Moribund, On The Bestial
Entries to a writing prompt, as told by you <3
So every now and again, I put on my publication chat a writing prompt for any and all to be involved in. I have posted two posts for the responses to these prompts, so this, dear readers, is the third one! All authors are listed in the collaborations, so do check them out if you enjoy their work! <3
If you wish to be involved in any previous or future prompts, do have a look at the publication chat! I will be posting another at…some point, but the past ones are still very much up!
I hope you enjoy, critters <3
There is an austere laboratory of glass and stone standing vigilant in the midst of a bustling town. Monsters and beasts borne of lofty ambition at times find themselves escaped -- fortuitously or premeditatively? A question, dear reader, for you to determine.
Opaque bottles of elixir and poison span shelves amongst books of Paracelsian knowledge. Bone and flesh, digits, tongues, and eyes sit in jars lined in wax. Parchment, scrawled and drawn upon in violent black ink, lay sprawled upon tables and floors. Tis, dear reader, the room of a mad academic.
Alas, a beast of lycan-like visage hath escaped from this laboratory of glass and stone! Deep in the night within the ivy-ridden walls of a churchyard does this creature feast on the corpse of the unfortunate sexton; blood and gore painting the dew-scented grass and headstones.
It was the case that a soul should come across this bestial vacuity. A doctor seeking it to exhume its being? An innocent bystander caught in the gloom? A child of wonder yet dangerously curious? A relative of the man this beast once was?
It turns upon the newcomer with violence in its eyes; glowing in the dark like a cat.
(Make a character and make them curious and foolish; kind and gentle; vile and cruel. Make a member of the laboratory that formed this beast; a lover, a child, a parent, of the man it once was; a rogue in search of a meaning to these creatures now plaguing their city.
Make a character and dare to enter...)
Entry I - Chloe
I am this mad academic you mention, dear author.
Though “mad” — how cruel of you to say. My wits are sharp and my mind is yet fevered, but my ambition is unending and is consuming me from within. I was the fool that allowed this beast to roam. As punishment my superiors coerced me to pursue him; hesitantly, I acquiesced.
His eyes were shining in sharp malevolence and I was chilled.”Won’t you entertain me, dear Vincent?” Once human, a father of two I believe. Desperation and poverty forced him to our door when the Workhouse consumed his children and wife. He believed we could help him with money anew to save his family from that dreadful building. Do not mistake me for a bastard, my reader — any who suffers should not entertain the sadistic Workhouses…but instead should join the Laboratory and allow us to work!
Of course, I was given no answer amongst the weeds and dead. He stood from the mangled corpse beneath him and grew enticed by my mortal scent.”I wonder — do you enjoy the taste of lifeblood? Or is this instinct that succumbs you?” I wondered, too, if he recognised me as the woman who made him this thing; I thought of giving him the kindness of a mother so he would not run to the mountains and hunt me like The Monster from that novel…
Ah — the name escapes me.
He did not heed my question, how rude of him, I thought, but approached slow like a predator and I his doe; rotten.Well, dear reader, you know the end to my tale. My superiors knew he would not come quietly, nor did I stand a chance. I am no fighter, but a thinker and scientist — I wonder if he is absorbing my knowledge while he consumes my brain…
Entry II -
I'd known Vincent, the quiet, gentle man now the cause of this unending screaming. That visceral discord grated on my bones. They deserved every agonising note. They'd had this coming for far too long.
Vincent was our brother in torture, another desperate soul lured here a few moons prior with the promise of food on his family's barren table, and the illusion that he may sit at its head again.
I was another of those souls, though I came begging in hope to pay off debt. I would have rather faced the wrath of my creditors had I known the price I'd pay here.
Two moons of enduring their research, I was told, would be sufficient to pay off my debts, to return a free man to my wife. My wife who was with child when I left, who must have been expecting my return for... I know not how much time had passed, how many endless days I'd spent being thrown between my cell, my mangled wrists in shackles, and the madman's laboratory. The workshop, as we called it. Even now, that name trespassing on my inner thoughts invokes an involuntary flinch. They had this coming.
I was kept in a cell adjacent to Vincent's; we would trade meagre stories from our lost lives on the few nights neither of us were dragged to the workshop - it was small comfort, but we would take as much as we could.
When he finally snapped on that horrific night, finally let that rage consume him, he transformed into that... monster... beast. Is that what they were trying to bring out of us all along? Were we to be weapons, to serve some macabre purpose? Was it simply the result of the madman's amusement, spiralling out of control? In his frightening initial frenzy before escaping, he'd weakened the wall between our cells - intentionally or not - and enabled my own escape. Still in shackles, I ran. Past all the panic, through the screams lingering in the air. I had to find him.
It didn't take long, following a clearly defined trail of blood, limbs, and corpses. I found him in the blood-painted churchyard, atop the madman's remains, recognisable only by his now-tattered coat. I gave him no second thought, no ounce of sympathy. He had this coming. My full attention on the man who had kept me company through nights I needed it most. Who didn't deserve this. Who was now looking me with a cold, tired fury.
