I Have Always Been a Monster

A/N: Unfortunately I don't have the time to pass this through the workshop so I'm just putting it up after a lot of proof reads. This is, unfortunately, much longer than I would have liked it to be but I also enjoyed writing it and got quite lost in it. The competition required we write a story that integrated two cliches. I had to start my story with one of the following "You're not gonna believe this"/"I don't have much time left"/"I used to be normal", and the second cliche was that I had to include the following plot point - "A taboo attraction pulls a man away from his sanity."

Hope you guys enjoy.

- I used to be normal, not that you’re going to believe me. That’s fine. I imagine you stood in some irradiated church having tracked me across the frozen tundra that connects Calais and Dover while you read this note and unsurprisingly I don’t think you’ve endured this struggle to see if I was telling the truth. Chances are that you’ve actually tracked me all this way just because you’re angry and wish to avenge your family’s loss. That’s an admirable aim, but I don’t think you know just what you’ve let yourself in for.

Actually can you read English? If you can’t… turn the page, there’s a small sketch. I’m not interested in forming a connection with a nemesis who can’t even understand me so, just to let you know, that doodle shows the symbol of the London underground which is now populated with some overzealous tape worms. You know them as Taltara and I’ve found some totems that suggest you worship them as deities of fertility. I don’t think you’ll find them so reverent when they’ve made themselves at home in your—significantly altered—rectal cavity. If you avoid those tunnels, I’ll take it as a sign you can understand me and what I write.

If you do speak English, you might think this some sort of trick. My kind don’t usually talk or communicate but truth is I’m terribly lonely. It’s been so long since there was much to my life beyond compulsion. It’s actually hard to remember that once upon a time the urges I felt were taboo in some form. Yes… I do recall some of it. I recall the hoods and red robes and the sneaking around. It felt so powerful and so wonderful even if I knew what I was doing was wrong.

Why am I even writing you this note? Would you really understand any of my story even if you can read the old tongue? Can you really appreciate what life was like all those millennia ago? You’re so much more human than I am now, but you’re also savage and primal and filled with rage. Are you up for this? Really? If you’re just another tribal buffoon go home and tell your village you killed me in the frozen wastes. Take something as a souvenir to show how far you went in your journey and live a graceful life amongst your peers.

-

You are quite a man! I’ve been watching you as you chase the trail of breadcrumbs that I leave for you. What should I call you? Do you have a name? How about Alex, after Alexander Armstrong? You are something special with that spear of yours so the name fits, and you’re something of an explorer too. But he was a scientist and I doubt you know what that means. No, you are not a scientist…

But I was.

I worked on messages received from space. I had a wife and a mother whom I cared for a great deal. My mother was old so her mind had started to go away. You’ve seen it before; the illness of the mind that I speak of. In the early morning hours when I stalked your little huts I often peered through the windows from afar and saw you speaking with an older woman. She was a squat little thing and her eyes had that identifiable glaze. How old is she? Fifty? Sixty? You’ll find that if she lives for much longer she’ll start to forget things and go wandering away much more often.

My mother was ill in a similar way, except in those times it was common to live past seventy so we saw it often. She was unable to care for herself so I cared for her instead. Or rather my wife—a wonderful woman—cared for her while I worked at my job. It might be hard for you to understand what that was but I think the best comparison would be a shaman. Except, unlike your sad little wizard with albinism my magic was not nonsense. We didn’t throw magnets around in a bowl and divine secret messages, we just took to understanding reality.

But I’m feeling conflicted telling you our philosophy because while I remember that our magic was not about revering some unknown power I actually did find something. I found Him. I was looking through things in space. There were… there were numbers and I saw in them a pattern. I didn’t know it at the time but I was just one of thousands who saw His patterns in things. The buildings of life, the essence of matter, the stars in the sky, even the smoke from a fire; all of these things started speaking to people. Not all of them were scientists like me. Some were just ordinary people but once you saw it something inside you took over and you were connected to His will and you started to feel the urges.

And I was not like you Alex. Viable males in those times were not defined by a ritual of manhood with violent and dangerous circumcisions. We weren’t required to demonstrate that capacity for aggression, and so many of us were, by your standards, very weak. Can you picture that? Can you picture me as a short balding man who had never once struck another person? What do you think I am Alex? Do you wonder why the world is like this? Why I look nothing like you but claim to have once been human? You are a simple thing but even you are a man and all men think.

