Beautiful Beasts

By ZippyTheAvenger

"I was bornamidst the purplewaterfalls

I was weak, yet not unblessed

Dead to the world, alive for the journey

One night I dreamt of a white rose withering

A newborn drowning, a lifetime lonliness

I dreamt all my future, relived my past

I witnessed the beauty of the beast"

-Nightwish

Prologue

Winter here was more like spring in other places. Painfully bright, only a little cold, and flowers everywhere. The flowers, she hated the flowers most of all. Madeleine used to love flowers, and all beautiful things. Flowers, she now knew, could be poisonous.

“Mom, why are we going to the beach at night?”

Madeleine’s wild eyes flicked to her right, at the little boy seated beside her. She was grateful for the mask, but at the same time the sight of it filled her with something hateful and she wanted to smack the boy. Many times she’d given in to the urge, but not tonight.

“We’re going to watch the moon rise, Erik. The moon is full tonight, did you know that?”

Erik rolled his yellow eyes. “Of course.”

“You’re so clever.” All the time Madeleine’s voice was flat, her eyes fixed on the road through the windshield. Her hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were bone white. She shook so hard that her beaded earrings jangled.

Madeleine was aware of her son watching her suspiciously. Her lip pulled back in a snarl that revealed her gnashing teeth, but she did not admonish him this time.

Madeleine pulled into a space in the empty parking lot and got out of the car. The cool wind picked up her tawny blonde hair and threw it around with the malicious playfulness of a cat teasing its prey before going in for the kill.

Erik slipped out of the passenger seat and ran to the weathered wooden fence separating the pavement from the sand and stared rapturously at the full moon hanging over the waves and tipping them silver as they rolled in and out. Madeleine had to admit it was beautiful, though she had lied about her reason for bringing her son here.

“Why don’t you go walk on the sand?” She called over the catlike hissing of the wind. “It looks lovely, doesn’t it? Glowing white and soft like that…”

The boy needed to further prompting. Erik excitedly wriggled under the fence and began to walk slowly, reverently towards the water.

While her son was entranced by the sand as white and luminous as the surface of the moon above and the dark water that glittered like a thousand dancing stars all around, Madeleine stiffly slid back into her seat and pulled the car door shut behind her. While Erik was busy exploring his own private moon, she turned the car on, backed out of the parking lot, and tore off into the night with the squeal of tires covering up her own screams.

“Mom?” Erik stared at the rapidly retreating tail lights of his mother’s car. For several minutes he stood swaying on his feet, unable to process what had just happened. His mother had left him. What? No, impossible.

But, somehow he wasn’t the least bit surprised. In a perverse way he was almost relieved. Deep in his subconscious, where the savage things grew, he surely must have known it was only a matter of time.

Erik unthinkingly let his small body drop onto the cold, white sand. It was like dry snow.

For hours he lay there. When the tide started to come in, only a small part of his brain registered it, and that part hoped to be swept out so sea, like garbage cleared from a gutter. That’s what had happened, he had been thrown out like garbage and left to be somebody else’s problem.

Then, something sharp poked him in the back.

Erik squeaked in protest and raised his head a fraction. He saw blackened toes poking out from under wet, dirty skirts, and then the stick was thrust forward again and jabbed him in the forehead, nearly knocking his mask off.

“Stop it!” He tried to shout, but his voice was hoarse.

“So you ain’t dead, eh? What’s a livin’ dead boy doin’ lyin’ out here dis time a’ night?”

Erik sat up, his body aching from the cold and the time spent motionless, and stared at the woman speaking to him. A tall, wiry black woman with dreadlocks past her elbows was standing over him, with her head tilted like a bird’s. Her dress was a dingy grayish-white of fabric that at one time had a pattern, but had been worn to dullness, and the sleeves had long tears up to the elbows so that they fluttered uselessly from her forearms like gauze bandages that had fallen loose. She wore many necklaces and bracelets of beads, chains in silver and gold, wooden charms, bones, the tiny broken pieces of porcelain dolls, bottle corks, and all manner of peculiar things. In the moonlight her wide eyes and slyly smiling lips looked ink black.

“Are you a mermaid?” Erik asked.

The woman threw her head back and laughed a laugh like the sound of twigs snapping. “Na, boy. I’m somethin’ much worse than any bone-lickin’ fishy harlot.”

Erik noticed that the woman had a large burlap sack slung over her shoulder, and that it was twitching. She followed his gaze to the bag, then smiled at him, showing black teeth, then heaved it onto the sand and opened it. Erik leaned forward to peek inside. It was full nearly to the top with live fiddler crabs, all writhing and clattering over each other and waving their tiny purple claws.

“There,” The woman pulled the drawstrings and tied the bag shut again, then looked at Erik wickedly. “I dun showed you somethin’,now you’ll show me.” She reached a bony, long-nailed hand towards his face.

Erik backed away quickly, small hands flying to his mask. “No!”

“Fair’s fair, sweetling.” The woman cooed persuasively. “I just wanna know why you wearin’ it.”

“You can’t see! No one must ever see!” He cried.

“Why’s that?”

Erik lowered his head, and the woman leaned in conspiratorially. “I’m…ugly.” He whispered.

Instead of drawing away, the woman leaned in closer until Erik felt her hot, stinking breath on his ear. “I can make you beautiful.”

Erik turned his head the slightest bit in the woman’s direction, and she backed away gracefully. “How?” He asked.

“There are many ways,” She circled him as she began to speak, the wind picking up with her words and making her dreadlocks undulate as if she were underwater. “I can put power in your body, I can bring luxury to your hair, I can make your eyes shine like two suns. I could fill you with magic.”

“Will you?”

“I won’t. Not unless you do somethin’ for me, and you already owe me a look, so that makes two somethin’s.” The woman stopped behind Erik and fell to her knees in the sand. She placed one clawlike hand on his shoulder, and the other slowly undid the ribbons holding on his mask.

The bit of sculpted white cloth fell onto the damp sand. Erik’s hands itched suddenly, but he forced himself to ignore his instinct to retrieve it. Instead he focused on the cold, salty wind on his bare face and let the woman turn him around. He stared defiantly into her eyes.

“Well, now…” She smirked like a cat who’d just swallowed a particularly fat bird. “Ain’t you somethin’?

“I was born wrong.” Erik said quietly.

“I can fix it.” The woman purred, running her fingernails lightly along his hairline. “But you gotta give me somethin’, else it won’t work.”

Erik’s hand drifted down and snatched up the mask, but he didn’t put it on. He thought she meant something like a surgery. He’d heard his mother talking on the phone to cosmetic surgeons about what they might do to fix his face. From what he heard before his mother noticed him and made him go into the other room, very few of the doctors had any ideas, and all of the doctors assured her that she couldn’t afford it anyway.

“What do you have to give?” The woman’s voice turned sultry and persuading again. “Ten years off your life? Thirteen good stories? Your eyelashes?”

Erik frowned. “I don’t think I can give you those things.”

The woman smirked, and stood to brush her hands on her dress. Then she offered Erik her right hand. “Come with me then, and we’ll discuss terms.”

Erik hesitated, then slipped his small white hand into hers and allowed himself to be led down the beach.