Was there a glimmer of recognition in those furious eyes? I could not tell, and yet I approached all the same. He did not stalk towards me, allowing me to come closer, until I could feel the air from his jagged breaths, and smell the blood dripping from his fangs. Was this consent, or a challenge?
"Vincent...", I whisper, hoping the name carried all that I felt. For a second, I swore his glare softened before succumbing once again to the anger. Slowly, he raises his claw, that rageful gaze unwavering. I knew I hadn't reached him, and this was certainly my end. Better to die by the hand of a friend than the tools of that madman, and so I closed my eyes and thought of my wife, wondered whether our child was a boy or a girl, and hoped they were alive and well.
A growl resonated through the air between us, and I felt the lash of his claw. Yet, I opened my eyes and they met his, his gaze resolute. We held contact for a few seconds more, after which he stalked off - to this day I know not where he went.
With adrenaline fading away, I noticed a certain lightness, and looked at my hands, and the shackles which now laid harmlessly on the ground.
I was free, with a yet-unrealised affliction.
Entry III -
Many years ago, when I was but a man of seven and twenty, and young to the ways of the world, I became a cleric. But the Lord saw that my wits were sharp and my belief sharper, and resolving to use me for his purposes, turned me from the good office of preaching onto a stonier path. And so I shed the cloth and took up the quill.
In the name of Heaven, I devoted myself to the study of the grotesque and arcane. I charted the stars and surveiled the moon from wax to wane. I pored over the texts, probed all manner of scholarship on anatomy and parapsychology, astromancy and occultist theory. I became learned in the paranormal arts—my specialty: rare ailments of the body and mind; curses, mutations, and metamorphoses of the biological kind, though far from natural—and to the common man, seemingly incurable.
From Belarus to the Indies I am known as a master lycanthropist, an authority on skin-changers and nightstalkers; on so-called wolfmen who fall to unholy disfigurement by the light of the moon, who find themselves prey to devils that wear their flesh as cloaks and treat their unwilling hosts most unkindly.
These days, I fashion myself a sanctifier. An inquisitor into the profane am I, and thus contrariwise a champion of the sacred, a friend to the afflicted. I am a reformer, a recoverer—you might say—of hopeless cases, of those poor souls among us who are not yet lost but at the brink of burning. And in their direst hour, I am something else: a purveyor of a final boon. It is this I offer: misericordia—a last drink from the cup of providence, a last hope to touch the light before the soul is turned forever from His grace, a last chance to die by the blade and be cleansed lest disease take root and drive humanity from the flesh. When the moment calls, I am His executioner.
By will of the divine, I hath been instilled with noble purpose. Yet it is with heavy heart I must confess, mine is a lonely profession. To many, my life’s work amounts to a fiction. Though I have gained wide repute, outside of spiritual circles I am regarded as a man of mere superstition. I am judged by those who walk in the thin light of disbelief—I, who know the truth: that everyday wicked forces defy the laws of nature, seek to taint us, darken us from within and drag us under. I know, too, that oft these forces are of our own crude making, called into existence by those among us who would aim so near to God as to become him.
I met such a one, not so long ago from now: a scientist, razor-precise in her faculties but possessing of a woman’s sensibility—all its hysteria and hunger. A most fatal combination, I fear.
She sent for me once of a drear morn in January, desiring, she said, to confer with a fellow academic, to pick my brain and devour its contents: my obscure wisdom, my intimate ken of the werebeast. She talked madly of plans and trials, ill fancies of creation, moving with abandon amid her tomes and poisons. I knew then what folly she intended, the wretch of a man she sought to corrupt, and beseeched her to cease this cursed operation.
But forgive me, I could not detain her. I might have put an end to this evil before it hardly began, but some depraved part of me longed to know if it could be done. After all my years of inquest and crusade, but one question remained to me unanswered: How do these monsters come to be? From whence do they emerge? If not direct from the Eternal Fires, then where?
At last, I hath found an answer, though I wish to God I never did. The weekly papers spell a sordid tale: a woman inventor, slain within the walls of her workroom; reports of wild howlings, strange happenings in the parish churchyard by twilight.
These perversions shan’t go unpunished. I know now what I must do. This night, I wield a dagger in my waist pocket; twin pistols of lethal silver at my hip; just over my breast swings a blessed crucifix—an object most baleful to the beast. Above, the sinister moon waxes pale; below, a black shape crouches ‘neath a sheet of mist. There is a terrible sucking, a tearing, a gluttonous swallowing sound, as it feeds from the mess of carcass at its feet. There is an odour of dead woods, of rain and rare flesh, of the slaver that runs from its open mouth. It is a thing past recognition, past salvation. It senses not the vanquisher who approaches from behind.
For His sake, I will purge Earth of this daemon. In memory of the singular mind which conceived it—I will avenge; this, her finest specimen, her masterwork, and her undoing… soon annihilated at the point of my holy blade.
These prompts are always so imaginative and so so fun!! And what an honour to have my contribution sandwiched between two absolutely *masterful* pieces - love these so so much and I'm excited for the next prompt!!