Page 6 of Monster's Obsessive Hunger
I owe her an answer, though I am not sure I have the words for it. The concepts are alien to me, emotions I can only understand as flavors, not feelings. “Your voice…” I begin, my own true voice a rough counterpoint to the memory of her laughter. “It has… life. More than any other I have tasted.” I see her flinch at the word ‘tasted,’ but I have no other language for this.
I try again, struggling to articulate the vast, ancient emptiness that is the core of my being. “Before you, there was only the hunger. A gray, silent void inside me that could only be filled for a few brief, bloody moments. The voices of my prey, their fear, their pain—they were fleeting tastes that only made the silence deeper when they were gone.”
I take a step closer, a risk, but I need her to see as much as hear. I need her to look at the glow and understand. “I remember nothing of what I was before the curse. Nothing of the elf I might have been. My existence is a long, unbroken stretch of gray. But your stories, your voice… they are the first color I have known in centuries.” I pause, the confession a raw, vulnerable thing. “Because your voice makes me feel… less hollow.”
This is the heart of my obsession. She is not just prey, not just a source of novel sensation. She is a cure for an ailment I didn’t even know had a name. She is the antidote to my own nothingness. The memories she shares are starting to stir something within me, phantom sensations of sunlight on skin, the echo of a forgotten name, the ghost of a feeling that might have once been love. They are faint, fleeting, but they are more than I have had for longer than her entire civilization has existed.
Lyssa is silent, her mind clearly struggling to comprehend the monstrous, pathetic truth I have laid at her feet. I am a parasite, feeding not on her blood but on her soul, her memories, the very essence of her life. I see the pity in her eyes, and it is a far sharper wound than her fear ever was. She takes a half-step back, a small, instinctive retreat that feels painful to witness. Her expression is a storm of conflicting emotions—revulsion, fascination, and a deep, aching empathy that she has no reason to feel for a creature like me.
She turns without a word and walks away, her form swallowed by the darkness of the woods. She does not run this time. Her departure is a quiet, deliberate act of retreat, leaving me alone in the clearing with the weight of my own confession. The silence she leaves behind is absolute.
I stare at the spot where she stood, the scent of her fading on the cold night air. The warmth her presence brought is already leaching away, the familiar gray chill seeping back into my bones. The glow in my chest, which had flared so brightly with her stories, now dims to a low, anxious green, pulsing with uncertainty.
Is this dangerous? The question surfaces from the deepest part of my consciousness. This new hunger, this addiction to her voice, is becoming a need as fundamental as the curse itself. The satisfaction it brings is a thousand times more profound than that of a kill, but the craving it leaves in its absence is a thousand times more acute. What will I do if she decides not to return? The thought sends a spike of cold, possessive fear through me, a feeling so sharp it is almost indistinguishable from the physical hunger for flesh.
The two cravings are beginning to merge, to twist together into a single, all-consuming obsession. I know this path is perilous. This strange, fragile connection to a human is a weakness, a vulnerability that could be exploited. It couldunravel me, destroy the cold, simple purpose that has allowed me to survive for centuries. But as I stand alone in the silent, empty clearing, I am forced to admit a terrifying truth to myself. I don’t want to stop. Ican’tstop. The thought of returning to the gray, silent void of my former existence is now more terrifying than any physical threat. I have tasted color, and I will do anything to keep from being plunged back into the dark.
9
LYSSA
The village has started to watch me. The stares are no longer just the soft, pitying glances I’ve grown accustomed to over the years. They have sharpened, honed by suspicion into something that feels like an accusation. When I walk to the market to trade for flour, the conversations hush as I pass. I can feel the weight of their eyes on my back, tracing the new, secretive lines of my posture. They see the dark circles beneath my eyes, the faint scratches on my arms from branches I didn’t see in my haste to reach the clearing. They notice the way I no longer flinch at the howl of a distantworg, the way my gaze is always fixed on the treeline, as if waiting for a summons.
The whispers follow me like my own shadow.She’s meeting a lover, some of the older women murmur behind their hands, their eyes alight with scandalous gossip.It’s the grief,the kinder ones say, shaking their heads with sorrowful clicks of their tongues.It’s finally broken her mind.They see a girl unraveling, a tragedy entering its final, pitiful act. They don’t see the truth: that I am not breaking, but being remade.
