Fanfic: Man and Monster

Author Note: Here we have a bit of a treat. Once upon a time, a friend of mine known sometimes as Mr. Bojangles and most times as Mr. B, came up with a pretty damned nifty representation of just how James tapped into his arcane abilities. So I present to you, his rendition from James’ viewpoint. Also note that the only editing I’ve done with this is to format it to my WP template. Enjoy.

-Drew

1801, Location Unknown

I was screaming.

I don’t remember for how long….hours, days, months?

I think I passed out, but I’m still screaming.   How is that even possible?  Possible…..anything’s possible now.  I’ve seen it happen.  I know dreams are the myth.  I….I know….oh god, how long have I been standing here?  How long can a vampire stare at the sun before he forgets everything?

I don’t know…..I don’t ….what was my name?

Ah yes, James.  Grasp it, hold on to it.  My sanity’s going.  Slipping through my fingers like blood from a virgin.  No, NO!  I am James Damien!  It’s like a trumpet of victory against the black!!  I know my name!  I know who I am!  I remember….I remember…..

I’m screaming.

I hear his voice again, goading me on.  Ranting at my inadequacies.  Fuck him, fuck you, you bastard!  This isn’t training!  How does this make me stronger?!!  I can barely think!  How am I suppose to get out of this?!!

He told me once.  First theirs denial, then theirs rage.  Then comes despair.

I’m screaming, crying, begging, God it hurts!  Please….please….

“PLEASE, MAKE IT STOP!!  MAKE IT STOP, GOD I’LL DO ANYTHING JUST MAKE IT STOP!!!”  I’m begging.  I’ve never begged in either of my lives.  But this, how do you fight this?  I’ve never felt such pain!  The sun in my face.  I always took it for granted.

Never again.

I’m chained to the floor.  It’s a gray room.  Simple, made of stone and mortar.  It served no purpose that I could think of when my new teacher gave me the grand tour.

I never noticed the sun roof.

The sun winks out for an instant.  I feel sweet sweet relief.  My burnt flesh stops sizzling.  I can feel the smoke rising from my naked body.  I still can’t see anything.  My eyes melted out of my skull a long time ago, weeping the foulest sort of tears.  It was the only way I could cry.

But it’s only relief for an instant, and then it’s back, burning me away, bit by bit.  I don’t think I stopped screaming.  It’s hard to remember one second from the next.  He knows exactly what he’s doing, pacing in front of me.  Passing between me and the sun, casting his shadow on me for just an instant.  Just an instant of ecstatic relief and then the pain comes back a thousand times worse.

I should probably explain a few things:

I found myself a teacher somehow.  He’s supposed to be damn near the best in the world.  There’s a long story about how I got a hold of his attention and why he took me on, but right now I can’t seem to care.  I am burning to death after all.

This is a test he said.  I’ve experienced his “tests” before so I knew it would suck.  God I’m an idiot.

He brought me here, chained me to floor.  Kinky, I thought, I don’t go for this sort of thing but hey, vampire. He threw a spell in my face.  It’s making me stand up.  I can’t fall, can’t kneel.  Nothing, it’s like he’s locked my legs in stone.  Then he stripped me naked……I have no way of explaining that.  I thought it was as weird as you.

But then he did something to me.  He went inside me with raw arcane force.  He picked apart my DNA, he said.  He pulled out the bit that made me able to walk in the sun.  For the first time in a long, long time that shiver of true terror ran up my spine.

“Here’s the test squirrelly-boy.”  He said to me.  “Save yourself.”  The dome above me started to open.  The blonde idiot with his pale skin and sunken eyes grinned, bleach bone white teeth laughing at me.  “You’ve got power kid, and I’ve taught you a thing or two about how to use it.  Now fight through the fear and the pain.  Prove to me you’re not another two bit magician wannabe and maybe I’ll put you back together again.  And then I’ll teach you things that make gods weep.”

There was tinted glass in the hole in the ceiling.  He’d treated it with something to dull the effect.  So I wouldn’t burst into flames instantly.   No, now it would slowly burn me away.

I learned  afterward that I was in there for 2 days.

