As ever comments, criticisms and suggestions.
Spoiler: show
I’m tired.
I’m only twenty four and I feel like I’m fifty.
I’m always tired these days. If ever a man chose a place to lie down and die, he could do a lot better than here.
I wouldn’t let my dog die here. If I had a dog.
I could think of one woman I might let die here. It probably wouldn’t take long considering how badly she handled the cold when I knew her.
The oppressive concrete bears down on me from all sides. Smooth grey walls, new enough that the leaks haven’t carved grooves into them.
I can’t help but shiver when the freezing metal of my helmet touches my neck. The cold and the wet have seeped into me so far that I don’t think a hundred hot showers will ever be able remove the sensation.
If a man were to choose a place to die, he could do a lot better than this place and that’s probably why it’s a prison. I have lived here for two years.
Yet, I am not listed as a prisoner here.
If you were to search the records for my designation in this place it would say: Joe Davies, Prison Guard.
Yet, I am as much a prisoner here as any of the poor monmusu that dwell here. I can leave at the end of my shift if I so choose, there is no one who will stop me. The only obstacle between me and freedom from this place is in my own mind. Guilt shackles me here as surely as any iron chain. I know that at the end of today, just like every day for the last two years, I’ll walk to the empty cell in C block and sleep there until my day starts again.
Kind of a melancholy way of looking at it, but hey, if I chose to talk to someone about the source of my guilt, I would likely end up with my head on a pike, so broodings my only real option. I’m sure these feelings will pass in time. I still have hope; I just wish it wasn’t so damn cold in the meantime.
The great irony is that my feelings of guilt have made me try and make the prisoners lives as comfortable as possible. I know it’s absurd considering monster girls are part of the reason I’m here, but some days I just want to make someone’s day a bit better, even if they are an inhuman monster. My behavior certainly hasn’t won me any friends. I work the night shift anyway so I’m usually the only human in the building.
My fellow guards fall into two distinct groups. The group that avoid me because they think that I’m some kind of Order fanatic who’s addicted to his work, or the group that avoid me because they ‘are’ fanatics of the Order who think I have a monster sweetheart amongst the inmates which they try to desperately discover at every opportunity.
Both are wrong.
I’m most certainly not an Order fanatic, if I was I would probably never have ended up in this hellhole. I also don’t have a monster sweetheart amongst the inmates. Tried a monster girl once, got burned, never again.
I may not particularly like the Order, but I owe it a debt I wouldn’t be able to fulfill if I lived a hundred lifetimes. Well, maybe I don’t owe the Order a debt, more like humanity as a whole. Either way, my religious work ethic and monster coddling hasn’t made me any friends.
Shame, I was quite popular once.
My musing on social life, or lack thereof is swiftly interrupted, and by swiftly by a new sound in the prisons usual hum. I’ surprised, I now have something to do besides feed the prisoners or let them out into the yard.
The routine of prison life is only ever interrupted by one thing, a breakout, or a new arrival.
Three young Order paladins walk in through the main doors in the lobby, two of them are dragging a shackled third person, although I use the word person loosely.
At a glance at her clothes and scaled tail I would say she was a Lizardman, a species I have a particularly great level of distaste for. Her face is covered in a burlap sack, pretty standard disorientation stuff. I don’t get why we do it, it’s not like we want to ask them any questions.
In the past we would take their clothes off before we shoved them in their cells, but an incident with a succubus caused the administration to decide that less time with hands on the merchandise was the correct approach. Now we only occasionally have love-struck guards breaking girls out. Even in the very depths of Order territory with the monsters locked up, men are just as susceptible to their charm.
The third paladin greets me with a stiff handshake as I move to greet him, the other two drag the prisoner to her cell without giving me so much as a glance. Typical Order twits.
“Warden, add into the logs that Ser Gregor of Reinhark captured one Lizardman intact on the ninth of October.”
Intact?
Intact means without a fight, usually a child or some poor confused holstaurus, not bloody likely with a fully grown Lizardman.
My disbelief must have shown on my face because the paladin flushed a shade of red a beetroot would have been proud to claim.
“Yes, you heard correctly Warden, it just walked into the city center. It’s the middle of an Order city and she just pulls back her hood in the middle of day and claims her name is June-”
“June?” I nearly shout in surprise.
Ser Gregor looks equally surprised at my interruption.
“Yes Warden, she just kept saying her name was June and that the coward should face her, she just kept repeating it until we took her in.”
I can feel myself turning pale. How the hell did she find me here? Hasn’t she done enough to me? Why now?
I haven’t thought about her since I left. It would seem strange considering she was the instigator of my crime, and yet I find I have blocked her out except in the most vague general recollections.
It seems I am trying to escape her in my mind as well.
“Did you harm her?”
Gregor looks disappointed,
“Didn’t have to unfortunately, you know how it is with the current leadership, they want them alive for study. Disgusting.”
He spits on the floor to show his distaste.
My mind is running a mile a minute. I need to deal with her. Tonight, before she can speak too much and get us both killed.
If I don’t deal with her she will say things. Things that could get me hung a good few times over.
Part of me is kind of happy I might be able to get some closure. I can feel myself starting to grin now, and it’s not a pleasant one. It’s more like the kind of grin you use to show teeth.
The paladin must have noticed my reaction because he leaned in close, as if sharing a secret, which I suppose he was,
“Do you know that beast Warden?”
I look him in the eyes and he visibly recoils. I wonder what’s reflected in my eyes right now.
Anger? Hate? Hurt?
Regret?
“Oh yes, that thing murdered my sister in cold blood, it escaped before I could enact my vengeance. I never thought I would get a chance to get my hands on her.”
Now, if the paladin I was looking at was a veteran, then I was thoroughly rumbled. Any frontline soldier worth his salt knows that the days of monmusu murdering people wholesale were long over. Fortunately for me, he was young and considering we were in the middle of Order territory, the young paladin had probably never even seen a monster prior to today.
He would believe me too, a job as a prison warden in a monster facility may not be glamorous, but it paid well, and the only people who were trusted enough to spend extended time around monmusu were those who had resisted them in the field, or had some reason to hold a grudge against them.
I definitely looked the part of the grim soldier with my metal mask that completely obscured my features. It was designed to make us guards appear more intimidating and less human, ironically.
It was a risk.
“Alright Gregor, how about I cut you a deal. I’ll give you twenty gold pieces and we pretend that the Lizard was killed on the way over when she resisted you.”
I stuck out my hand. Twenty gold pieces was a lot for a paladin fresh out of training.
Gregor stared out my outstretched hand and seemed to think it over, before leaning in once more to whisper,
“You’ll make her suffer right?”
I nodded, grinning even wider.
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
Hell, it was half true. I did want her to suffer. I would have liked her to spend as long in this hellhole as I have, but I can’t risk her speaking to the other guards. I honestly don’t know what I’ll do with her.
Part of me wants to stick my sword in her.
Part of me wants to let her escape if she promises to never come near me again.
The part of me I’m trying my hardest to pretend doesn’t exist just wants to see her again, to hear her voice, to feel her skin on mine…
…To apologize.
Stop it.
Focus.
She betrayed me.
She used me.
She took my pride, my home, and my friends in one fell swoop.
What I did to her when I left doesn’t even come close to evening the scales.
The other two paladins return, and I pass Gregor twenty gold from my jacket pocket. The paladin grins happily and leaves without looking back, probably already envisioning an epic night in the local taverns.
Order twat.
Well no time like the present. I moved down the hall to where the paladins stashed June, it’s obvious which cell door she’s behind because the dumb pricks just dumped her shackles and sack outside it, hopefully after pushing her in, but I wouldn’t trust a new paladin recruit now to shit on the carpet. A quick pull of the latch confirms the iron door is locked tight.
I’m in luck though; they used one of the joined cells. Originally all the cells were completely solo affairs, but it was quickly discovered that most monster girls died pretty quick without any social interaction whatsoever.
I imagine that most humans would too if they were left alone in this dank lifeless place. The Order needed the girls to survive in here, so the joined cells were created.
