Thursday, March 7, 2013

With Regret


This is a transcribed (and probably edited, at least for spelling and horrible grammar) version of a piece I wrote for a SAC during year 12, way back in 2006. I’ve intended to do this for a while, but I never got around to it. There’s a couple of big issues – like starting to use the thoughts to detail action, instead of just reflection/emotions; and a spoiler so I’ll put it at the end.

With Regret

                If only I could start again, the teenage girl thought.
                She regretted how her life had turned out, how it was ending. The fact that she was still alive surprised her; she could feel the blood flowing steadily over her eyes.
                She didn’t believe it was her fault. Not completely. She’d only done one thing that could make the blame lead to her door. She hadn’t really recovered from her ‘illness’. She’d faked it. She pretended to have overcome what she had ultimately given in to. She’d become the wildness that had been the reason for her confinement.
                I’m returning to normal, now, in my last seconds, she thought. I’m becoming truly human again, in the end. For what I’ve done, I shall be damned, but as a human. Not as the beast I feel like still.
                When she was sick, her parents had tortured her. Not deliberately – they were just trying every possible cure. She’d hated the torture, as she felt it had been. It had been unending, a constant in her life for many years. And it was all because no ‘respectable’ doctors had any idea of what to do.
                When it used to get loose, I was chained, and rightly. But they kept me there afterwards… I couldn’t help but give into it, in the end, could I?
                She felt no pain from her wounds; she could barely feel the blood flowing. It was warm, and clung to her, with fresher blood flowing over the older. Could she have known, back in the beginning, how far it would go? How could she?
                Just four years ago she had been a normal thirteen year old girl. A little vain, proud of her long black hair, and fond of flirting with boys. She missed who she had been then. The three years of torture and one of catch-up schooling had left her changed.
                Back then she had gone to a camp in a forest as part of school. She’d been excited, and had some good fun when there. There were forest walks, and at night, camp guides told spooky stories of a wild and vicious dog in the woods.
                I wanted to see it. It was silly, but I did. I grabbed some of my friends and snuck out, late at night. A couple of us were scared, but I was excited. I should have been more careful. No. I should not have gone, nor taken the others with me.
                The young teens had wandered off into the forest, torches illuminating the darkness. A soft and chill breezed accompanied them amongst the trees. They missed the first child’s disappearance, but the second, he screamed.
                The then young girl and her companions had also screamed. They ran, panicked, in all directions. The girl felt as though she was running so fast that nothing could catch her, and maybe she was. But soon she noticed her heart thudding loud and fast; her breath coming hard and ragged. She collapsed in the nearest clearing that opened up, sitting and leaning back against a knee-high rock.
                Soon after she’d seen another member of her group enter the clearing. Her torch made him throw up his hand against the glare, just in time for her to see a clawed hand grab him and pull him from her view.
                I was unable to move. I couldn’t even move the torch as screams and a wet rending sound came from nearby. A thud came behind me, and as I span around I felt something slice deeply into my back.
                All I saw before I fainted were eyes, glowing in the torchlight, and sharp yellowed teeth.
                The next day she was found. No-one believed her story, even though everyone saw her wound. Her parents picked her up, and everyone said she was lucky; she could have been killed like the other children. Depends on how you look at it, she mused.
                A few weeks after that I awoke late at night. I felt weirdly excited, and as I stood up, casting a shadow on my bed by the light of the full moon, I changed. How I killed no-one, injured no-one I do not know. I only remember the… thing that I wasn’t, then, taking control of me. In the end, I became it, the beast, the savage killer, the werewolf. I had control, but at the price of who I had been.
                Her parents thought her cured though; she fooled them, and when the time came, she killed them. And her brother, and her sister.
                Then someone killed her. Shot her in the chest, and in head, and broke her leg with some power. As she turns back into a teenage girl, dying, she does not regret what she has done. Only that this was the route her life had taken.
                If only I could start again, maybe I would know what it is like to live a normal life, to be truly human.


                The man kept the gun aimed at the dying, or dead werewolf. It was quickly changing back into a teenage girl, but it paid to be careful. He wondered what her story was, for a moment, before the woman he’d saved let out a profane exclamation.


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Back to random comments: the second last thought section should be longer – the fact that she is normal for three years THEN gives into the beast doesn’t come across clearly at all <_>

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