My teacher had done something to that room.  That sun never stopped shining.  It was always day.  That’s where this little musing starts.  Two days later, screaming and begging.  He’d broken me.  He had me by the balls.  My eyes were melted pools in my head.  My hair had caught fire and burnt away a long time ago.  The sun had scorched away most of my skin.  I could feel a breeze on my bones.  Despite all this though, for some idiotic reason, he was pissed at me.

“Fight it you whelp.  Show me the monster!  You’re thinking like a man.”  I could hear the snarl in his voice.  “Why?  Rid yourself of that nonsense.   You’re a monster, a beast, a foul thing that should not exist.  But you do.  You go against everything that is real and natural in the world. “

I stopped screaming, I couldn’t help it.  I wanted to.  It hurt, hurt so much.  Now all I could do was sob…

“Kill me, please.”  My voice a whisper of what it was.

“KILL YOU?  IS THIS HOW YOU WANT IT TO END, BOY?  SOBBING FOR DEATH? I TOOK YOU ON BECAUSE I SAW THE MONSTER IN YOU.  ALL RAGE AND FURY LIKE A STORM AT SEA!!  BUT YOU’RE STILL THINKING LIKE A MAN!  PAIN IS A JOY TO WHAT YOU ARE!  DEATH IS AN OBSTACLE YOU HAVE ALREADY OVERCOME!”  He stopped and sighed in resignation.  “You are thinking like a man, you should be feeling like monster.  A creature of the darkness.  You ARE the boogeyman.  But who would be scared of you now?”  I heard him turn and walk away.

Who would be scared?  Fear, terror, despair.  Pain, so much pain.  Creature, monster….man….

Fuck this, fuck THIS…….FUCK THIS!!!!  I stopped caring about the pain.  The fear and terror were sucked into the black.  The void that had been there since I had died swallowed them up.  I was whole again, if only in my soul.  I realized I was screaming again.  Not in pain or fear, but in joy and rage.  Ecstasy unrivaled.  The sun burnt through my bones and I laughed at its fear.  I saw the terror in its rays.  Scared of the monster in the night.  I could see everything now, though my eyes were still dripping down my face.  The world had exploded in waves of color and vibrancy.  The ebb and flow of power through the ether.  Is this how he saw the world, my teacher?  I realized this was magic raw and untamable.  For now.

I saw him then, my teacher, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed in satisfaction, a smirk on his face.  I saw underneath the skin.  What he really was.  A darkness, a void where his spine should have been.  The rest of his body nothing but ice and ash, a construct to shield the rest of the world.  I looked down and saw my hands.  Not the hands of a man, these were the hands of a god.  Terrible and joyous to look upon.  I saw the sun above me.  It was nothing.  It’s rays that had so frightened me now naught but laughable. With a thought and a word, I extinguished it.

I laughed in joy, in rage, in terror.  I saw the world for what it was, beautiful and horrible.  I pulled the magic in to me, fueling my body to new heights.  Bones knit , skin grew, my eyes reformed in my skull, I could feel my hair growing like grass.  My heart started to beat again…..wait that wasn’t right.  I had lost it, I realized.  The magic was working on its own.  Flowing into me like a maelstrom.  Like a storm at sea he had said.  I could do nothing to stop it.  So I laughed.  Laughed in the face of my own death speeding at me like bullet train.  I saw him leaning over me, grasping for my soul.  The ferryman, come to take another one on his boat.  I spat in his face and laughed even louder.  I was going to die a god, hell had no horrors to show me.
His fingers snapped.  The world was dull and gray again.  The ferryman was gone.

“What..what was that?  What happened?”

My teacher stepped out of the shadows to help me to my feet.  I hadn’t even realized I’d fallen to my knees.

“That was you.  You did it mageling.  You embraced the beast.  You saw what you were, are and will be one day.  Few people survive tapping directly into the flow of the world.  Interesting way to save yourself.”

I stopped as I realized the chains were holding me still.  Or I thought they were.  When I looked down theirs was nothing but dust on the ground.

“I…what did I do?  What did you do?”

“YOU almost blew yourself up.  I severed your connection to the flow. But you healed yourself completely.  Even fixed your own DNA.   Simple and easy, and congratulations mageling.  You passed.”  He stepped aside.  Giving me a clear path to the dark exit.  “Welcome James Damien.  Welcome to the future, your future.

I didn’t understand it.  I didn’t care.  I walked into the void, naked.  A grin on my face.