Two cells separated by iron bars rather than concrete, the monster girls could even touch each other through the bars if they chose, and they often did, hugging up against the bars and each other for warmth.
I swear to god when I leave this place, I’m going to help them get out of here. It might not absolve my sins, but it might help me sleep better. I may have cause to dislike monmusu, but I practically live with these ones. An extra blanket, some extra rations or a book is no skin off my back, I’m already resented by my peers and I’m too valuable a worker to be removed by the higher ups. My actions only barely sit on the edge of heresy.
Order pricks.
The joined cell works in my favor though. Now I won’t have to converse with June through the grill of the door. I can’t deny that I want to see her, even if it’s to watch her suffer, or maybe I want to see her face if she tries to explain.
Focus.
I stop in front of the door to the cell next to June’s. I need a moment to steady my breathing and stop the blood from rushing in my ears.
The woman I have been running from for two years is behind this door. The only woman who I can claim to love and hate with equal intensity. The woman who took everything from me.
I push the door open and move across to sit on the cot opposite without looking over to where she will be sat.
Sitting on the rock solid mattress I take a deep breath before finally bringing myself to look at her.
She’s still beautiful.
Her green scales seem to shine even in this dark place, as if she lights up the room just by being in it. Her tail lies casually across her lap as she sits on the cot facing me. My eyes try to take in all her features at once, her short brown hair, smooth tanned skin, green scaled ears and her single golden eye. She doesn’t look she’s in prison, she’s smirking as if we were back home and she had beaten me at chess.
A home that doesn’t exist for me anymore, at least not in any form I would recognize.
She has one new trait though; perhaps I’m biased toward noticing it first, because I knew her before she had it.
She has an eye patch, along with a long scar running from her forehead through where her right eye would be, right to the cleft of her chin. Part of me is happy to it, the part I’m trying to ignore feels ill.
Even my parting gift to her doesn’t seem able to detract from her beauty; if anything it gives her more of that dangerous charm she so easily wooed me with.
It annoys me that while I have chosen to banish myself to the closest thing to hell on earth for my actions that night, she is still beautiful as ever, as if she deserves no penance for her betrayal.
She looks well considering the last time I saw her she was face down in the dirt covered in her own blood.
Even then I couldn’t kill her, even as she destroyed my home. I didn’t even mean to hurt her, I just wanted her to let go of me. To let me escape.
Only later was I glad I did it, returned some physical hurt for the emotional agony she heaped on me. Sometimes though, when my thoughts are unguarded, I suffer small jolts of crippling guilt.
Yet, as I look upon the confident lizardman I know I can’t kill her. I never could, nor will I ever be able to. I just can’t intentionally destroy the things I love.
I can still remember when I met her two years ago.
I got off my watch in the guard tower and headed down to the local tavern. The Order may have been a bunch of blowhards, but they kept the roads safe enough for trade to keep flowing, and that was damn near the only reason I volunteered for the town militia.
It helped that while I was damn near hopeless at most things, I had an uncanny talent for swords and strategy. My plan was to save enough cash to apply for the military academy in the capital.
When I got into the tavern, something immediately caught my eye, sitting alone in the back corner was a cloaked individual, not exactly rare with all the traders going through but what caught my eye was the fancy chess kit it had poking out of its pack.
A complete stranger sitting alone with a sword should have given me pause for thought, but I was young and it really did look like an exquisite chess kit. If I could just run my hands over one of those carved pieces I would be a happy man. Poor people don’t get fancy chess kits, so this really was once in a blue man chance.
I tried to start a conversation, but I was rebuked harshly with words I can’t remember, I can only remember being surprised this cloaked individual was a woman and wondering if the woman would have suggested in her rebuke that I perform such an act if she knew my mother was dead, I didn’t own a dog and I had no earthly idea what a pineapple was.
I was persistent though. I would get my hands on that chess kit, or get stabbed trying.
Eventually in a fit of frustration I suggested that the woman may in fact be too cowardly to face me for a small game. That certainly got her interest because in seconds she was setting up the board, gloved hands moving a mile a minute. She told me not to cry when I lost.
I won barely. The gloved woman challenged me to match after match as she got more and more frustrated when she lost and more arrogant when she won. The more she lost, the more she challenged me and the more verbal she became.
I remember long conversations with that hooded woman about all sorts of topics, where we grew up, what we wanted in life, standard noninvasive small talk while we played our game. I couldn’t see a shred of her skin, but her voice was sexy enough to drive my libido insane. I felt like a giddy teenager with a girl on his first date.
We repeated the same thing every night for about a week. A week of that wicked tongue verbally flaying me at every opportunity and me laughing it off, and yet I found myself becoming ever more attracted to this mysterious hooded woman with the wild temper, wicked wit and subpar chess skills.
The feeling must have been mutual because eventually she suggested that I accompany her home. I was delighted, even if I had never seen her face I was entirely infatuated with her.
It was in a secluded alley that she finally whipped back her hood, unveiling a blushing face that was beautiful to the point it rendered me speechless. I hardly even noticed the scales at first.
We must have stood there a good few minutes, her blushing and speechless for a change, awaiting my reaction, me blushing and trying to think of something to say.
Finally I managed to stutter something to the intent that she was beautiful and that I could care less about the fact she was a Lizardman.
She blushed even brighter and damn near broke my ribs when she pinned me to the wall. I’ll just let it be said that that was the night we became intimate, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that anyone else would just never be able to compare to that creature in my bed.
I remember asking her why she was handing out in an inn in an Order controlled border town. She claimed she was a traveling mercenary, and just passing through. I asked when she would be leaving, and she told me she would leave when I chose to leave with her. I guess she considered a chess match to be a ‘duel’ of sorts. It seemed romantic at the time.
Now I know what a risk she took in exposing herself to me, I can’t help but wonder if it was all just part of her plan to gain my trust.
It worked too. Oh how it worked.
So with memory lane out of the way, here she is. Two years and four months since our first meeting, and my only desire is to be free of her.
She turns her golden eye on me with such casual nonchalance I almost believe it.
“Hello Joe.”
Her voice sounds the same, that cocksure arrogant lilt with the slight tang towards the end of her words. I used to love listening to that voice; even now I can still feel those old emotions bubbling beneath the surface, like pus under an old wound.
I sigh and remove my helmet.
“How did you know?”
She slowly raises a finger to tap her nose.
“I could never forget your scent. Not in two years, not in two thousand. I can’t smell any women on you though. I assume you quickly figured out that nothing will ever compare to me.”
She tried to make it sound like a casual statement, but she was never a great actor and I can hear the slightest tremor of tension in her delivery.
She’s right. The few brief liaisons I’ve had since I ran away from her just left me feeling unsatisfied and mildly dirty, as if I had done something wrong. Eventually I just gave up, though I’ll never give her the satisfaction of saying so.
She seems to take my lack of a response as a confirmation though. It irritates me even more when she slowly exhales in relief.
“It doesn’t need to be said, but I haven’t been with anyone but you since we met, nor will I ever be. Were joined, its fate, neither you or I can escape, and neither of us should want to.”
When I don’t respond she get irritated, dropping her pretense of being casual and showing her true feelings as she sits forward, her single eye flashing menacingly,
“Do you have any idea how much I had to pay a danuki to track you down? It took a year’s work just to get the gold for her to start searching.”
She smirks, leaning backwards again,
“I would do it again though, as many times as it takes.”
I just sit in silence. I’m not trying to be difficult; I just don’t know what to say to her after so long. It’s been two years, and yet the sight of her is bringing my emotional baggage all back as if it was only yesterday. I’m not saying anything because, if I speak I’m worried I’ll just scream at her until I can’t talk at all.
She continues anyway, either ignorant of my inner turmoil, or more likely just trying to get her words in before I do. She always preferred being on the offense.
“So this is where you have been hiding, an Order prison just outside the Order’s capital. I understand they keep monmusu here and try to figure out how long we live naturally. Pretty boring stuff.