I imagine it would make sense for you to think I came from the holes in the sky that your ancestors described. But I didn’t. I was here before they came. You must know that the world before He and His children came was quite different to the one we live in now. Look at the walls around you Alex. I brought you to this specific building for a reason. All the places I will take you will have some purpose.

Can you believe that where you are stood was once a safe place for children? Early travellers from His glorious dimension crossed into these homes for children and found the supple young forms suitable enough to assimilate. Does it unsettle you to see those fleshy monsters shuddering up from the shadows in the forms of giggling children? Have you seen them up close? Have you seen the façade fall away to reveal a quivering mass of fungal veins?

I have taken advantage of my new form to study the various lifeforms that colonised our world after His reveal. And I find these ones quite strange. Why take the form of children, not adults? Were there not teachers in this school? And why not change after finding a different form that was more suitable, like a wolf or a cat? Did you know that each face was once a real child? They are not just random forms they conjure up out of the shadows. Stranger still if they believe they are unwatched they will go about a routine. They will skip and play as real children, and go to classes to learn.

I wonder if they took more than just their forms. Are there memories in those rancid things? Do they remember the old world, like I can?

Things were so much different back then… so was I.

-

You wisely avoided the tunnels. I suppose that means you can understand me, yes? It has been so long since I’ve ever really felt the need to articulate myself. Instead I’ve just spent the last few millennia snatching children from ignorant savages like you. It’s hard to say that I even give in to those urges because nothing can stop me, and I no longer fight it.

Have you ever given into an urge Alex? I was a good man for a long time but once things changed inside me I couldn’t keep it under control. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was a despicable urge that I felt… I needed to do something that I knew was wrong. He kept speaking to me in a thunderous voice that no one else could hear and He told me that He needed something alive. He needed a seed, but He also needed mass. First I had to get it a seed; a living human. It is such that a son should always love his mother and I too loved mine but every time I looked at her I… I would feel a rising compulsion. I didn’t know why He had chosen me to suffer this curse, and I don’t know why He made the urge rise up from such… uncomfortable places.

This building, by the way, was where I worked. It was a research centre though little of it remains. Most buildings still stand because they were occupied long after His awakening but nothing here was seen as fit, or valuable so it was left to crumble. Still there was something here I desired during my human life. I was… unremarkable before He came to my life and so I had dedicated myself towards something grand, and amazing so I chose a life as a scientist to find life amongst the stars. But really… I wanted glory and love from my fellow man. By the time my hair started falling out and my knees began to ache and the years rushed by faster than I could ever fathom I think I finally realized that dream was lost.

I was never going to be something special. I would just live my entire life as a meaningless nobody. That is… until He came into my life that Summer day. Maybe that was why one night, after weeks of suppressing the urges, I decided to just give in. I stopped thinking and just went with it. I pulled off my sweat soaked bed sheets and walked to my mother’s room. I picked her up and walked her calmly to the damp basement and laid her down in a mouldy corner. She looked at me, I think she knew something was wrong. But He needed an offering, He was hidden between the folds of reality in such a way that He would recognize the offering. She only had to be left in that place for him to seize her. But that was only just the seed. I also needed mass; I walked upstairs and I saw my wife’s living face for the last time.

I didn’t… I didn’t want to do it Alex. I leant down and felt her breath on my cheek and I knew I would never feel it again. It meant a lot that I could steal that final comfort but it only made it worse when I bludgeoned her face in with nearby photo frame. Some part of me, deep down, screamed silently as I picked her limp body up and carried her to my still living mother who saw what I had done. She could not move from her illness; she was helpless and so her eyes could only well up with tears. I looked down at my humble tribute, and I knew it needed more. It needed a lot more mass. But He also wanted something specific.

His will often took the form of flashing images and seizures. For me I saw cracking bones, crushed foetuses and placentas. I instantly realized that He needed stem cells. Don’t worry about what they are, just know that you find them in children.

Ah… Alex, does it make some more sense now? Can you draw the dots between what I did three millennia ago and what I did three weeks ago in your village? I wonder if you could ever really gain a total comprehension of why I took your niece; will you ever see the bigger picture? This was what this building was all about. It was all for the bigger picture. There’s no monsters in this place, unlike much of London’s suburbs. Though I will recommend you take the time to dig through this rubble. Under some of these rocks is a map that has somehow survived the years. It shows the world as it once was before the old continents sank and the new continents consumed what remained.

