From Tales of the Insanity:
Scarlet Hands
By V.L. Smith
Many thought of him as ‘one with the beasts’. He was, in a sense, a beast himself one would assume by all appearances. Nevertheless, his relationship with Fiend and Man would evoke no such question of concern. He was a serene young man.
In the foundation or his younger years, around age seven or eight, he was noted the ‘wild child’ or his siblings. During those times his love for creatures had begun. On one such occasion, upon discovering their son’s unique kinship with beasts, his parents showered him with a host of pets including a litter of pups, a parakeet, some fish and a pair of white and black kittens. Among these, the two cats wher his favorites and he usually held the likes of these felines above any other.
Over the years as he and his beloved pets matured in size and life; his cherished creatures, so he called his children died away. The pups grew to be dogs and sadly the cuteness of their youth was eroded in stubbornness for they, eventually, suffered fatal accidents. The bird, light-hearted and cheerful, grew ill and faded. As for the fish, they simply grew too old and fell to death as well. But as for the boy’s most worshipped companions, the white and black cats became no such victims of ill misfortune and they, like the boy, lived on.
But now it was many years later and the boy was longer a boy, but a young man- still a child, no doubt, but life was now a bit more complex. And with the many complexities life brought new horrors and realizations. Life was no longer simple, as the young man soon discovered becoming the grand jest of his classmates, the very icon of a foolish monstrosity itself for his rather peculiar obsession with these creatures they often detested as “monsters”. He was laughed at, joked about and stared at. His peers often found a sick amusement in declaring him rather flippant appellations such as: “Beast Boy”, the “Cave Creature”, or the “Monster” and even “Queer”. Was it so wrong to love them as he did?
The emotional humiliation had taken the better part of his sanity and he found himself more at comfort with the cats than any other living thing. He’d closed himself off from the world completely, locked himself away in the divine propinquity of these animals. He often thought of the pair of felines as immortals, gods in the very way they presented themselves and he believed in only the cats for they flourished in wisdom and pride. A pride that often lifted his trampled spirits in times of doubt, and all too often doubt and dysphoria would plague his heart. His doubt that all too often brought to question the rectitude of those around him. Friends became deserters. Family wanted nothing more to do with him, being ashamed of their affinity by blood they reveled in rejection against him and all that he stood for. Even his parents, whom had loved him and adored him, sense birth began to grow distant.
The cold world had forsaken the poor boy. And at such juvenescent decline the young man had already forgotten the world.
It was at or around this time, deteriorating in the bleak meaninglessness of the world, when his father had fallen sudden victim to Death. His mother had mourned, or course, and she begged of her son to do the same but the boy shed not single tear. For it was Man that betrayed him, (Women as well), and for that, the boy refused to attend to the misfortunes of Men. There was no sadness in his eyes, mourning or remorse on behalf of the many years he’d be without a father. There was absolutely nothing but joy, a bitter cold joy. A gaiety that evoked within him somewhere the sinister inclination to suddenly cry out with twisted hilarity amidst the bemoaning of the mourners encompassing him. It was truly the laughter or an imbecile causing even the sermonizer to halt mid-eulogy and gawk in horror and disgust and fascination.
In the somber years following, the once praiseworthy reputation the boy’s family once held rapidly reduced itself to a status even subject to a house of ill repute. During these trialing times the remnants of the family had finally grasped a perspective of what his world was like. Cold and empty, save for the pleasant company of animals, but nonetheless, forgotten. The boy showed no concern, however, witnessing day after day and late into the nights, his mother, surrendering herself over to transient after careless transient, tolerance suddenly subverted to pure petulance, and he fled in fury to the comfort of the back alleyways. There, the darkness was like a protective shroud, a patron to the young man’s desire: ‘seclusion’. And where, or course, the promising pair or felines, one black and one white, whom he’d came to name LIFE and DEATH would come to offer their assuagements.
The black cat approached him first as sat in sludge and he caressed its ebon fur, dissolving in tears as he did while mumbling, chanting again and again the sorrows of his life. As he rambled on, heedless to the fact that his strokes haphazardly grew more vigorous each second, the black cat let out a yelp or pain and attempted to elude the weeping boy’s obliviously portentous hands, but to no avail, for the boy now embraced the distressed beast to his chest. He could hear the desperate cat gasping for air, but he would give it none. In a final hope for evasion, the breathless cat reared back and sank its salient claws into the boy’s flesh, a warm sensation trickled down his chest. In rage the boy swiftly grabbed hold of the retreating fiend’s neck and snapped it without merely a hint of indecision. He gawked wide-eyed in horror as the daunting realization or murder sat upon him, his hands the very hands of treason. Looking up, his teary eyes, filled with shame and pain, met with another pair or eyes. The white cat’s eyes, blazing like fire in the night. Taking a single neurotic gaze at the mingled corpse of its brethren lying still in the night, the white cat made to dash for the darkness but the boy had inflexibly swaddled his hands around its tail. There was a maelstrom of aberration in his vacuous eyes as he took hold a thick nearby twig from some tree and plunged it into the squirming beast’s chest. It gave a solitary cry of agony before it lay at rest- the silence of Death had passed it and dark red blood tainted its ashen coat. The boy sulked, his tear- drenched, shame-streaked face sunken in scarlet hands.
The hours following the atrocity wher bleak and tormenting. Each tearing moment marked the presentiment of Death, at this point, an end to his suffering. His mind ventured into the far reaches of slumber that ruinous night and as he awoke, merely hours later, he was none but astounded to discover a lurid crepuscular trail of blood reaching from the dark hallways, though his open door and across the barren floors of his room. In the scarlet puddles upon the floor wher the imprints of some beast’s paws, surely the paws of the cats. There was a menacing hiss and perched upon the boy’s open window was the black cat, its neck twisted and disjoined, its head hung contortedly to the side. The white cat sat at the foot of the young man’s bed and stared deep into his eyes, blood pumped from its open chest and spilled onto the sheets beneath him. They had come for him, as he’d dreaded.
Through a procession of intricate events the young man, in lucid fright and dejection constantly evaded the pair of cats’ omnipresence. He’d flee for hours only to discover the beasts, tailing at his heels in neither exhaust nor apathy. He presented on one such occasion to secure himself deep within the seclusion of the family cellar, however, there the pair of felines lingered, awaiting his accession.
Days turned to weeks and weeks into restless months, night and day tormented by the fiends, both adream and awake they wher inescapable. The pain, ever impending until it drove him, one dark and forlorn day to the rooftops of his home; and there at the edge of existence he contemplated Death and for a fraction of a second- Life. Still, the pair of cats pressed upon him, the white to his left and the black to his right, whispering and chanting the encouraging embrace or Death.
“Leap into the open arms of Death, dear boy”. They’d hiss and snicker. But the boy needed no such prodding, for he’d already prepared his decision, turning at the roof’s end to face the Earth some fine leagues below. Merely a smile, a smirk of sudden alleviation jogged his fatigued visage. A tremendously joyful laughter erupted from his trembling lips and with a gleeful plunge he leapt with alacrity beyond the parted ingress of Death!
THEND
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