I don’t care about what they think. Their small world, once the entirety of my own, now seems distant and insignificant.Their worries about mended nets and rising bread feel like the concerns of children compared to the vast, ancient secret I carry within me. I have stood before legend, a being of bone and anger who feeds on emotion, and he has named himself to me. He has listened to my stories. The judgment of the village feels like nothing more than the buzzing of flies against a windowpane, a minor annoyance on the other side of the glass that separates my two realities. The truth is, the woods, once the source of all my fear, now feel like the only place I can truly breathe. The village, with its narrow streets and even narrower minds, has become the cage.
Clara corners me as dusk bleeds across the sky, her expression a tight knot of worry and frustration. I am in our shared room, pulling on my thickest cloak, the familiar anticipation of my nightly pilgrimage a low hum beneath my skin. She stands in the doorway, blocking my exit, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Where do you go, Lyssa?” she asks, her voice devoid of its usual warmth. “Every night, you just disappear. You come back smelling of pine and cold stone, with your eyes looking a thousand miles away. The whole village is talking.”
“Let them talk,” I say. I try to push past her, but she holds her ground.
“No,” she says, her own eyes, so like our mother’s, filling with a frustration that borders on anger. “I won’t. I’m your sister. I’ve watched you waste away for five years, chasing a ghost. But this… this is different. This is self-destruction. Are you trying to get yourself killed out there? Is that what this is?”
The accusation stings, but I can’t give her the truth. The truth is too monstrous, too unbelievable. I force myself to meet her gaze, to construct a lie that sounds just plausible enough. “I’m just walking, Clara. It helps me clear my head. It’s quiet out there. I can think.”
“Think about what?” she presses, her voice softening slightly, her frustration giving way to the deep, aching worry that has been her constant companion since I started my nightly excursions. “What is there to think about in the dark, in the cold, where abatlazcould tear you apart?”
I see the fear for me in her eyes, and a pang of guilt slices through me. I am hurting her with my secret, driving a wedge between us that may soon become too wide to cross. But the alternative—telling her I’m meeting a skeletal monster who finds my voice a delicacy—is impossible. She would never understand. She would try to stop me. And I cannot be stopped.
“I’m just… working through things,” I finish lamely. “About Mother. It’s helping. Please, just trust me.”
The lie is thin and transparent. I can see in her eyes that she doesn’t believe a word of it. But she is exhausted, worn down by my grief and my secrets. With a heavy sigh, she steps aside, granting me passage. Her parting words are a whisper of defeat. “Just… be careful, Lyssa. The forest takes things. I can’t bear for it to take you, too.”
The moment I step under the canopy of the trees, the tension from my fight with Clara dissolves, replaced by a profound sense of peace. The air here is clean, honest. The ancient pines do not judge; the cold, silent stones do not whisper behind my back. This is where I belong now. The thought is both terrifying and exhilarating. I navigate the familiar path with an ease that would have been unthinkable just weeks ago. The darkness is no longer a threat; it is a comforting blanket.
I see the faint crimson glow of his heart-light before I reach the clearing, a lonely beacon in the deep woods. The sight of it doesn't spark fear anymore. It sparks… a feeling of coming home. A towering silhouette, and a genuine smile touches my lips. He is the only soul in this world who has ever truly listened to me.
As I step into the clearing, I finally admit the truth to myself, a truth I have been circling for days. I am not coming here for closure about my mother. I am not here out of some morbid curiosity. I am here for him. I am here because the thought of not seeing him, of not sharing the quiet intimacy of our strange communion, is unbearable.
I am not scared of Thorrin anymore. I am drawn to him. To the ancient loneliness in his gravelly voice, to the impossible gentleness in his monstrous form, to the way his chest flares with wonder when I laugh. It’s a dangerous, reckless, and utterly insane feeling. I might even be falling in love with him. The realization settles not with a crash, but with a quiet, irrevocable certainty. My life is now cleaved in two: the gray, suffocating world of the village, and the vibrant, dangerous world of the forest. And my heart, I now understand, has chosen the darkness.
10
THORRIN
Her presence has become the new center of my world. The moon’s cycle, the turning of the seasons, the ancient rhythms of predator and prey—they have all faded into the background. My existence is now measured in the hours between her visits. By day, I am a hunter, waiting in the smothering hush of my lair. But when dusk falls and I sense her approach, something inside me awakens. I am not merely a monster in the dark anymore; I am Thorrin, waiting for Lyssa.