You must really have been desperate to hide from me if you were even willing to live amongst the Order’s drones. As I remember you never did much like the Order, I believe your favorite descriptor for them was ‘Twat’.”
Her smug smile remains constant as she slowly says the next words. Only her eyes belay the furious intensity of her words.
“Doesn’t matter where you hide though.
You can run to the end of the earth and I will still sniff you out. Cowardice only makes your scent stronger, and after two years of skulking in the dark you reek of it.
You can’t hide from me anymore. I have your scent again and I’m never letting it go.
Hell, I’ve even forgiven you for this-” she gestures to her ruined eye, “-it was a fair fight, and you were confused, I should have given you space. Your actions were… extreme, but understandable. I was even a bit impressed. What I have not forgiven is what you did afterwards, coward.”
I can feel my blood rising in response to her words. A fair fight?
As I remember it I attacked her without a word. A duel has a clear beginning and end. What I did was inflict grievous bodily on someone who was not ready and stopped my attack when she stopped moving.
She betrayed me first though, and then has the gall to show up spouting bullshit, as if I’m just going to leap into her arms!
I don’t have to listen to her call me a coward either. I was ready to die with them if I had to, and she took that from me. If anyone should be talking about forgiveness here it’s me.
Yet I remain, even if it’s like rubbing myself on sandpaper, I’m compelled to be near this women, for better or for worse.
Her words finally force a response from me though.
“Coward!? Strong words from a traitor!”
Her head jerks back as if she’s been slapped. Lizardmen put a lot of stock in their honor and I’m sure if I were anyone else she would be trying to rip my head for that. It seems in spite of what she did she does still care for me a bit.
“Traitor!? Who did I betray!? It was all finally coming together, we could finally be together, but you attacked me-” She gestures at her ruined eye, “-maimed my eye and ran, leaving me in a pile of my own blood. I guess according to you I should be thankful you took the time to bandage my face before running for the hills.”
I can barely contain myself.
“You betrayed me! My town! My friends! You sold us all out!”
I leap up thrusting my finger at her through the bars. Spittle flying as two years of pent up pain fly out.
“Worst of all you used me to do it! And I let you! Because I trusted you!”
It’s all spilling out now,
“I was supposed to be on guard in the eastern watchtower that night, but you asked me to meet you in the forest, and like a moron I did it.”
I step toward the bars, breathing heavily,
“We spend a few hours in the woods, and I return to find my home under attack by a horde of monsters.”
I can still remember looking out at the small town from the crest of the hill. The stink of lust in the air, the moaning and screams as my friends and neighbors were dragged from their homes in the night, to be taken by the invaders or turned into one of them. I remember watching from the distance powerless to stop it. Knowing it was my fault.
And she stood there next to me, her golden eyes glowing in the night, grinning as if she had pulled a great trick and deserved a reward.
“My whole town!”
My tears are running freely now, I couldn’t stop them If I wanted to. I have two years of guilt churning in my gut. This is the first time I have vocalized anything close to the truth of what happened that night.
“Turned or taken by monsters, all because I was fucking a monster in the woods!”
I can’t take my eyes off that damned eye patch. I can still see her face down, blood pooling beneath her, soaking into her sleek hair, staining it. The metallic smell of blood permeating the air, the same air we had made love in just hours ago.
Even if her love was filled with lies and deceit, I still loved her, even then.
“You tricked me! Used me! Every word was a lie!”
That seems to surprise her. I can see her scaled ears fly back against her head as she mulls over my words.
She mutters under her breath.
“I never betrayed you Joe, lied by omission perhaps, but I never wanted to hurt you. You have to understand.”
She’s looking at me with that one remaining golden eye, and yet I keep finding myself drawn to the eye patch, that ruined eye that symbolizes just about everything that our relationship has become.
Ruined, ruined by my hand and hers.
“Joe…”
She sat up, less sure of herself now. She was speaking slowly, as if deliberating her words at great length,
“I know you’re hurt, but it was all for the best.”
She moves forward pressing against the bars, I move back instantly, only stopping when I feel the cot hit the back of my legs. Hurt flashes in her eyes and her ears droop once more, but she continues anyway.
“I think perhaps we misunderstood each other, and if we have then we have both wasted a great amount of time. I think that the few weeks we had might not have been enough for us to fully understand each other. In which case, perhaps the injury you gave me was well earned, even if by accident. I should have explained things first, but I was in love and I thought it would be more romantic that way. If I could go back and kick myself I would.”
She absentmindedly rubs her clawed hands up and down the cold metal of the bars.
“Joe, I need you to understand something. On that night there was absolutely nothing you could have done to save your town. You need to stop blaming yourself and me for that matter.
If you had been in the tower when the attack came, you could have given the town a few minutes warning at most. The garrison might have been able to kill a few more Monmusu, but they would have been overrun in pretty short order. I know you think I was a spy or something similar for them, but that’s not true, for a town the size of yours they didn’t need to infiltrate, they could just roll in.
I’m sure you would have acquitted yourself well if you had been there, you may even have managed to kill a few invaders, but you would have been taken in pretty short order. The only difference would be that it wouldn’t have been me who laid claim to you. One of your attackers would have taken you as spoils of war and you would have had blood on your hands for your efforts.”
She sighs and looks at me intently with that one golden eye.
“You have to understand that I couldn’t let that happen. So before the attack started I moved you out of the way and kept you with me. It was the best way to keep you safe and secure, and maybe save a few lives that would have died for nothing more than human pride.”
My head was spinning. I had always known objectively what would have happened that night if I had been at my post, not the bit about getting ‘claimed’ by the attackers or that they didn’t use infiltrators, but the bit about the town getting steamrolled by the invading army was pretty obvious to me, even if my feelings of guilty wouldn’t let me acknowledge it.
I can for the most part accept that. It doesn’t forgive June’s betrayal though, or my abandonment of my post.
I did have questions though,
“You were part of the Demon lord’s army. Why not just wait until the battle was over or just claim me during?”
She shook her head, irritation flashing in her eye.
“Did you ever actually see me interact with that army, as in communicate with it in any way?”
I numbly shook my head.
“No, you just assumed that because I’m a Lizardman that I was automatically a part of it.”
It was my turn to get irritated now. I leapt forward so that we were face to face. God she smelled good, like spices and smoke on a day in spring.
“You knew the attack was coming though! How would you know that unless you were part of it.”
She was hissing at me through the bars now, it was a new sight for me, I have seen her playfully angry a hundred times, but never genuinely enraged.
She grabbed the front of my jacket through the gaps in the bars and pulled me until I was pressed against them and mere inches from our noses touching. I had forgotten just how strong Lizardmen are.
“Because I’m a monmusu you stupid ape!”
She pushes me back, before pulling forward, painfully slamming me against the bars again, groaning as she apparently grows frustrated that she can’t bring us any close together with a few inches of iron bar and air keeping us separate.
“I could sense their demonic energy a few hours before they arrived! Even if I told you as soon as I sensed them, what could you do? Tell the town that monsters were coming and your Lizardman girlfriend told you?
Even if they all left by some miracle, they would have been caught in the open fields just as quickly as if they had stayed in the town. I couldn’t stop it and neither could you!”
I can see tears running down her cheek from her one good eye.
“You don’t get it. I had a plan, I thought it would be romantic you dolt.”
I watch her crying and want so much to reach through the bars and comfort her, but I can’t.
The damned eye ruined eye stops me, staring at me from beneath that eye patch.
Mocking me.
Reminding me that I’m the man who maimed the woman I love. A moments rage immortalized in the flesh of my beloved, a result of poor decisions, circumstances and self-control crystalized.
June heaves a heavy sob,
“Our first sword fight, under the moonlight, as your hometown became somewhere we could live without fear of recrimination. I couldn’t stop it, so I thought I could make it a good memory, something we could smile about.
I barely even had my hand on my sword-”
Her voice becomes devoid of emotion, a strangled whisper.
