen asleep on, hoping she'd hear his message and come back. She did not. Disjointed, sorrowful days turned into weeks.
He became frustrated and angry.
"Why did you leave like me like this Mother? Where are the answers I need now? Why didn't you warn me about how alone I would feel, how destroyed by this mystery I would be?" and after his yelling, the grief would come again and he'd cry.
But while Grief will linger, Death will not. So he wrote her off as dead. He decided that was the answer and his heart and mind shifted to its truth. He began creeping along through the days less downhearted, his pain changed though it never went away.
And he noticed his sorrow being slightly dented by cravings. They came on slowly at first but then with force. His appetite for sweet food drove him to the source. Finding some beautiful and pungent flower, he'd drive his beak into the soft, fleshy skin and drink until he was bloated. But each time his hunger seized him, he stabbed more forcefully and more often than necessary. Sometimes his pleasure for stabbing was greater than for filling his stomach. He felt anger still brooding inside him. He knew he was being destructive for its own sake.
Caught in the act of this violence one day he jumped in fright. Another voice, not unlike his mothers, screeched,"Aren't you going into a bit of over kill there? You don't need to poke the flower more than once to get the juice you know."
He flicked his antennae back from his eyes and realized he was looking at a beautiful, female assasin. Instantly he was seized by lust for her. She looked so soft, sounded so sweet. He said,"Yes, I suppose I am going overboard. I'm sure I look like a real fool." She flicked her antennae too, but he felt no empathy from her. And she began crawling away down the fuzzy green stem of the plant they were apparantly sharing.
He watched her as she left. No more graceful than himself or any other, but graceful beyond all others not of their kind. Those other things that had no names to them.
He wanted to follow her, so he did.
And as he followed, all of his loss, his confusion, and the mysterious cravings that had begun taking over his mind intensified. He imagined himself on top of her, but he didn't quite understand why. He just wanted to be there. Felt like he had to, that he must, and the opportunity could not pass from him. So he quickened his creeping pace and began closing the distance between them.
She finally noticed, but it was too late. She felt the prickly hairs of his chest on her back and she felt him attach to some part of her she'd barely ever noticed. Suddenly she saw eggs and babies in her mind. Offspring! Their offspring. And she wanted this more than anything and she rocked with the stranger glued to her now.
But her joy was not to be. She felt a sharp, sudden pain pass through her body from her back to her stomach. She began resisting, fighting but he clamped all of his legs tighter around her. She rotated an eye back and saw his giant beak coming down and down again and his voice choked and thick with rage as he said,"You fool, you fool!! I will not know you! You will not leave me!" In her dieing, she appealed in a gurgled voice,"No, our offspring...please..." but he was clenched with fury and stabbed her harder again yelling,"NO!! NO!! No more, more hurt, no hurt for my own, never!!!".
She lay still, three of her legs broken, her body torn apart by his rage. He backed up and looked at her. He felt no satisfaction at all. Only more craving. He pointed his beak gently towards her wounds and sucked up her fluids into himself, then creeped away.
As his nights wore on and he began feeling his age, his dreams were filled with horrendous images. A mother chastising him for killing his children, a mate eating his antennae off his head, and the voices of his children chanting in high timbered tones:
"Ring around the rosies
pockets full of posies
Ashes, Ashes
We all fall down..."
posted by .. @ 5:12 AM
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