Once there was a man. He had a secret. The secret was that, well, it wasn’t just “him”. Inside him, waiting, was something sinister. This sinister thing had curled itself up in the pit of his stomach, at the core of his being. However, its tendrils reached far. Some were attached and some were still searching. Although it slept, it was far from asleep. It listened. It waited.

The man knew of its existence, but he endeavoured to push it as far down inside him as he was able. It scared him. He feared that one day this beast that lurked would suddenly uncoil itself and possess him completely. The beast fed on this fear. The physicality of it, indeed, included no mouth. It did not need one. It required no teeth, no tongue. But could it smile, it would have done as it was so very happy. The man was his. It had him completely.

The man made music. He would pick up his violin and the instrument would sing. He would sit at his keyboard and as his nimble fingers exercised, wondrous tunes would emerge from the keys. The beast liked these times. It embraced the focus of the man. It flexed its tendrils in time to the music and fed on the buzz that vibrated in the man’s chest. In fact, there could not have been a better host for the thing that lurked. And listened. And waited.

You may be reading this and think, “Well, what is wrong with that? We all have deep, dark secrets buried deep within us. This ‘beast’, as you call it, is not hurting anyone is it?”

Ah, it is there that you are wrong. You see, there was one thing that made the beast angry and jealous. Something that, in turn, had made the man into a recluse, a loner. A single individual. Whenever the man was lucky enough to have a date, the beast would begin to stir. Two dates and it would fume. A month of dates and it would begin to move. To the man it felt like deep indigestion. A grumbling tummy after a heavy meal. But then, the feeling would develop and grow. The beast would start to twist and turn. The dark tendrils would thicken and the slimy flesh creep and smoulder.

The man would feel the shift. A little uncomfortable grumbling would change into something all-encompassing. Something he could not deny was there. It would worsen every time the man held tightly to his lover. The beast would stretch, spreading the threads towards the man’s chest. Coiling the thickest tendril around the man’s heart, it would squeeze oh-so tightly so that the man would feel the permanent stabbing of pain. It wasn’t just pain. It was something much darker than that. He would feel the shift of his spirit as it plummeted towards darkness. His view of life, of music and the multitude of endless possibilities at his fingertips, his hope for the future would slowly begin to turn to nothing.

The slow suffocation of the beast would increase in intensity until the man had no choice but to do something about it. He would confess to his unsuspecting lover that it was all over. That the relationship was something he did not, could not want. He would explain that he didn’t need to “be” with anyone. That he was happy being on his own.

But he wasn’t on his own, was he?

The beast settled once more. And slept. And listened. And waited…

March 2013

Kate Millner,

600 words