“-then you slashed me before I could even get my sword out of it’s sheathe. I didn’t even know humans could move that fast. You cut me, it was supposed to be something nice, and you took an eye from me.”
Her remaining eye is streaming and every tear is like a pinprick to my soul.
I can remember it all perfectly.
June, beautiful as the day I first saw her face, hair flowing in the cool night air, standing on the grass of the hill with the sight of my hometown’s invasion behind her. She was still glowing from our last love making session.
I could hear her perfectly over the wind and the screams, an embarrassed smile tugging at the edge of her lips.
I say her words aloud as the June from my memory says them in my memories,
“Let’s celebrate the beginning.”
June stops weeping long enough to nod,
“It was supposed to be special, something good amongst the bad.”
Now I realize she meant the beginning of our lives together. Our first sword fight before I proposed to her, or she to me. I’m sure it never occurred to her that it was a cruel mirror of the events she was trying to distract me from.
I watched a horde of monsters move through the open gates of my home, gates I should have been guarding. Gates I was not defending because of the woman in front of me. The woman who had lured me away under false pretenses, the woman who had known they were coming. The woman who was about to pull a sword on me, the woman I thought had just vaguely threatened me.
At the time all I could think about were the Order’s warnings. A life time of sermons ran through my head warning me about the deceitful nature of monsters.
If I had been allowed twenty seconds between seeing the horde of monsters, and June grabbing her sword, I think I might have acted differently. I just needed twenty seconds to get my thoughts in order and think things through, rationalize what was happening.
June was excited. She could never have waited twenty seconds for her big unveil.
As it was I got thirteen seconds.
My conscious mind was still trying to process what was happening and my next movement was relegated to my subconscious mind, a subconscious that was upset, angry, confused and filled with a lifetime of ‘pro-Order anti-Monmusu conditioning’ verses a few weeks of love for a woman that I was sure had betrayed me.
I didn’t even know my hand had moved until I felt the warm spray, the metallic taste in my mouth and the faint wumph as June collapsed. I could feel the weight of my short sword in my hand, and the warmth on my arm as a faint line of blood dribbled down the blade and onto my arm from the handle.
I didn’t even scream. My whole body froze, my breath caught in my throat. I don’t know how long I stood there as the woman I loved bled on the ground in front of me. It was probably only a few seconds, but to me it felt like a lifetime, a lifetime of that metallic taste in my mouth and the warmth of her blood on my face, a lifetime of hell.
I can’t possibly imagine how it must have felt for her. I imagine that she fainted, not from physical pain; I don’t think she would have even felt pain in the time it took for her to collapse, but from the idea that the man she loved had just stabbed her. I don’t know if she realized it was a possibility when she planned out that evening. I doubt it, deep introspection is my thing, not hers.
It was only a harpy flying overhead toward the town that broke me from my reverie. My body moved when my mind failed me, I remember feeling numb when I went to check on her and found her still breathing. No relief, just numbness. I used my shirt to bandage her head so she wouldn’t bleed to death.
I doubt she would have bled to death even without my help, monmusu are significantly tougher than humans after all. With that done I took my bloodied sword and ran to the nearest Order town, ostensibly to get reinforcements, but really just to get away from what I had done.
From there I signed up for work as far away from monmusu as I could, and soon ended up in this prison, my reward for being the sole survivor from my town. I say survivor, but we all know that’s just code for ‘escapee’.
So that’s it then. I slump against the bars as my legs give way, it’s only June quickly wrapping her arms around me in a desperate hug that stops me from dropping to the floor. I can’t even look her in the eye as she observes me with waiting for some reaction, any reaction that shows I believe her.
I don’t know what to say. If I believe June’s version of events then all my hate, all my time in this hellish place, it was all over a misunderstanding. To be sure, June’s communication could have used work, as could her sensitivity, but nothing she did was malicious, if anything it was her attempts help me that contributed to my reaction.
I have no reason to doubt June’s words. I doubt she could even come up with such an absurd set of circumstances. In fact it would be just like her to try and ‘save me’ without thinking it through at all.
I laugh mirthlessly,
“A ‘romantic duel’ eh?”
She nods with such enthusiasm and optimism that I feel even worse when I look at her scars.
God, I want to cry. So ridiculous, I maim the girl I love for misunderstanding the importance of communication, blame her for events beyond her control, blame myself for events that I couldn’t have known about in addition to blaming myself for maiming said girl, and spend two years in some miserable cesspool, only for the girl I maimed to then come and explain it all to me in retrospect.
I’ve wasted two years of my life running from a woman, because I was terrified of what she would say to me when I met her again after what I did. I dreaded the possibility that she wouldn’t forgive me so much that I hid myself as far away from her and any condemnation she would give me.
We both did some bad shit, but only one of us had the balls to try to fix it, I suppose that’s why she kept saying ‘coward’. In this new light it seems fitting.
June didn’t dwell on her mistakes. She woke up in an empty field, covered in her own blood with a half assed bandage on her head and blindness in one eye, yet here she is in front of me, trying to fix things. Not groveling and begging forgiveness, but apologetic and angry.
I don’t know how to respond to her. She claims were together forever, but I don’t know if I deserve her anymore. When our relationship came under hardship, what did I do?
I lashed out and I ran.
What did I do to deserve this stubborn woman who just doesn’t know when to quit, what did I do to deserve such tenacity?
Perhaps I’m overthinking it. I think I’ll try June’s way of doing things.
Run at them.
“June, I don’t know what I can say to make it right between us. We both did some pretty dumb things.”
Key difference here being that I inflicted lasting damage on her and abandoned her for two years. She may have flung the first stone, but my response, even if it was under emotionally stressful circumstances compounded by guilt and her own actions, was significantly worse.
“June, what do you want from me?”
I had to ask. I knew the answer, but I needed to hear it.
She speaks contemplatively.
“Joe, have you forgiven me for deceiving you, even if it was for your own good?”
I nod, still avoiding looking at her face and her scars. I can feel her arms tightening around me as she hugs me painfully hard.
“Do you still love me?”
I nod, I don’t have or need any grandiose words for it, it’s just a simple fact, it has never changed and I know it never will.
I can feel the swish of air that indicates her nodding.
“Good, then your punishment and mine for our mistakes is to be together forever, locked in holy matrimony.”
I finally turn to look at her, as she her golden eye stares back into my blue ones. I can see the shimmer of tears forming in her eye as her voice quakes,
“Oh, and I want two daughters, one for each year you spent running from me.”
Her voice quivers a little as she speaks,
“Do you accept that punishment my husband?”
I can feel my own tears forming as I hug her through the bars with the familiarity of an old lover. I know that if I agree then I can never run again, every problem we have will have to be tackled with love and understanding, and if that fails, sheer bull headedness.
The last two years I have failed my part of our relationship, but June has held up her end. Now its my turn.
“I do.”
-----------------------------------------------
I’m tired.
I’m only thirty six and I feel like I’m fifty.
I’m always tired these days, but if ever a man chose a place to lie down and die, he could do a lot worse than here.
I watch my two girls in the garden playing with wooden swords. My youngest has recently come to the conclusion that because her mother is stronger than me, it must be because she has one eye covered.
My youngest has thus decided that the only logical thing to do is cover both eyes and become doubly as strong as her mother. My oldest is trying to disabuse her of this assertion by vigorously swatting my youngest on the bum as she flails around blindly.
As I enjoy the suns warmth I feel two scaly hands clutch my shoulders, which indicates to me that my wife has emerged from her sunbathing spot to appropriate my body as a new heat source, as she casually presses into my back and wraps a tail around my waist.
A husky voice whispers into my ear as her lips begin to caress my neck,
“Husband of mine, I know I asked for two daughters, but I’ve been thinking that two kids really isn’t punishment enough for forcing me to spend two years without you, so I’ve decided I need a son as well.”
I realize that this is an impossibility, but if my wife feels that her emotional damage requires it of me then it’s my obligation to try for a son, even if it takes me the rest of my life.
Now the real difficulty is getting back inside before her tail can bring my pants down.
