Iron Quill - Time and Lies - I Will Do This Again

[Trow]

I Will Do This Again

1654 word count

Ingredients: Broken Clock, The lovers

 

 

 

     I awoke cramped and starving. Hoping there would be time for a quick breakfast, I pulled out my timepiece, but to my dismay I was almost

 

tardy already. Carefully I tucked it back into my pocket, it had belonged to my father and was the only thing of value he had to pass on to

 

me at the time of his death. Slowly I rose from my resting place, every muscle screamed in protest my neck most of all. I would have to get

 

new furniture when Mary and I wed, she would not stand for such an uncomfortable resting place. Of course she might change her mind

 

altogether if I kept her waiting too long. Stiffly I left my home and set out upon the streets of Malifaux.

 

 

     The streets where practically deserted at this time of night, no one wanted to risk getting caught out past curfew. Incarceration by guild

 

officials was hardly a pleasant prospect, and of course there were other dangers during the dark hours. I moved as quickly as my stiff

 

muscles would allow, not wanting to be out here for longer than was necessary. Only one thing would pull me out into the darkness while

 

the city slept around me; Mary. Just thinking of her lent purpose to my limbs, the pain in my legs fading as I trudged on. The fire in my neck

 

and gnawing huger continued.

 

 

     Mary would be waiting for me in the park as we had agreed. Her father was a man of means and did not approve of me.  He seemed

 

insulted the day that I asked him for his permission to wed his daughter. He refused and had me thrown from their home, shouting that I

 

would never see Mary again.  The foul man arranged for my beloved to be given to another, a man named Simon who was a rich lawyer in

 

good standing with the guild, a much better match for his daughter than a lowly drudge like me. Tonight however we would elope together,

 

and leave her father and would-be husband behind us.

 

 

     The gaslights faintly lit the park causing shadows to dance around with the faintest breeze. Mary would be waiting for me beneath one of

 

these beacons. I prowled the wavering shadows with my shambling gate, wary of catching some guardsman’s eye. Every moment I feared

 

that my hunger would cause my stomach to growl giving away my presence. I searched high and low through the park till finally I saw her.

 

Oh she was beautiful, the dim lights could not hide her fine features from my eyes. It was if she radiated her own inner light, I perceived

 

every exquisite line of her face and gentle curve of her body I perfect clarity.

 

 

     At first I was so preoccupied with my beloved’s beauty that I failed to notice that she was not alone. She was with a man. Who was this I

 

wondered, some stable hand or butler who would not let Mary out on her own? There were several individuals among her father’s

 

household staff that where sympathetic to our plight. Then as I slowly crept closer Mary lifted herself onto her toes and kissed the man, who

 

in turn embraced her tightly. At that moment I knew who it was… Simon.

 

 

     I could not fathom what lies or dark magic this man had used to turn my lover’s affection from me, but I burst from the shadows as quickly

 

as my tortured limbs could manage. I tried to shout at him to get away from her, but such was my heartbreak that it only came out as a

 

garbled moan. The very effort of vocalization spread the knifing pains from my neck down my spine and through the rest of my body,

 

causing a few uncontrolled muscle spasms. Mary gasped in shock at my sudden appearance, had she forgotten all about me? Simon threw

 

himself between my love and I, drawing a pistol to ward me off. Such was my rage and despair that I did not care if he killed me or not, and

 

I surged forward.

 

 

     My rival fired twice in the time it took for me to close the gap between us. The shots must have gone wide, for I felt no pain other than the

 

agony from my neck, and unbearable hunger in my gut. I fell upon Simon full of hate, and we fell to the ground in a heap. After a brief

 

struggle I ended up on top of my enemy with his coat lapels gripped tightly in my fists. Repeatedly I slammed his head into ground, until the

 

grass was stained with dark fluid and Simon’s body only moved in little jerks and spasms. The smell of the blood reached my nostrils, and

 

the aching hunger I had endured since I awoke grew to an all-consuming need for satisfaction. The thought started small and innocently,

 

just a tiny moment of curiosity. What would Simon taste like? Mentally I recoiled from the thought, but my body moved on its own. Slowly I

 

began to lean forward my mouth opening, salivating.

 

 

     A shriek brought snapped me back to reality. My head raised quickly, earning me more fire in the neck. Mary stood there with a hand

 

covering her mouth, pale with fear. I had forgotten she was there in my hunger. I grabbed her by the ankle, causing her to trip as she tried

 

to run. Her screams where loud and shrill, no doubt they would reach the ears of a guard soon. I half crawled half pulled her to me and

 

covered her mouth with my hand. I tried to tell her to be quiet, but my blood was still up and the words came out as a snarl. She writhed in

 

my grip as she tried to escape, desperately flailing at me with her fists. My poor Mary. What had that bastard Simon done to make

 

her hate me so?

