Polite Monster
Jul. 26th, 2004 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalakShe does not trouble herself with justifications to her poor victims, though occasionally it will trouble her just a bit. An old sting of conscience that might cause a moment's pause, but never when she is going for the kill. She is as he has been for a very long time. Beautiful and enchanting when she wishes to be and utterly invisible when she's not she is the perfect predator among the humans.
I managed to see her just a little one night and unlike her other victims I was just a little to quick and knew a bit too much of the old ways for her to get me. Not to mention a heavy dose of luck. I mustn't be too proud of myself. I did all I could to make myself a real person in her eyes, for I guessed that might make her spare me. Or not.
"So do you talk to the rest of them?" I asked the darkness conversationally.
"No young one."
The answer seemed to come out of nowhere and everywhere around me at once. I didn't bother trying to locate the source. I'd wait carefully tense to see if she made a move continuing to methodically sweep the darkness as best as my poor human senses could.
"Why not? It surely would not matter if you revealed what you are," I said to my stalker, trying and I think succeeding at sounding neither fawning nor cold.
"Why take the risk? And why torment them? Some of my kind say terror makes the blood sweeter, I have never noticed such tasteful change." She didn't try to put me off guard this time, the voice just coming out of the darkness from one direction. Or maybe she did, I kept up my steady surveillance of the night.
I squelched a question on how she thought her victims felt on dying as possibly a bit too uncomfortable, I wanted to keep this friendly. "So I suppose the reason you're still after me because you see the danger of taking me knowing as being less than letting me live."
"That is so."
That answer was far too short for my purpose. "I don't suppose you'd tell me if there is any way I could convince you to let me live, would you?"
There was a hint of laughter in her voice as she replied, again from all around me, "I had not been thinking that way. I think you'll have to work it out for yourself if you want to live."
"I have not had much of a chance to think of one yet myself. Not much time to mull it over and all. Blind terror isn't actually that good at focusing the mind on a problem. Being brought in as people brought into the mob when they're too good to be squashed doesn't seem to be an option since I'd have to trust you not to kill me as soon as it was expedient."
She appeared now across from the hasty fire I had built. Her face along with the barest outlines of her fine black clothing so it almost looked as if she was a floating face and hands. I continued to be on guard though and didn't meet her eyes. "Wise of you not to trust me. That is a trick that has occurred to me, though I've not lead anyone on falsely in the past."
"Why not? What harm would it do once they were dead?"
"There are other ways besides telling untruth or even a half truth," she said like a speaking statue. She had a unnatural stillness about her when she didn't make an effort to cloak herself in the illusion of humanity. She was still very beautiful in her way though.
"Ah, do you believe in honor then, like the duelists who prize it above everything else?"
She seemed to warm to this question a little, "Not exactly. Honor is reputation. It is a system that works to make doing difficult things more bearable. To use your example of the duelists it only works between people of the same system. The same rank or class. Though if they of your rank would respect actions towards lesser people with more courtesy than is required one might do that. I am honorable as my kind counts such things, but you don't rank human." The last could have easily come off imperiously, but she said it as if to an equal. I hoped against everything that this might be succeeding. "I act this way because I've seen occasions with the angry dead come back. I do as much as I can to make my dead less angry and to limit how many I kill. It is practical."
That didn't seem so good for me and I said so. "Ah well then I suppose if I were in your shoes I'd kill me as being less dangerous than the chance I might come back."
"Do not be so sure of that, you've shewen a lot of mettle so far young man. And you have kept your head in the face of thing that other men cross themselves and deny exist. I'm going to leave you be, though I don't expect you to trust me. I am not sure if this choice is more dangerous or less, I cannot see where you are going yet. But I think I'll let you live. Fare well young sir. Stay wary, but know that you have something about you that makes even monsters like you."
And she stepped back into the darkness I have not yet seen her again. I suppose she moved out of the area. I did keep watch the rest of the night and I have been careful since leaving the spot in the Sierra Madre Mountains where I faced a monster far from the safety of town and bed a month ago. It seems very far away as I write here in Denver.