Prison life can be hard with a warden like mine.
I’m only twenty four and I feel like I’m fifty.
I’m always tired these days. If ever a man chose a place to lie down and die, he could do a lot better than here.
I wouldn’t let my dog die here. If I had a dog.
I could think of one woman I might let die here. It probably wouldn’t take long considering how badly she handled the cold when I knew her.
The oppressive concrete bears down on me from all sides. Smooth grey walls, new enough that the leaks haven’t carved grooves into them.
I can’t help but shiver when the freezing metal of my helmet touches my neck. The cold and the wet have seeped into me so far that I don’t think a hundred hot showers will ever be able remove the sensation.
If a man were to choose a place to die, he could do a lot better than this place and that’s probably why it’s a prison. I have lived here for two years.
Yet, I am not listed as a prisoner here.
If you were to search the records for my designation in this place it would say: Joe Davies, Prison Guard.
Yet, I am as much a prisoner here as any of the poor monmusu that dwell here. I can leave at the end of my shift if I so choose, there is no one who will stop me. The only obstacle between me and freedom from this place is in my own mind. Guilt shackles me here as surely as any iron chain. I know that at the end of today, just like every day for the last two years, I’ll walk to the empty cell in C block and sleep there until my day starts again.
Kind of a melancholy way of looking at it, but hey, if I chose to talk to someone about the source of my guilt, I would likely end up with my head on a pike, so broodings my only real option. I’m sure these feelings will pass in time. I still have hope; I just wish it wasn’t so damn cold in the meantime.
The great irony is that my feelings of guilt have made me try and make the prisoners lives as comfortable as possible. I know it’s absurd considering monster girls are part of the reason I’m here, but some days I just want to make someone’s day a bit better, even if they are an inhuman monster. My behavior certainly hasn’t won me any friends. I work the night shift anyway so I’m usually the only human in the building.
My fellow guards fall into two distinct groups. The group that avoid me because they think that I’m some kind of Order fanatic who’s addicted to his work, or the group that avoid me because they ‘are’ fanatics of the Order who think I have a monster sweetheart amongst the inmates which they try to desperately discover at every opportunity.
Both are wrong.
I’m most certainly not an Order fanatic, if I was I would probably never have ended up in this hellhole. I also don’t have a monster sweetheart amongst the inmates. Tried a monster girl once, got burned, never again.
I may not particularly like the Order, but I owe it a debt I wouldn’t be able to fulfill if I lived a hundred lifetimes. Well, maybe I don’t owe the Order a debt, more like humanity as a whole. Either way, my religious work ethic and monster coddling hasn’t made me any friends.
Shame, I was quite popular once.
My musing on social life, or lack thereof is swiftly interrupted, and by swiftly by a new sound in the prisons usual hum. I’ surprised, I now have something to do besides feed the prisoners or let them out into the yard.
The routine of prison life is only ever interrupted by one thing, a breakout, or a new arrival.
Three young Order paladins walk in through the main doors in the lobby, two of them are dragging a shackled third person, although I use the word person loosely.
At a glance at her clothes and scaled tail I would say she was a Lizardman, a species I have a particularly great level of distaste for. Her face is covered in a burlap sack, pretty standard disorientation stuff. I don’t get why we do it, it’s not like we want to ask them any questions.
In the past we would take their clothes off before we shoved them in their cells, but an incident with a succubus caused the administration to decide that less time with hands on the merchandise was the correct approach. Now we only occasionally have love-struck guards breaking girls out. Even in the very depths of Order territory with the monsters locked up, men are just as susceptible to their charm.
The third paladin greets me with a stiff handshake as I move to greet him, the other two drag the prisoner to her cell without giving me so much as a glance. Typical Order twits.
“Warden, add into the logs that Ser Gregor of Reinhark captured one Lizardman intact on the ninth of October.”
Intact?
Intact means without a fight, usually a child or some poor confused holstaurus, not bloody likely with a fully grown Lizardman.
My disbelief must have shown on my face because the paladin flushed a shade of red a beetroot would have been proud to claim.
“Yes, you heard correctly Warden, it just walked into the city center. It’s the middle of an Order city and she just pulls back her hood in the middle of day and claims her name is June-”
“June?” I nearly shout in surprise.
Ser Gregor looks equally surprised at my interruption.
“Yes Warden, she just kept saying her name was June and that the coward should face her, she just kept repeating it until we took her in.”
I can feel myself turning pale. How the hell did she find me here? Hasn’t she done enough to me? Why now?
I haven’t thought about her since I left. It would seem strange considering she was the instigator of my crime, and yet I find I have blocked her out except in the most vague general recollections.
It seems I am trying to escape her in my mind as well.
“Did you harm her?”
Gregor looks disappointed,
“Didn’t have to unfortunately, you know how it is with the current leadership, they want them alive for study. Disgusting.”
He spits on the floor to show his distaste.
My mind is running a mile a minute. I need to deal with her. Tonight, before she can speak too much and get us both killed.
If I don’t deal with her she will say things. Things that could get me hung a good few times over.
Part of me is kind of happy I might be able to get some closure. I can feel myself starting to grin now, and it’s not a pleasant one. It’s more like the kind of grin you use to show teeth.
The paladin must have noticed my reaction because he leaned in close, as if sharing a secret, which I suppose he was,
“Do you know that beast Warden?”
I look him in the eyes and he visibly recoils. I wonder what’s reflected in my eyes right now.
Anger? Hate? Hurt?
Regret?
“Oh yes, that thing murdered my sister in cold blood, it escaped before I could enact my vengeance. I never thought I would get a chance to get my hands on her.”
Now, if the paladin I was looking at was a veteran, then I was thoroughly rumbled. Any frontline soldier worth his salt knows that the days of monmusu murdering people wholesale were long over. Fortunately for me, he was young and considering we were in the middle of Order territory, the young paladin had probably never even seen a monster prior to today.
He would believe me too, a job as a prison warden in a monster facility may not be glamorous, but it paid well, and the only people who were trusted enough to spend extended time around monmusu were those who had resisted them in the field, or had some reason to hold a grudge against them.
I definitely looked the part of the grim soldier with my metal mask that completely obscured my features. It was designed to make us guards appear more intimidating and less human, ironically.
It was a risk.
“Alright Gregor, how about I cut you a deal. I’ll give you twenty gold pieces and we pretend that the Lizard was killed on the way over when she resisted you.”
I stuck out my hand. Twenty gold pieces was a lot for a paladin fresh out of training.
Gregor stared out my outstretched hand and seemed to think it over, before leaning in once more to whisper,
“You’ll make her suffer right?”
I nodded, grinning even wider.
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
Hell, it was half true. I did want her to suffer. I would have liked her to spend as long in this hellhole as I have, but I can’t risk her speaking to the other guards. I honestly don’t know what I’ll do with her.
Part of me wants to stick my sword in her.
Part of me wants to let her escape if she promises to never come near me again.
The part of me I’m trying my hardest to pretend doesn’t exist just wants to see her again, to hear her voice, to feel her skin on mine…
…To apologize.
Stop it.
Focus.
She betrayed me.
She used me.
She took my pride, my home, and my friends in one fell swoop.
What I did to her when I left doesn’t even come close to evening the scales.
The other two paladins return, and I pass Gregor twenty gold from my jacket pocket. The paladin grins happily and leaves without looking back, probably already envisioning an epic night in the local taverns.
Order twat.
Well no time like the present. I moved down the hall to where the paladins stashed June, it’s obvious which cell door she’s behind because the dumb pricks just dumped her shackles and sack outside it, hopefully after pushing her in, but I wouldn’t trust a new paladin recruit now to shit on the carpet. A quick pull of the latch confirms the iron door is locked tight.
I’m in luck though; they used one of the joined cells. Originally all the cells were completely solo affairs, but it was quickly discovered that most monster girls died pretty quick without any social interaction whatsoever.
I imagine that most humans would too if they were left alone in this dank lifeless place. The Order needed the girls to survive in here, so the joined cells were created.
