A Tale Of Misery

Epilogue

Epilogue.

First there was silence, and then there was noise. You have noise, and then you have noise. It takes a trained mind to know which is which when all there is to distinguish between the two is having made them both yourself. This noise, was a scream. Not of pain, and not of just screaming because you but, but screaming because you can't and you feel nothing.

You couldn't actually hear it  because it was the opposite of a noise. It was the noise that comes when nothing happens when you try to make it sound. It was piercing; it rattled the body and boiled the blood. And then there was noise to ruin the silence of the other noise. It was a cackling, a mad one. An evil genius one. One who's creation had just come alive.

A bony white hand, clean from any and everything, appeared. It gripped the edge of the metal tank that stood in the middle of the grey brick room and slowly pulled itself up. The skull atop of the spine swiveled round and looked through empty eye sockets at the room. The jaw bone moved up and down, as if it were trying to say something, and it watched as it flexed its bony fingers.

It stared down at the rest of its body before turning towards the mad man courching in a corner of the room, giggling wildly and clutching at a name plate peeled from a coffin lid. Jumping out of the tank with surprising agility, the skeleton clicked its way over to the mad man. Reaching him, it reached out a hand and grabbed the plate from the man's loose grip.

Turning the plate over, it rubbed the dirt and grime away from the name and read it. It screamed another noiseless scream and dropped suddenly to a heap on the room, clutching its knees to its body as it rocked back and forth like the mad man. The name plate had falled to the floor face up, and the skeleton couldn't take its empty eyes from it. It was his name 'Rowen Keaton'.

~

Sitting with his feet up on a table, a cigar between his lips, James sat in the living room of the penthouse. Drawing in a deep breath he sucked in smoke and then released it in a ring. It floated in front of his face until he blew it away to join the rest of the smoke up on the roof. It was four months since Rowen's death. Since both of their deaths, actually. Rowen was dead, and James would turn into a werewolf each full moon.

He still remembered the first time it happened, it took everybody by surprise. It was in the middle of a party, the moon had shone through an open window. He had managed to figure out what was happening before he was too far gone and managed to get them all to safetly. Even though later he had lost a spot in the social circle he had still saved them.

Turning his head, he gazed blankly at the calender on the wall and at the date marked in red. Today. Stuffing out the rest of his cigar, he rose and made his way to a new room he had instaled after that frightful night. The scratch that Gustave had left across his face, the one he had become infected from, had never fully healed and now an ugly scared lined his face.

Locking the steel door he slid the key under it and seated himself in the large metal chair and proceeded to strap himself in. You needed a full moon to turn, and the moonlight helped the process, and so he had taken the precaution of strapping himself in each time. Settling himself into a comfortable position he closed his eyes and prepared for the wait.

~

Carly stood behind the counter of the Odd Shope. Not once since that fateful evening had she seen James. She hadn't even attended Rowen's funeral just in case she saw him. A tinkling indicated that the door had opened and she looked up from the book she was reading and adjusted a smile onto her face. It was fake, the one she gave to customers, but upon seeing who it was it transformed magically into something real.

'Ed!' she cried happily, rushing around the counter to embrace the strong looking man that had walked in. As they kissed they turned, and as they did so the light on the ceiling reflected the two new rings sitting on her wedding finger that took the place of the ring Rowen had given her. With him gone, she had moved on and quickly found someone else.

The End.