Beastly

Pt. 3 The Playthings

I stand, paralysed, as the lights switch on, the chandelier above flaring to life in a hundred candles. How, I haven't the slightest idea. My eyes are frozen in their sockets, staring down at the polaroid. It looks like a sadistic sex scene in a slasher movie. I am fixated on the stains that mar the man's skin... blood. I slowly look up, and I see him, teeth bared in a vicious hybrid between a snarl and a smile. Holy shit.

"Kara," he says, abandoning the woman. Despite his nudity, he stands tall. His muscles ripple dangerously, not dissimilar to that of a panther or a tiger. "I see the candles have done their job splendidly. How nice of you to join us." His eyes—the green suddenly seems predatory—focus on my robe. "Ah, you chose the red one. A wise choice—sensible, too, considering our situation. Red silk... it certainly embodies the spirit of sex and pain, doesn't it?"

The woman on the bed is still—not dead, but still. Her bare chest rises and falls in shallow breaths, almost moans. A cry slips out, and Lysander's face transforms into a bestial one as he drives his fist into her stomach. She has the sense to suppress her pain.

"I—I—I swear, I didn't mean to... I must have sleepwalked, I swear, I didn't—I'll leave, I won't tell anyone—" I splutter my fear numbing control of my tongue as I rattled on.

"Enough," he booms, and my voice dies in my throat. My finger forms faster and faster circles around the lens of my camera, but I cannot tear my eyes from his fox green eyes, which are focused on my robe—his robe, I correct myself. Only then do I notice the haste in which I had donned it before, the front almost completely undone. My hands move to tighten the sash, but his hand raises. I stop. "Take it off," he says, his voice as smooth as one with a silver tongue, "and get on the bed. Keep the camera. I want you to use this as... your muse, shall we say?"

I nod submissively, paralysed in terror, and sit cautiously on the bed, suppressing a cry when I see the woman. She has been ravaged, her stomach and breasts clawed and ripped apart by the work of a monster, and her face, arms and legs as slippery with blood, both dried and fresh. Her eyes, pale blue orbs that are almost colourless, stare up at the ceiling blankly, the whites of her eyes stained red with burst blood vessels. Her translucent skin shows nothing but her desperation for death to take her away.

"Take a picture," Lysander orders, and I comply, barely able to steady my hands before snapping a shot of the woman's agonised semi-conscious face. Lysander snatches the polaroid from my grasp and examines my work. Once he's satisfied, he positions it against the wall on one of the dressers.

"Who are you?" I whisper at last, finally calm. "What are you?"

Fake hurt flits across Lysander's face before amusement takes over as he turns to look at me. "What? What are you talking about? It isn't like I'm a monster or anything!"

"Yes. You are a monster." The words slip out of their own accord, and I regret those words instantly.

Amusement vanishes, and fury replaces it. He leaps across, and I'm pinned to the bed, my back pressed against the woman's legs. Lysander snarls at me, and all of a sudden his teeth seem to be sharper, all gleaming with the silver glint that I had only seen on one canine before.

"I am not a monster, dear Kara," he purrs, running the flat of the blade of a dagger down my cheek, with enough force to carve a thin line of blood into my flesh, and I wince automatically. "I am not a monster, no, not at all. No, but I am so, so, so very much worse."

That is all that I hear before the blade buries deep into my chest.

My scream echoes within the room, blood-curdling and spine-chilling, and I can feel my heart slowing as pain rips me apart. No, please, oh God, what have I done, NO!

I scream and I scream and I scream, as Lysander's body cracks and shifts and distorts above my body, and a terrifying fusion of a wolf and a bear tears into my body with the bloodlust of something far more more terrifying that a mere monster.

"You should be proud of yourself," a garbled voice says through fangs and flesh. "It has been many years since a human has awoken me from my slumber. I will be sure to give you a swift end."

Swift? The sobs rise now, tears mingling with the blood and the menagerie of other fluids and gore.

"Please, please, please!" I scream, just as a heavy paw clamps over my mouth, the beast's claws cutting into my skin.

"Thank you, Miss Saunders, for waking me up," the beast says in the same deep voice as Lysander's. My vision, while tinted with infernal shades of red, begins to blacken and dim. Black spots begin to dance, as my eyes roll to the top of my head. Through a haze of delirium and pure pain, his last words are all I hear before everything is gone, black, lost.

"It's been a pleasure meeting you, Miss Saunders."

That's it!! By the time I finished the first part I knew that I'd love to at least try to write a novel out of this, but it's SO HARD!!! Anyway, it'll probably take an age to sort that out, so please vote or comment or both or whatever, and thanks for reading this!! :)