Two cells separated by iron bars rather than concrete, the monster girls could even touch each other through the bars if they chose, and they often did, hugging up against the bars and each other for warmth.
I swear to god when I leave this place, I’m going to help them get out of here. It might not absolve my sins, but it might help me sleep better. I may have cause to dislike monmusu, but I practically live with these ones. An extra blanket, some extra rations or a book is no skin off my back, I’m already resented by my peers and I’m too valuable a worker to be removed by the higher ups. My actions only barely sit on the edge of heresy.
Order pricks.
The joined cell works in my favor though. Now I won’t have to converse with June through the grill of the door. I can’t deny that I want to see her, even if it’s to watch her suffer, or maybe I want to see her face if she tries to explain.
Focus.
I stop in front of the door to the cell next to June’s. I need a moment to steady my breathing and stop the blood from rushing in my ears.
The woman I have been running from for two years is behind this door. The only woman who I can claim to love and hate with equal intensity. The woman who took everything from me.
I push the door open and move across to sit on the cot opposite without looking over to where she will be sat.
Sitting on the rock solid mattress I take a deep breath before finally bringing myself to look at her.
She’s still beautiful.
Her green scales seem to shine even in this dark place, as if she lights up the room just by being in it. Her tail lies casually across her lap as she sits on the cot facing me. My eyes try to take in all her features at once, her short brown hair, smooth tanned skin, green scaled ears and her single golden eye. She doesn’t look she’s in prison, she’s smirking as if we were back home and she had beaten me at chess.
A home that doesn’t exist for me anymore, at least not in any form I would recognize.
She has one new trait though; perhaps I’m biased toward noticing it first, because I knew her before she had it.
She has an eye patch, along with a long scar running from her forehead through where her right eye would be, right to the cleft of her chin. Part of me is happy to it, the part I’m trying to ignore feels ill.
Even my parting gift to her doesn’t seem able to detract from her beauty; if anything it gives her more of that dangerous charm she so easily wooed me with.
It annoys me that while I have chosen to banish myself to the closest thing to hell on earth for my actions that night, she is still beautiful as ever, as if she deserves no penance for her betrayal.
She looks well considering the last time I saw her she was face down in the dirt covered in her own blood.
Even then I couldn’t kill her, even as she destroyed my home. I didn’t even mean to hurt her, I just wanted her to let go of me. To let me escape.
Only later was I glad I did it, returned some physical hurt for the emotional agony she heaped on me. Sometimes though, when my thoughts are unguarded, I suffer small jolts of crippling guilt.
Yet, as I look upon the confident lizardman I know I can’t kill her. I never could, nor will I ever be able to. I just can’t intentionally destroy the things I love.
I can still remember when I met her two years ago.
I got off my watch in the guard tower and headed down to the local tavern. The Order may have been a bunch of blowhards, but they kept the roads safe enough for trade to keep flowing, and that was damn near the only reason I volunteered for the town militia.
It helped that while I was damn near hopeless at most things, I had an uncanny talent for swords and strategy. My plan was to save enough cash to apply for the military academy in the capital.
When I got into the tavern, something immediately caught my eye, sitting alone in the back corner was a cloaked individual, not exactly rare with all the traders going through but what caught my eye was the fancy chess kit it had poking out of its pack.
A complete stranger sitting alone with a sword should have given me pause for thought, but I was young and it really did look like an exquisite chess kit. If I could just run my hands over one of those carved pieces I would be a happy man. Poor people don’t get fancy chess kits, so this really was once in a blue man chance.
I tried to start a conversation, but I was rebuked harshly with words I can’t remember, I can only remember being surprised this cloaked individual was a woman and wondering if the woman would have suggested in her rebuke that I perform such an act if she knew my mother was dead, I didn’t own a dog and I had no earthly idea what a pineapple was.
I was persistent though. I would get my hands on that chess kit, or get stabbed trying.
Eventually in a fit of frustration I suggested that the woman may in fact be too cowardly to face me for a small game. That certainly got her interest because in seconds she was setting up the board, gloved hands moving a mile a minute. She told me not to cry when I lost.
I won barely. The gloved woman challenged me to match after match as she got more and more frustrated when she lost and more arrogant when she won. The more she lost, the more she challenged me and the more verbal she became.
I remember long conversations with that hooded woman about all sorts of topics, where we grew up, what we wanted in life, standard noninvasive small talk while we played our game. I couldn’t see a shred of her skin, but her voice was sexy enough to drive my libido insane. I felt like a giddy teenager with a girl on his first date.
We repeated the same thing every night for about a week. A week of that wicked tongue verbally flaying me at every opportunity and me laughing it off, and yet I found myself becoming ever more attracted to this mysterious hooded woman with the wild temper, wicked wit and subpar chess skills.
The feeling must have been mutual because eventually she suggested that I accompany her home. I was delighted, even if I had never seen her face I was entirely infatuated with her.
It was in a secluded alley that she finally whipped back her hood, unveiling a blushing face that was beautiful to the point it rendered me speechless. I hardly even noticed the scales at first.
We must have stood there a good few minutes, her blushing and speechless for a change, awaiting my reaction, me blushing and trying to think of something to say.
Finally I managed to stutter something to the intent that she was beautiful and that I could care less about the fact she was a Lizardman.
She blushed even brighter and damn near broke my ribs when she pinned me to the wall. I’ll just let it be said that that was the night we became intimate, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that anyone else would just never be able to compare to that creature in my bed.
I remember asking her why she was handing out in an inn in an Order controlled border town. She claimed she was a traveling mercenary, and just passing through. I asked when she would be leaving, and she told me she would leave when I chose to leave with her. I guess she considered a chess match to be a ‘duel’ of sorts. It seemed romantic at the time.
Now I know what a risk she took in exposing herself to me, I can’t help but wonder if it was all just part of her plan to gain my trust.
It worked too. Oh how it worked.
So with memory lane out of the way, here she is. Two years and four months since our first meeting, and my only desire is to be free of her.
She turns her golden eye on me with such casual nonchalance I almost believe it.
“Hello Joe.”
Her voice sounds the same, that cocksure arrogant lilt with the slight tang towards the end of her words. I used to love listening to that voice; even now I can still feel those old emotions bubbling beneath the surface, like pus under an old wound.
I sigh and remove my helmet.
“How did you know?”
She slowly raises a finger to tap her nose.
“I could never forget your scent. Not in two years, not in two thousand. I can’t smell any women on you though. I assume you quickly figured out that nothing will ever compare to me.”
She tried to make it sound like a casual statement, but she was never a great actor and I can hear the slightest tremor of tension in her delivery.
She’s right. The few brief liaisons I’ve had since I ran away from her just left me feeling unsatisfied and mildly dirty, as if I had done something wrong. Eventually I just gave up, though I’ll never give her the satisfaction of saying so.
She seems to take my lack of a response as a confirmation though. It irritates me even more when she slowly exhales in relief.
“It doesn’t need to be said, but I haven’t been with anyone but you since we met, nor will I ever be. Were joined, its fate, neither you or I can escape, and neither of us should want to.”
When I don’t respond she get irritated, dropping her pretense of being casual and showing her true feelings as she sits forward, her single eye flashing menacingly,
“Do you have any idea how much I had to pay a danuki to track you down? It took a year’s work just to get the gold for her to start searching.”
She smirks, leaning backwards again,
“I would do it again though, as many times as it takes.”
I just sit in silence. I’m not trying to be difficult; I just don’t know what to say to her after so long. It’s been two years, and yet the sight of her is bringing my emotional baggage all back as if it was only yesterday. I’m not saying anything because, if I speak I’m worried I’ll just scream at her until I can’t talk at all.
She continues anyway, either ignorant of my inner turmoil, or more likely just trying to get her words in before I do. She always preferred being on the offense.
“So this is where you have been hiding, an Order prison just outside the Order’s capital. I understand they keep monmusu here and try to figure out how long we live naturally. Pretty boring stuff.