We still tread some of those lands that did not crumble into the sea, such as this lonely peninsula that was once an island. I think it is good that someone remembers what the world once looked like.

-

We are no longer in London. If you are reading this, then you have reached the next dead drop and have tracked my footsteps to this abandoned house.

Good for you.

You did an admirable job fighting off The Moss That Ate Big Ben. What a marvellous use of fire; you hurt it but it’ll heal. When the skies first opened and it fell down in a sprawling mass in the middle of London other men tried and hurt it too. They spent decades hurting it while it slowly consumed any poor soul who came near. It’s surprisingly easy to damage. But you’ll never kill it. All it needs is a little bit of itself hidden in the soil and it’ll come back. But revere it Alex because it is old. It is one of the first pilgrims that left His world and came to ours when He opened the door.

The first time I saw Him emerge He was still small. He’s gone now, and I feel empty without him. But back then He was just coming into our world. The first real breakthrough for me was when I found another disciple. She was wandering along the highway with a hammer in her hand and instantly I knew. I pulled over, I picked her up, and she directed me to a building. There I found eight others who had been touched by His light like I had. Together they showed me the rituals they had divined through their feverish nightmares. They showed me their tributes, and then came to my home to see mine. It was pitiful and sad. I had done none of the necessary ceremony to bring him to true life.

They saw the fourteen-year-old girl. She had… often been a problem in the neighbourhood. She smoked and did drugs and when I saw her I felt something. I remember thinking that it might be better to offer her because… I thought she would die anyway so there would be less guilt. She was destined for a sad and painful life. Also the way she dressed made me confused, and kind of angry. I was so inexperienced in divining His messages that I mistook what I wanted for what He wanted. I thought her flesh might be desirable for him like it was for me. And without my wife or my mother I felt bold and empowered to act on thoughts that I had always dismissed as… irrational. I thought that by satisfying my own terrible desires I was helping Him achieve His goals.

Those socks... I left them on her long after the violence was over. I liked them on her. Even the other disciples who visited and saw my tribute thought that was strange. But they forgave me. I was young and foolish and they knew that divining His intentions could be difficult, so instead of chiding me they shared their knowledge and I shared mine. We noticed that each of our respective tributes had grown since we had first made the offerings. For my own tribute in my basement I noticed that roots of flesh had sprung forth from my mother’s torso and consumed much of my wife and some of the girl, but my mother was still alive and her eyes only showed pain and grief. She frequently begged me to kill her but He would not come into this world through already dead and cold flesh. She had to remain alive. Still, progress felt slow.

We discussed how to speed things up, and I told them about the need for stem cells and they told me that they had not divined that specific message. In return for my insight they offered to induct me into their particular family and together we would clump our offerings into one great big tribute. We knew there were others out there who could be closer to completing the ritual, and we knew He would only share His greatest gifts with the most accomplished, so we set out immediately to make our tribute the best.

One year later and after about fifteen unborn children had been split, like sickly ripened fruit, across the gaping wound that was my live and rotting mother and I finally saw Him splutter to life.

My god was He something special. My mother’s eyes glazed over during one of the ceremonies and she hungrily leaned forward to snap violently at our offering. Her flesh ripped asunder and in a grotesque voice her body spoke. Somehow He had reached into our dimension and used my mother’s tendons and muscles to create a grotesque, grinding, voice. He had finally shown an interest in our world, and most importantly He had shown an interest in us.

He told us what He wanted. We obeyed. We were to be the head of His church.

God what a strange few years we experienced after all that. It would be decades before His doorway opened but His presence in the world started changing things straight away. That included us, of course. That wasn’t a lot of fun. Still… it was necessary.

Alex I’m finding the act of writing to you a most invigorating, but also distressing, experience. Please excuse me if I can’t be so theatrical all the time but I must cut this letter short out of a need for rest and mournful contemplation. Also, you should probably avoid staying in the house you’re stood in. I didn’t choose it as a trap but I did choose it because I have enjoyed watching you slaughter various things in your travels. Here you’ll find the Rats of Leng; nasty little beast-men who are numerous and belligerent corruptions of a once common vermin. Please do draw them into the open fields where men once tilled wheat and crops; not only will you gain the tactical advantage but I will also be able to see the battle from my perch and such things raise my spirits.

