Mother would often tell me about the creatures that walked with two legs, with flat faced-heads living plains and hills away from our wild marsh. They were the sons and daughters of Abel, blessed by the god that shone down on them. Mother always told me to stay away from them, that these creatures called “humans,” would only bring about misfortune and bad will to our kind. She told me that we were different. We, who never understood the love of the Almighty Lord, descendants of Cain, banished to the depths of Earth to live our lives out in hell. Our kind was said to have come up again and again to avenge what wrongdoings were done to us lepers, and again and again brutally slaughtered. Needless to say, I personally haven’t given a thought about the strange creatures that lived above our home. That was the case, until the Noise.

The Noise.

It bothered me. It bothered me so much; it crawled under my thick, slimy skin. My head was spinning, churning inside like a boiling broth. The banging, the barbarians, the hall stinking of chaos and alcohol damaged the sense in my head. The Noise - awoke me from my slumber in my miserable, gloomy den. Something came over me, something in my blood, in my veins, I had the urge to go up to those creatures and tear them apart. Before I realized it, I was in their hall, clutching one of those small, pathetically annoying “humans” with my bare claws. I felt power surge through my body, an invincibility I never felt before I now understood. It was an addiction, the need to shred one after the other. Their shrieks, their cries, made it all the more exhilarating as I drank the nectar from their ruby blood.

Now and then, when the Noise is pounding above me, I would go back just to see those creatures fall to prey. One night, I met one particular “human,” he gripped my arm with such fierce vigor that an agony beyond belief swept over me. Pain was all I felt, air stuck at my throat as I saw my very arm snap off my shoulder. I felt fear for the first time. Fear of this land, of the unknown, of the creature that harmed me and the possibility that he could be following me home to mother. Mother. Yes, mother was right that our kind must not mingle with that of the lord’s.

That night, I found no comfort hiding in the murky prison beneath the layers of earth I called home. I was waiting for the “human,” to come, anticipating a slender, chilling metal to fill the holes in my heart.