You must really have been desperate to hide from me if you were even willing to live amongst the Order’s drones. As I remember you never did much like the Order, I believe your favorite descriptor for them was ‘Twat’.”
Her smug smile remains constant as she slowly says the next words. Only her eyes belay the furious intensity of her words.
“Doesn’t matter where you hide though.
You can run to the end of the earth and I will still sniff you out. Cowardice only makes your scent stronger, and after two years of skulking in the dark you reek of it.
You can’t hide from me anymore. I have your scent again and I’m never letting it go.
Hell, I’ve even forgiven you for this-” she gestures to her ruined eye, “-it was a fair fight, and you were confused, I should have given you space. Your actions were… extreme, but understandable. I was even a bit impressed. What I have not forgiven is what you did afterwards, coward.”
I can feel my blood rising in response to her words. A fair fight?
As I remember it I attacked her without a word. A duel has a clear beginning and end. What I did was inflict grievous bodily on someone who was not ready and stopped my attack when she stopped moving.
She betrayed me first though, and then has the gall to show up spouting bullshit, as if I’m just going to leap into her arms!
I don’t have to listen to her call me a coward either. I was ready to die with them if I had to, and she took that from me. If anyone should be talking about forgiveness here it’s me.
Yet I remain, even if it’s like rubbing myself on sandpaper, I’m compelled to be near this women, for better or for worse.
Her words finally force a response from me though.
“Coward!? Strong words from a traitor!”
Her head jerks back as if she’s been slapped. Lizardmen put a lot of stock in their honor and I’m sure if I were anyone else she would be trying to rip my head for that. It seems in spite of what she did she does still care for me a bit.
“Traitor!? Who did I betray!? It was all finally coming together, we could finally be together, but you attacked me-” She gestures at her ruined eye, “-maimed my eye and ran, leaving me in a pile of my own blood. I guess according to you I should be thankful you took the time to bandage my face before running for the hills.”
I can barely contain myself.
“You betrayed me! My town! My friends! You sold us all out!”
I leap up thrusting my finger at her through the bars. Spittle flying as two years of pent up pain fly out.
“Worst of all you used me to do it! And I let you! Because I trusted you!”
It’s all spilling out now,
“I was supposed to be on guard in the eastern watchtower that night, but you asked me to meet you in the forest, and like a moron I did it.”
I step toward the bars, breathing heavily,
“We spend a few hours in the woods, and I return to find my home under attack by a horde of monsters.”
I can still remember looking out at the small town from the crest of the hill. The stink of lust in the air, the moaning and screams as my friends and neighbors were dragged from their homes in the night, to be taken by the invaders or turned into one of them. I remember watching from the distance powerless to stop it. Knowing it was my fault.
And she stood there next to me, her golden eyes glowing in the night, grinning as if she had pulled a great trick and deserved a reward.
“My whole town!”
My tears are running freely now, I couldn’t stop them If I wanted to. I have two years of guilt churning in my gut. This is the first time I have vocalized anything close to the truth of what happened that night.
“Turned or taken by monsters, all because I was fucking a monster in the woods!”
I can’t take my eyes off that damned eye patch. I can still see her face down, blood pooling beneath her, soaking into her sleek hair, staining it. The metallic smell of blood permeating the air, the same air we had made love in just hours ago.
Even if her love was filled with lies and deceit, I still loved her, even then.
“You tricked me! Used me! Every word was a lie!”
That seems to surprise her. I can see her scaled ears fly back against her head as she mulls over my words.
She mutters under her breath.
“I never betrayed you Joe, lied by omission perhaps, but I never wanted to hurt you. You have to understand.”
She’s looking at me with that one remaining golden eye, and yet I keep finding myself drawn to the eye patch, that ruined eye that symbolizes just about everything that our relationship has become.
Ruined, ruined by my hand and hers.
“Joe…”
She sat up, less sure of herself now. She was speaking slowly, as if deliberating her words at great length,
“I know you’re hurt, but it was all for the best.”
She moves forward pressing against the bars, I move back instantly, only stopping when I feel the cot hit the back of my legs. Hurt flashes in her eyes and her ears droop once more, but she continues anyway.
“I think perhaps we misunderstood each other, and if we have then we have both wasted a great amount of time. I think that the few weeks we had might not have been enough for us to fully understand each other. In which case, perhaps the injury you gave me was well earned, even if by accident. I should have explained things first, but I was in love and I thought it would be more romantic that way. If I could go back and kick myself I would.”
She absentmindedly rubs her clawed hands up and down the cold metal of the bars.
“Joe, I need you to understand something. On that night there was absolutely nothing you could have done to save your town. You need to stop blaming yourself and me for that matter.
If you had been in the tower when the attack came, you could have given the town a few minutes warning at most. The garrison might have been able to kill a few more Monmusu, but they would have been overrun in pretty short order. I know you think I was a spy or something similar for them, but that’s not true, for a town the size of yours they didn’t need to infiltrate, they could just roll in.
I’m sure you would have acquitted yourself well if you had been there, you may even have managed to kill a few invaders, but you would have been taken in pretty short order. The only difference would be that it wouldn’t have been me who laid claim to you. One of your attackers would have taken you as spoils of war and you would have had blood on your hands for your efforts.”
She sighs and looks at me intently with that one golden eye.
“You have to understand that I couldn’t let that happen. So before the attack started I moved you out of the way and kept you with me. It was the best way to keep you safe and secure, and maybe save a few lives that would have died for nothing more than human pride.”
My head was spinning. I had always known objectively what would have happened that night if I had been at my post, not the bit about getting ‘claimed’ by the attackers or that they didn’t use infiltrators, but the bit about the town getting steamrolled by the invading army was pretty obvious to me, even if my feelings of guilty wouldn’t let me acknowledge it.
I can for the most part accept that. It doesn’t forgive June’s betrayal though, or my abandonment of my post.
I did have questions though,
“You were part of the Demon lord’s army. Why not just wait until the battle was over or just claim me during?”
She shook her head, irritation flashing in her eye.
“Did you ever actually see me interact with that army, as in communicate with it in any way?”
I numbly shook my head.
“No, you just assumed that because I’m a Lizardman that I was automatically a part of it.”
It was my turn to get irritated now. I leapt forward so that we were face to face. God she smelled good, like spices and smoke on a day in spring.
“You knew the attack was coming though! How would you know that unless you were part of it.”
She was hissing at me through the bars now, it was a new sight for me, I have seen her playfully angry a hundred times, but never genuinely enraged.
She grabbed the front of my jacket through the gaps in the bars and pulled me until I was pressed against them and mere inches from our noses touching. I had forgotten just how strong Lizardmen are.
“Because I’m a monmusu you stupid ape!”
She pushes me back, before pulling forward, painfully slamming me against the bars again, groaning as she apparently grows frustrated that she can’t bring us any close together with a few inches of iron bar and air keeping us separate.
“I could sense their demonic energy a few hours before they arrived! Even if I told you as soon as I sensed them, what could you do? Tell the town that monsters were coming and your Lizardman girlfriend told you?
Even if they all left by some miracle, they would have been caught in the open fields just as quickly as if they had stayed in the town. I couldn’t stop it and neither could you!”
I can see tears running down her cheek from her one good eye.
“You don’t get it. I had a plan, I thought it would be romantic you dolt.”
I watch her crying and want so much to reach through the bars and comfort her, but I can’t.
The damned eye ruined eye stops me, staring at me from beneath that eye patch.
Mocking me.
Reminding me that I’m the man who maimed the woman I love. A moments rage immortalized in the flesh of my beloved, a result of poor decisions, circumstances and self-control crystalized.
June heaves a heavy sob,
“Our first sword fight, under the moonlight, as your hometown became somewhere we could live without fear of recrimination. I couldn’t stop it, so I thought I could make it a good memory, something we could smile about.
I barely even had my hand on my sword-”
Her voice becomes devoid of emotion, a strangled whisper.
“-then you slashed me before I could even get my sword out of it’s sheathe. I didn’t even know humans could move that fast. You cut me, it was supposed to be something nice, and you took an eye from me.”