-

So it seems you are well suited to heat as well as cold. It has been a few months now since I’ve dragged you along the coasts of what was once England. We are now approaching what remains of Africa and you have been a compelling adventurer. At times I almost feel like I’m actually running from you. Isn’t that funny? I haven’t felt a struggle since… let me think…

I remember batteries. Oh forget it don’t even try to conjure up an image. Just know that they were metal little things that tumbled out of our… lanterns, I guess I’ll have to call them. On this occasion the batteries rolled out and bounced on the hard floor of a parking lot because I had used the lantern to strike the skull of a guard hired to protect a hospital. One of our members worked as a doctor and he had arranged for us to carry away the bodies of all the miscarried and stillborn children until one night we were caught and I was forced to fight. Not that I was good at it but at some point I grabbed the man’s light and started hitting him.

The other’s watched me while I did it. You won’t find it a surprise to know that murder can be fun, and I suddenly found beating it to be a lot of fun. In fact, I found it to be much more than just fun. I can’t tell you if it was His will, or just my own desperate urges, but I certainly enjoyed acting on them and no one else wanted to challenge me. Maybe, like I did at the time, they thought I was acting out His will and they dared not question me, or maybe they were just scared of me. Needless to say I defiled his corpse. Can I tell you honestly that I can’t remember a more visceral pleasure than thumping mindlessly away into his eye sockets while the other disciples looked on in horror? I screamed at them if they tried to look away. My God they were clutching bags of children’s body parts but I could tell they still judged me.

Oh well, it was me who rose up the ranks. Not them.

On to business; Alex I have abstained from writing to you too much during our journey through France and Spain because I’ve started to find you far too endearing. So it is important that I make this particular note’s purpose clear and concise. First, I thought I should commend you on your actions in France. What you fought by the Louvre is not something I have had the fortune of naming or even seeing before, but you did a valiant job nonetheless. I can’t possibly say what the other side was like but I do know that the monster you fought does not belong to the ecosystems that I am familiar with. In particular I did not think that vertebrate physiology had ever evolved in His world. It may have been a latecomer to this world or it might be some sort of corruption of our own lifeforms; much like the Rats of Leng.

Come to think of it, it looked remarkably like a cetacean. Certainly the frills that ran along its jaw seemed reminiscent of a blue whale’s maw it’s just strange to think why it had so many damned legs.

The second thing, by the way, is that I think you should stop this silly quest. You won’t catch me and you won’t kill me if you do. At this stage Alex I’d rather not kill you because you’re like some hero from the stories of old. Forget your niece and brother; go back, marry his widow. Do the right thing. Be a good man. Don’t bring this to the inevitable conclusion that I know is coming.

-

How did you know that would happen?

I don’t think I spent enough time studying you. I actually focused most of my efforts on your brother, your father, and another man who often spoke with them since they were the largest in your tribe. I never saw them once read a thing though I did see some books. Were they your books? Are you smarter than you look? I saw you disassemble that gas mask of yours and fix it. I thought that was the first sign that you were clever but I never thought you actually understood how it worked.

Maybe I’m over thinking it. There’s simply no way you could have known that I would perch on that building, nor that the place was occupied by Heretics. If you did know that would strongly suggest that you and the Heretics had somehow planned an ambush for me. Well… I can only assume you had no idea what you were doing, so I suppose I should fill you in.

Well you might not know—very few people do—but not all the pilgrims worshipped Him in that other world. Some of them worshipped other gods and were actually sworn to destroy Him. When the portal opened they flooded across with His disciples to help sabotage the grand plan of my Lord, and when that same portal closed they were cut off from their homeland and they were forced to stay and adapt to this world. You can probably tell from the way they struggle to not go flying into the ceiling with each step that they are not well suited to our gravity. They are pitiful things and are destined to die in our strange and hostile world (local insects are especially dangerous to their kind).

And they can’t hurt Him anymore, not now that he’s gone.

Although they can still hurt me. But a bee can hurt can’t it, Alex? Hardly a threat is it? Do you understand what I’m saying? Don’t think that just because you’ve seen how I can be caused… discomfort that you’ve gained some upper hand. I am still a god compared to you, and now that He is gone I am perhaps the closest thing to a god in this realm.

Still… what if I’m wrong? What if that little shard of glass I saw you leave their camp with was more than just some shiny trinket? What if you’re smarter than I give you credit for? Some things can kill me in theory, Alex. Is that what you asked from them?