 

 

     I gathered her up, my right hand covering Mary’s face and my left arm encircled her torso. She struggled to no avail, the more she tried to

 

escape the tighter I held her to me. With my beloved in my arms I stole away into the night. I moved quickly through the shadows with my

 

prize in tow. Soon Mary’s ceased her struggles, and I was hopeful that whatever ensorcelled her mind had faded but I kept her held tight.

 

 

     I made good time on the shadowed streets, and soon I entered my humble abode. I laid Mary down, and removed my hand from her face

 

flashing her a smile. She returned the smile with dull staring eyes. I shook her with no response. I tried to whisper her name but it only

 

came out as a hiss. Mary was dead, my hold had been too tight and she had suffocated in my grip. My body was wracked with sobs but no

 

tears came to my eyes. I gently leaned forward to plant a kiss on her forehead. Her body was still warm. The hunger flared. My mind

 

screamed “No!” but it was too late. What followed was a moment of pure unrestrained savagery unequaled in the darkest of my nightmares.

 

 

     I sat there for a moment in disbelief at what I had done, only a moment though. With the hunger sated by my dark feast, the memories

 

flooded back. This was not the night I was to meet Mary in the park, this woman at my feet was not my beloved, nor was the poor bastard I

 

had left in the bloody grass my rival Simon. The night Mary and I had conspired to elope was a long time ago. Our escape had gone as

 

planned and we fled to one of the frontier settlements to start our new life together. Her father’s bounty hunters found us in less than a

 

week. I was thrown in prison for a month before being put on trial for kidnapping. My mouth hung agape in disbelief as countless former

 

friends took the stand against me, until at the end my final hope was dashed as Mary denounced me as a madman who stole her away in

 

the night.

 

 

     They hung me on a tree branch next to Jack Daw, snapping my neck. Mary attended the execution arm in arm with her new husband

 

Simon. I had been dead for some time. The next thing I remembered was awakening to the face of a man with wild red hair wearing a

 

doctor’s uniform. The man was disappointed that the hangman’s noose had destroyed my voice but praised my intelligence thinking me a

 

great success. That was until the hunger took me, and I tried to eat one of his nurses. Then I was unceremoniously disposed of in the

 

sewers. I wandered for a long time until I found a women squatting in an abandoned building. The building in which I now laired, filled with

 

more corpses than I cared to count. I pulled out my father’s watch and my body began to convulse. I’m not sure if I was laughing or

 

sobbing. The watch was broken forever stuck at ten minutes to midnight, always stuck right before I was to meet Mary in the park. Just like

 

me.

 

 

     I knew what would happen next, I had done it enough times to be sure of it by now. I would stay here and feed of my latest victim for a

 

while to keep the hunger at bay, but soon the flesh would begin to rot and it would do little to sate my unwholesome appetite. I would fight to

 

keep control of myself for as long as I could, but sooner or later the hunger would steal my memories from me, and send me out into the

 

night looking for Mary. And then… I will do this again.

[Trow]

edited the formatting a bit

[admiralvorkraft]

Dark indeed. I enjoyed reading it, a straightforward story well told. The last paragraph is, perhaps, a little heavy on the Gothic for my taste. It's not bad, and it fits the story well, but the monster brooding on his inescapable situation, horrified by his own dark side... I don't know, it just seems too well packaged? Maybe he gets a perverse joy out of getting to kill Simon over and over again?

Or maybe not. It works the way it is, and if you're happy with it then so am I.

[Trow]

i actually had 3 different endings in mind for this story. This was the original, (if I can even say that since my first concept was a guy who arrives somewhere to early because of a broken watch and sees his fiance with another man) the second one had him go out hunting again and finding his next mary, only this time she's blindfolded with and has a katana, but the word count removed that from the realm of possibility. And finally while writing it I considered stopping at the second to last paragraph because it felt pretty strong, but if I had done that i would have renamed the story "Ten to Midnight" and I just didn't like that as much as "I'll Do This Again"

PS: He totally likes killing Simon

[admiralvorkraft]

I can't blame him, Simon's an ass

Like I said, I really enjoyed the story. I just like to leave a little critique on every piece I read because I hope people will do the same for me. I think I would have liked it better if you'd stopped at the second-to-last paragraph, it would have been nicely circular, without the really heavy Gothic note at the end. I also think you could find something to do in that last paragraph that develops his character in the present, and makes him distinct from his character pre-death.

But then, enigmas are good to, especially in stories this short.

[Lord Byron]

Pretty Dark, I like the idea of an undead man whose hunger tricks him like that. I don't know if it's my computer or the formatting on the site, but there's huge gaps between the lines, like double spaced notebook paper big. It really threw me off and made it hard to read. The story was great but my eyes hurt by the end of it.

[Trow]

About the formatting: I don't know what the deal is, it looks great on my laptop and desktop but I just read your comment and checked it out on my phone and it looks horrible.

[Lord Byron]

Yea, I'm not sure what's going on, seems like for some it's perfect.