Lost something dear...
Talk about something you lost.
“I never thought I’d say this, but you truly did lose your soul…You’re a monster, Percy.”
I think I smiled when Gawain told me that, as he often did, after a vicious kill. He hated that I took a certain pleasure in the deaths of children, but had never stopped me. Who’s crime was it then? We shared the guilt if you asked me.
I would say I lost my sanity in my youth, but I cannot be sure I was ever a child of normal parameters. But even in my youth, I suppose, I had some small amount of humanity within me. When I was ten, I remember protecting a village girl from one of the raiding Scots. It wasn’t the easiest of feats; a trained warrior verses a small child. But whatever luck was on my side had allowed me to prevail, and as the man lay dying…I remember crying.
It was the first time I had taken a life, man or beast. Father Hughes had told me in great length that God abhorred murder, unless it was in his name, and here I was with my hands clinging to a blood soaked tunic.
The girl had run away before I could say anything, not even so much as a “thank you” uttered from her lips. So I was alone, the corpse of a murdered man beneath my trembling form.
In later years I had learned that the Scotsman wasn’t a part of the raiding party, but rather the girl’s father. She had never told anyone I had killed him, but her mother claimed that I was possessed by the devil before the whole of the village. And soon the Father was having me sit in the church as he observed my condition.
The basic rites for an exorcism explain that there are certain signs that said I was possessed. However the physician assured the priest I was healthy and…’sane’. But what they could not understand, they had to find a source to blame…
And so it began; the intimate relationship between boy and priest.
I did not lose my humanity to the death of a Scot, or to my sire. If I lost it, and I had to have lost it at some point, it was with Father Hughes. The man who prayed over me, to me…tried to beat the evil from me in so many ways.
Whatever I had, I lost then. Like a dog beaten to a near death learns to hate its master…I learned to hate humanity.
===
William Percy Hastings
OC
word count: 426
“I never thought I’d say this, but you truly did lose your soul…You’re a monster, Percy.”
I think I smiled when Gawain told me that, as he often did, after a vicious kill. He hated that I took a certain pleasure in the deaths of children, but had never stopped me. Who’s crime was it then? We shared the guilt if you asked me.
I would say I lost my sanity in my youth, but I cannot be sure I was ever a child of normal parameters. But even in my youth, I suppose, I had some small amount of humanity within me. When I was ten, I remember protecting a village girl from one of the raiding Scots. It wasn’t the easiest of feats; a trained warrior verses a small child. But whatever luck was on my side had allowed me to prevail, and as the man lay dying…I remember crying.
It was the first time I had taken a life, man or beast. Father Hughes had told me in great length that God abhorred murder, unless it was in his name, and here I was with my hands clinging to a blood soaked tunic.
The girl had run away before I could say anything, not even so much as a “thank you” uttered from her lips. So I was alone, the corpse of a murdered man beneath my trembling form.
In later years I had learned that the Scotsman wasn’t a part of the raiding party, but rather the girl’s father. She had never told anyone I had killed him, but her mother claimed that I was possessed by the devil before the whole of the village. And soon the Father was having me sit in the church as he observed my condition.
The basic rites for an exorcism explain that there are certain signs that said I was possessed. However the physician assured the priest I was healthy and…’sane’. But what they could not understand, they had to find a source to blame…
And so it began; the intimate relationship between boy and priest.
I did not lose my humanity to the death of a Scot, or to my sire. If I lost it, and I had to have lost it at some point, it was with Father Hughes. The man who prayed over me, to me…tried to beat the evil from me in so many ways.
Whatever I had, I lost then. Like a dog beaten to a near death learns to hate its master…I learned to hate humanity.
===
William Percy Hastings
OC
word count: 426