Oh my, I really am feeling a spike of adrenaline at the thought of this! I can’t tell you how excited I feel at the thought of living a life determined by more than just survival and hunger. I want a fight; I want a challenge. I take back what I said – let’s take this to the inevitable conclusion! Let’s give you your own shove of energy and determination.

I started with her feet.

-

That certainly did the trick. Thirty-eight days without food and water! Only the blood of ticks that roamed the desert floor gave you sustenance. I am in awe that you crossed such an expanse of agonizing heat and arid sands. It was considered a feat of awe-inspiring endurance in my lifetime and the ground wasn’t infested with ticks one foot in diameter back in those days. I suppose I touched a nerve when I mentioned your niece. Then again I saw the way you looked at your brother’s wife. Don’t tell me the damned child was yours and not his?

I suppose I’m not the only illegitimate father still wandering the Earth.

Good on you, I guess. It’s been far too long since I’ve known a human’s sensual touch. The last time was… let me think. It was around 2080 when our order first became something of a global conspiracy and He had finally chosen me as its leader. I had spent most of the decades before working tirelessly to take His early form and grow it with an endless flow of offerings. We had grown in such strength that by that time we no longer had to rely on rotting, or recently deceased, children. A certain… investment plan had paid off and we found that we could soon produce enough newborns to satisfy His need for growth. We plucked the mothers from anywhere we could and relied on connections in the police to put off any possible threats. We occasionally allowed one of the children to escape sacrifice and instead put them aside for breeding. During those halcyon days He and I spoke often, and I was free to satisfy myself of any desires from the offerings.

Those were good decades.

But then He told me that, as His highest ranking apostle, I would need to take a more holy form. At the time I was tremendously excited and feverishly drank the thick yellow bile that dribbled from the openings that were once—decades before—my mother’s breast. I sucked it down and dreamt of a new glorious body which was immortal and infinitely powerful. He made it clear I would need to sustain myself from that point on with the same nutrients that kept him growing. I told Him that our supply was unending.

I now know that He was giving me a warning. He was basically clarifying that one day I would need to sustain myself as a solitary hunter, much as I do now. He knew, of course, that He had no intention of sticking around. I thought His glory was eternal and that He would not abandon us once He had gotten everything He wanted from our dimension. Then again, I also thought I would get to keep my genitals. God that was a shock… The poor girl was screaming her head off,

“It’s moving! It’s moving!” while I looked on in despair as my groin pulled away and I saw my tackle wriggle off into her pelvis. That was the last time I ever saw it! Poof… there it went. No more sex. I can still indulge in some perversions but it’s just not the same. He later told me that I could still reproduce with that region of my body.

He meant asexually. But I’m not inclined to divide myself; it’s hardly the bloody same! I’ve only done it twice out of desperation. I suppose He thought it was some great gift. His gifts always hurt though. I still love Him but I am wise enough to know that His gifts were hardly little bundles of joy. Let me tell you that the first time I woke up and felt my bones pierce my skin and my rib cage collapse I actually questioned the wisdom of following Him. The transformation was slow, and painful, and involved me being immobile for damned near a month. Luckily when I emerged He was strong enough to open the doors.

Whoosh – the end of the world! I awoke just in time to see the sky rip open in a flurry of red gaseous ribbons and orange mist. What a beautiful morning that was.

On a related note have you ever wondered what those ticks feed on? Most of the life in His dimension is plant or insect based but there are some interesting off-shoots that closely resemble our own life. One in particular is shockingly similar to our octopuses except much larger and with shells that allow them to endure dry environments. It’s remarkable.

It’s also nocturnal and is known to surface on occasion if the weather is just right. What I’m trying to say, Alex, is that I need to have my spirits lifted once more and that the rock you’re stood on is not a rock.

Please do make it a good show.

-

I didn’t expect that to happen. Who knew they were herbivores? You didn’t even kill the damned thing! You just… What’s the fucking point of being a murder machine if you just let things live? Do you think you’re funny? Denying me my entertainment? I’ll have you know I went back to that wretched thing and I saw what you’d done. Those etchings and spells are far too powerful for the likes you of you to know and I don’t appreciate you going out of your way to protect your little pet squid with some tacky incantations. I suppose the Heretics taught you that did they?

