Face Of The Monster

~21~

The carcass began to stink immediately, the scent so strong that it made Lillian cry. Rotted fruit, spoilt meat, old blood. She tried to stagger away from it but only hit the wall. She was trapped here, the Monster's great torrent of blackish blood dribbling over her feet through the gaping hole of its mouth.

"Lillian?" said Gabriel's voice from the other side of the body. He sounded close to tears with pain. "Darling, come to me. This chain is going to rip my hand clean off if you don't."

The chain. She remembered. It felt heavy and permanent around her wrist, not burning like Agatha's but cold and solitary like an angry hand. She could feel the resistance where Gabe's hand was being pulled.

"I can't move," she called to him.

"Are you hurt?"

"I'm sad."

It was so true that hearing herself say the words brought Lillian into another fit of sobs. Oh, she had never felt a sadness of this depth. This magnificent, rotting creature made her insides roil with awful loneliness. She missed the blue, the brilliant, shocking blue of its eyes.

She heard Gabriel's footsteps struggling toward her. "It won't break," he said. "I've tried to cut it, no luck. Have you any idea where it's come from?"

"None." A cold shock washed over her insides. Gabriel, she saw just beyond the monster's head, holding Agatha's sword, now sullied with dark blood. "Gabriel? Oh, Gabriel, you killed it didn't you?"

"Who else would have?" he asked.

"Why've you gone and done that?" Lillian exclaimed. "Did I not tell you to leave it for me? Was that not my only request?" She felt her insides crumbling deeper into themselves with dread.

Gabriel managed to edge around the Monster's angular jaw, his body becoming visible to Lillian. He was bloodied, dirty from the cave and glistening with sweat. "Lillian," he cooed. "You would have died. It was right there in front of you and you'd dropped your sword some time back. It would have devoured you whole, had I left you to it."

Lillian didn't know if this was true or not, but she felt it was not. She had felt something between the monster and her. There was a benevolence in those eyes, a deep-seated love. It would not have hurt her, she felt sure of it. "It was so beautiful," she squeaks. But he would never understand it.

He edged closer, sighing in relief as the chain slackened around his wrist. Lillian let him cocoon her in his bloody, dirty body, breathing in the scent of his sweat. It was greatly overpowered by the decaying aroma of the Monster. She touched him, his neck, his arms, his lips, and wondered if he had already begun to decompose, himself.