I think I shall make it here in the West. Now I go out to celebrate Colorado Day.
From the Diary of John Garland, Entry dated 1899 August 1st
I managed to see her just a little one night and unlike her other victims I was just a little to quick and knew a bit too much of the old ways for her to get me. Not to mention a heavy dose of luck. I mustn't be too proud of myself. I did all I could to make myself a real person in her eyes, for I guessed that might make her spare me. Or not.
"So do you talk to the rest of them?" I asked the darkness conversationally.
"No young one."
The answer seemed to come out of nowhere and everywhere around me at once. I didn't bother trying to locate the source. I'd wait carefully tense to see if she made a move continuing to methodically sweep the darkness as best as my poor human senses could.
"Why not? It surely would not matter if you revealed what you are," I said to my stalker, trying and I think succeeding at sounding neither fawning nor cold.
"Why take the risk? And why torment them? Some of my kind say terror makes the blood sweeter, I have never noticed such tasteful change." She didn't try to put me off guard this time, the voice just coming out of the darkness from one direction. Or maybe she did, I kept up my steady surveillance of the night.
I squelched a question on how she thought her victims felt on dying as possibly a bit too uncomfortable, I wanted to keep this friendly. "So I suppose the reason you're still after me because you see the danger of taking me knowing as being less than letting me live."
"That is so."
That answer was far too short for my purpose. "I don't suppose you'd tell me if there is any way I could convince you to let me live, would you?"
There was a hint of laughter in her voice as she replied, again from all around me, "I had not been thinking that way. I think you'll have to work it out for yourself if you want to live."
"I have not had much of a chance to think of one yet myself. Not much time to mull it over and all. Blind terror isn't actually that good at focusing the mind on a problem. Being brought in as people brought into the mob when they're too good to be squashed doesn't seem to be an option since I'd have to trust you not to kill me as soon as it was expedient."
She appeared now across from the hasty fire I had built. Her face along with the barest outlines of her fine black clothing so it almost looked as if she was a floating face and hands. I continued to be on guard though and didn't meet her eyes. "Wise of you not to trust me. That is a trick that has occurred to me, though I've not lead anyone on falsely in the past."
"Why not? What harm would it do once they were dead?"
"There are other ways besides telling untruth or even a half truth," she said like a speaking statue. She had a unnatural stillness about her when she didn't make an effort to cloak herself in the illusion of humanity. She was still very beautiful in her way though.
"Ah, do you believe in honor then, like the duelists who prize it above everything else?"
She seemed to warm to this question a little, "Not exactly. Honor is reputation. It is a system that works to make doing difficult things more bearable. To use your example of the duelists it only works between people of the same system. The same rank or class. Though if they of your rank would respect actions towards lesser people with more courtesy than is required one might do that. I am honorable as my kind counts such things, but you don't rank human." The last could have easily come off imperiously, but she said it as if to an equal. I hoped against everything that this might be succeeding. "I act this way because I've seen occasions with the angry dead come back. I do as much as I can to make my dead less angry and to limit how many I kill. It is practical."
That didn't seem so good for me and I said so. "Ah well then I suppose if I were in your shoes I'd kill me as being less dangerous than the chance I might come back."
"Do not be so sure of that, you've shewen a lot of mettle so far young man. And you have kept your head in the face of thing that other men cross themselves and deny exist. I'm going to leave you be, though I don't expect you to trust me. I am not sure if this choice is more dangerous or less, I cannot see where you are going yet. But I think I'll let you live. Fare well young sir. Stay wary, but know that you have something about you that makes even monsters like you."
And she stepped back into the darkness I have not yet seen her again. I suppose she moved out of the area. I did keep watch the rest of the night and I have been careful since leaving the spot in the Sierra Madre Mountains where I faced a monster far from the safety of town and bed a month ago. It seems very far away as I write here in Denver.
I think I shall make it here in the West. Now I go out to celebrate Colorado Day.
From the Diary of John Garland, Entry dated 1899 August 1st