The Heretics are just like you. They came here knowing that they would never go home. They may look like amorphous insect hives but each hive is, in fact, a distinct living thing. They have little… weird… insect wives and kids, believe it or not, back in their home dimension. My first form was specially designed to fight them since they started to cooperate with the remaining human resistances. I breathed a lot of fire back then because they liked to swarm. I remember catching one and trapping him in a jar and each day I would take one of the bugs that composed its collective form and would squash it between my hooves. I also discovered that Earthly cockroaches could interbreed with the individual members of their hives. The result was a hybrid that would slowly rape and eat their way through the hive’s extremely complicated, and sensitive, telepathic system. There were a lot of ways to hurt the Heretics and they always said the same thing,

“We do this for you.”

It was a sacrifice, in their eyes, made for the greater good. Whatever they thought they were achieving it was nonsense. He had corrupted my flesh to the extreme and He was corrupting our world by this point too. Oh those were good days; in fact, they were the best days. I sat back on a throne of infant skin and watched an endless army of degraded slaves participate in foul and painful orgies. I drank an endless slurry of His strength and ate a constant banquet of unborn flesh. I could not directly participate in some of the… group activities since I had lost much of my original shape but I took great pleasure in watching blubbering peasants gag and wretch at the whim of my sick and degrading wishes. I realized somewhere along the lines that I could find great eroticism in making others do terrible things. Still… it was nothing like what I’d hoped.

All those years washing my mother, and ignoring the way my wife touched me like some wretched obligation, had left me with an intense desire for power. None of it lived up to my dreams. I’d spent so long dreaming of power and rage. I’d spent so long just… being ignored. My wife waited until after we had married to reveal that she was asexual. Our wedding night was… somber. I suppose she gave it the old college try. One night I… I found these pills on the internet. I gave them to her. This was long before He came into this world. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. The pills made her sleep. I think she knew what I’d done. I think she just ignored the mess.

The blood.

Come to think of it…

I may have been a monster long before He arrived.

-

Kudos Alex. Last night I watched you sleep and when I went to crush your little skull beneath my feet I noticed you clutching that spear. The glow of it instantly sent me reeling with pain. Of course you weren’t really sleeping, were you? It was all a trap. I have to give you credit Alex you have not disappointed me. But I am growing tired. You just keep chasing me and I keep leaving these notes. Why?

You might be curious to know but we’re back in England. This place was my home. It’s just a clearing in some woods now but I can recognize some of the hills and mountains in the distance. It may look like nothing but long ago there stood a building here from which He first emerged. When He finally reached through there was no longer a need for sacrifices. Instead His terrible and wretched column-like form erupted from the soil and the sky turned blood red. Christians had a damned field day with the news although that didn’t really last long. After that it took two centuries for man’s desperate fight against the apocalypse to wane. Eventually there were nothing but sad little savages like you and your kind running around the place and He quickly took them as slaves. No more were there mighty warplanes, or battle cruisers, or nuclear missiles. Just His will, and His strength.

And then… His absence.

Turns out Alex that He was fleeing something. There was a reason He was so desperate to move from dimension to dimension. Apparently the Heretic’s god is surprisingly powerful. I heard rumours they recognized statues of Buddha, Krishna and even Jesus and revered them suggesting their God had passed through our realm long ago. Well whatever the reason was, He left not long after He tore our world apart and turned it into some interdimensional zoo. He was here for barely four centuries. Betrayal like that hurts Alex. I’ve had to spend millennia stalking savages like you and slurping bone marrow out of newborns in damp caves barely big enough to keep me sheltered.

I’ve had a lot of forms, but the last one He gave me was meant to be a sort of gift. It was certainly strange. No more hooves at least, which I suppose is a good thing because they made a lot of noise and I never liked looking like the Baphomet. It’s just a shame that by the time I acquired this new form there were no mirrors so I don’t know what made it so special. I wonder how you’ll fare against it, even with the precious little mystical spear head you’ve got. I wonder if it’s strong enough to pierce my rugose skin. Can you throw it high enough to even reach my chest? Can you drive it with enough force to penetrate my armour and kill me? Are you fast enough to dodge my blows and resilient enough to keep on fighting should I manage to strike you?

Are you wise enough to think twice about taking this note from a tree? Are you smart enough to look up and realize that the enormous trunk which rises up into the forest does not itself belong there? I know my latest form must be a terrible thing for you humans often look at it and completely fail to realize what it is you glare at. I wonder if you’ll see what others have not. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. But one last confession Alex for this will be the final note – my final urge, that last strange and most unnatural compulsion, has been to die.

Please don’t disappoint.