An Evil Baby (a short story)
When a baby is born, it usually cries. But why does it cry? Is it out of shock of seeing the world for the first time? Is it out of happiness out of starting their life? Is it an instinctual reaction meant to help in taking the first breaths? Maybe. In my case, I cried of sadness.
From the moment of birth, I felt it. The crushing despair of what my existence will bring. And my mother cried too, as my horns shredded her insides when she birthed me.
As I grew, so did my horns. Over the years sadness and fear evolved into anger, then anger evolved into hate. I hated the world. I hated the people in it. And most of all, I hated myself. This has lead to something strange. With experience, I learned, and as I learned, my mind expanded. I learned to extract the hatred from myself. To purify and concentrate it into something new. A strange kind of love.
As I learned, experienced, and expanded my mind, I came to a conclusion. One of two things must be true. Either the world is terrible and broken, or I am. I never fit in anywhere. Not with the people. Only with freaks like me. The tailed, the horned, the hoofed, the broken and the unhinged. And I shared my love with them, for it was the only thing I had. And they shared their love with me, for it was the only thing they had.
As my mind matured, so did my body. My horns grew to their full size, my skin became hard and cracked, not unlike mud dried in the sand. But my insides, they did not harden. With time they only became softer. Like a banana being charred by flame from the outside while liquefying and boiling on the inside. By that time my love and my hate were equal in volume. The two essences mixed, until they became one. I was a cocoon full of hateful love and a loving kind of hatred. And what grew inside me filled even my twisted soul with dread.
As my body grew older, I began to feel an ache inside me. Not just a physical one, but something like an itching in the back of my brain. An itch that I could not scratch. An itch that drove me insane. It compelled me to go up. Up, towards the domain of my forefathers. Up towards the sky. Up until there was nowhere else to go. Up, up, up.
My skull split in the middle, and the itching finally subsided. And I cried, just as I cried out at the moment of my birth. But this time it was not out of sadness. It was out of glee. But even true happiness can come from something corrupted. I am a beautiful butterfly, with a fruiting body in the back of my head. I will fly high over the world, and spread my miraculous sickness to all.
The ugly truth is, the word "horned" is only one letter and an anagram away from "honored".
From the moment of birth, I felt it. The crushing despair of what my existence will bring. And my mother cried too, as my horns shredded her insides when she birthed me.
As I grew, so did my horns. Over the years sadness and fear evolved into anger, then anger evolved into hate. I hated the world. I hated the people in it. And most of all, I hated myself. This has lead to something strange. With experience, I learned, and as I learned, my mind expanded. I learned to extract the hatred from myself. To purify and concentrate it into something new. A strange kind of love.
As I learned, experienced, and expanded my mind, I came to a conclusion. One of two things must be true. Either the world is terrible and broken, or I am. I never fit in anywhere. Not with the people. Only with freaks like me. The tailed, the horned, the hoofed, the broken and the unhinged. And I shared my love with them, for it was the only thing I had. And they shared their love with me, for it was the only thing they had.
As my mind matured, so did my body. My horns grew to their full size, my skin became hard and cracked, not unlike mud dried in the sand. But my insides, they did not harden. With time they only became softer. Like a banana being charred by flame from the outside while liquefying and boiling on the inside. By that time my love and my hate were equal in volume. The two essences mixed, until they became one. I was a cocoon full of hateful love and a loving kind of hatred. And what grew inside me filled even my twisted soul with dread.
As my body grew older, I began to feel an ache inside me. Not just a physical one, but something like an itching in the back of my brain. An itch that I could not scratch. An itch that drove me insane. It compelled me to go up. Up, towards the domain of my forefathers. Up towards the sky. Up until there was nowhere else to go. Up, up, up.
My skull split in the middle, and the itching finally subsided. And I cried, just as I cried out at the moment of my birth. But this time it was not out of sadness. It was out of glee. But even true happiness can come from something corrupted. I am a beautiful butterfly, with a fruiting body in the back of my head. I will fly high over the world, and spread my miraculous sickness to all.
The ugly truth is, the word "horned" is only one letter and an anagram away from "honored".