Her remaining eye is streaming and every tear is like a pinprick to my soul.
I can remember it all perfectly.
June, beautiful as the day I first saw her face, hair flowing in the cool night air, standing on the grass of the hill with the sight of my hometown’s invasion behind her. She was still glowing from our last love making session.
I could hear her perfectly over the wind and the screams, an embarrassed smile tugging at the edge of her lips.
I say her words aloud as the June from my memory says them in my memories,
“Let’s celebrate the beginning.”
June stops weeping long enough to nod,
“It was supposed to be special, something good amongst the bad.”
Now I realize she meant the beginning of our lives together. Our first sword fight before I proposed to her, or she to me. I’m sure it never occurred to her that it was a cruel mirror of the events she was trying to distract me from.
I watched a horde of monsters move through the open gates of my home, gates I should have been guarding. Gates I was not defending because of the woman in front of me. The woman who had lured me away under false pretenses, the woman who had known they were coming. The woman who was about to pull a sword on me, the woman I thought had just vaguely threatened me.
At the time all I could think about were the Order’s warnings. A life time of sermons ran through my head warning me about the deceitful nature of monsters.
If I had been allowed twenty seconds between seeing the horde of monsters, and June grabbing her sword, I think I might have acted differently. I just needed twenty seconds to get my thoughts in order and think things through, rationalize what was happening.
June was excited. She could never have waited twenty seconds for her big unveil.
As it was I got thirteen seconds.
My conscious mind was still trying to process what was happening and my next movement was relegated to my subconscious mind, a subconscious that was upset, angry, confused and filled with a lifetime of ‘pro-Order anti-Monmusu conditioning’ verses a few weeks of love for a woman that I was sure had betrayed me.
I didn’t even know my hand had moved until I felt the warm spray, the metallic taste in my mouth and the faint wumph as June collapsed. I could feel the weight of my short sword in my hand, and the warmth on my arm as a faint line of blood dribbled down the blade and onto my arm from the handle.
I didn’t even scream. My whole body froze, my breath caught in my throat. I don’t know how long I stood there as the woman I loved bled on the ground in front of me. It was probably only a few seconds, but to me it felt like a lifetime, a lifetime of that metallic taste in my mouth and the warmth of her blood on my face, a lifetime of hell.
I can’t possibly imagine how it must have felt for her. I imagine that she fainted, not from physical pain; I don’t think she would have even felt pain in the time it took for her to collapse, but from the idea that the man she loved had just stabbed her. I don’t know if she realized it was a possibility when she planned out that evening. I doubt it, deep introspection is my thing, not hers.
It was only a harpy flying overhead toward the town that broke me from my reverie. My body moved when my mind failed me, I remember feeling numb when I went to check on her and found her still breathing. No relief, just numbness. I used my shirt to bandage her head so she wouldn’t bleed to death.
I doubt she would have bled to death even without my help, monmusu are significantly tougher than humans after all. With that done I took my bloodied sword and ran to the nearest Order town, ostensibly to get reinforcements, but really just to get away from what I had done.
From there I signed up for work as far away from monmusu as I could, and soon ended up in this prison, my reward for being the sole survivor from my town. I say survivor, but we all know that’s just code for ‘escapee’.
So that’s it then. I slump against the bars as my legs give way, it’s only June quickly wrapping her arms around me in a desperate hug that stops me from dropping to the floor. I can’t even look her in the eye as she observes me with waiting for some reaction, any reaction that shows I believe her.
I don’t know what to say. If I believe June’s version of events then all my hate, all my time in this hellish place, it was all over a misunderstanding. To be sure, June’s communication could have used work, as could her sensitivity, but nothing she did was malicious, if anything it was her attempts help me that contributed to my reaction.
I have no reason to doubt June’s words. I doubt she could even come up with such an absurd set of circumstances. In fact it would be just like her to try and ‘save me’ without thinking it through at all.
I laugh mirthlessly,
“A ‘romantic duel’ eh?”
She nods with such enthusiasm and optimism that I feel even worse when I look at her scars.
God, I want to cry. So ridiculous, I maim the girl I love for misunderstanding the importance of communication, blame her for events beyond her control, blame myself for events that I couldn’t have known about in addition to blaming myself for maiming said girl, and spend two years in some miserable cesspool, only for the girl I maimed to then come and explain it all to me in retrospect.
I’ve wasted two years of my life running from a woman, because I was terrified of what she would say to me when I met her again after what I did. I dreaded the possibility that she wouldn’t forgive me so much that I hid myself as far away from her and any condemnation she would give me.
We both did some bad shit, but only one of us had the balls to try to fix it, I suppose that’s why she kept saying ‘coward’. In this new light it seems fitting.
June didn’t dwell on her mistakes. She woke up in an empty field, covered in her own blood with a half assed bandage on her head and blindness in one eye, yet here she is in front of me, trying to fix things. Not groveling and begging forgiveness, but apologetic and angry.
I don’t know how to respond to her. She claims were together forever, but I don’t know if I deserve her anymore. When our relationship came under hardship, what did I do?
I lashed out and I ran.
What did I do to deserve this stubborn woman who just doesn’t know when to quit, what did I do to deserve such tenacity?
Perhaps I’m overthinking it. I think I’ll try June’s way of doing things.
Run at them.
“June, I don’t know what I can say to make it right between us. We both did some pretty dumb things.”
Key difference here being that I inflicted lasting damage on her and abandoned her for two years. She may have flung the first stone, but my response, even if it was under emotionally stressful circumstances compounded by guilt and her own actions, was significantly worse.
“June, what do you want from me?”
I had to ask. I knew the answer, but I needed to hear it.
She speaks contemplatively.
“Joe, have you forgiven me for deceiving you, even if it was for your own good?”
I nod, still avoiding looking at her face and her scars. I can feel her arms tightening around me as she hugs me painfully hard.
“Do you still love me?”
I nod, I don’t have or need any grandiose words for it, it’s just a simple fact, it has never changed and I know it never will.
I can feel the swish of air that indicates her nodding.
“Good, then your punishment and mine for our mistakes is to be together forever, locked in holy matrimony.”
I finally turn to look at her, as she her golden eye stares back into my blue ones. I can see the shimmer of tears forming in her eye as her voice quakes,
“Oh, and I want two daughters, one for each year you spent running from me.”
Her voice quivers a little as she speaks,
“Do you accept that punishment my husband?”
I can feel my own tears forming as I hug her through the bars with the familiarity of an old lover. I know that if I agree then I can never run again, every problem we have will have to be tackled with love and understanding, and if that fails, sheer bull headedness.
The last two years I have failed my part of our relationship, but June has held up her end. Now its my turn.
“I do.”
-----------------------------------------------
I’m tired.
I’m only thirty six and I feel like I’m fifty.
I’m always tired these days, but if ever a man chose a place to lie down and die, he could do a lot worse than here.
I watch my two girls in the garden playing with wooden swords. My youngest has recently come to the conclusion that because her mother is stronger than me, it must be because she has one eye covered.
My youngest has thus decided that the only logical thing to do is cover both eyes and become doubly as strong as her mother. My oldest is trying to disabuse her of this assertion by vigorously swatting my youngest on the bum as she flails around blindly.
As I enjoy the suns warmth I feel two scaly hands clutch my shoulders, which indicates to me that my wife has emerged from her sunbathing spot to appropriate my body as a new heat source, as she casually presses into my back and wraps a tail around my waist.
A husky voice whispers into my ear as her lips begin to caress my neck,
“Husband of mine, I know I asked for two daughters, but I’ve been thinking that two kids really isn’t punishment enough for forcing me to spend two years without you, so I’ve decided I need a son as well.”
I realize that this is an impossibility, but if my wife feels that her emotional damage requires it of me then it’s my obligation to try for a son, even if it takes me the rest of my life.
Now the real difficulty is getting back inside before her tail can bring my pants down.
Prison life can be hard with a warden like mine.