Monster
A/n – This is the first time I've really experimented with Link's character. It's very odd and warped in this.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Tatl queried as they snuck into the Music Box House. "We might get caught…"
"That's what the Stone Mask is for," Link assured. "Besides, there's got to be something in here. Why else would the dead try so hard to get in?"
For that the fairy had no response, so without further objection they descended to the basement. Well drawn pictures of various monsters were scattered all around. Something was gurgling in a pot off to the side, something which looked disturbingly similar to a human heart.
"Strange, very strange…." Link muttered, at last turning his attention to the closet in the far corner.
His hand reached out to grasp the handle, just barely brushing the oak when he was thrown back violently. A distinct crack reverberated throughout the basement as all of Link's weight fell on his wrist. Yelping with pain, he cradled his broken wrist to his chest. By a small stroke of luck, it was his right wrist.
Drawing the gilded sword, Link stood to face his attacker. What he saw made him gag despite himself.
The man was freshly dead, that Link knew for sure. Bloating had just barely begun, and only a few maggots were crawling in his glassy, red eyes. Thick, flaking blood dribbled to the floor with each small, sagging step his bruised and bloody feet took. White bandages, clotted with drying brown lifeblood, were hung halfheartedly around the moaning sack of flesh. A shock of red hair hung loosely about a rotting face. The nose in particular appeared to have already been eaten away by scavengers, allowing Link to see the quivering and graying muscles.
The corpse screamed, and Link felt any semblance of courage leave him. Frozen in fear, he could only stare as the dead body limped closer….and closer….
"Move, Link!" Tatl screamed. "Move!"
Link moved.
A savage cry burst from his lips as he drew up his momentarily forgotten sword, and thrust it straight through the decaying flesh. The Hero of Time withdrew the blade harshly, and in the haze of pain and fear raised the blade to strike down the corpse.
To kill a human for the first time.
"Stop it!"
Startled, Link actually obeyed the command as a child streaked by him, straight towards the mummy. He reached out to grab the girl, his fingers curling around empty air, and found himself yelling: "Stop! Don't get any closer to it!"
The young girl ignored him, and instead rounded on him. Her hands were spread wide, as if she was protecting the corpse.
She looked close to tears as she asked: "Who are you? What are you doing just walking into people's houses like this?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Link snarled, gesturing towards the moaning and heaving mummy behind her. "I'm trying to help you! To save you from that—that monster!"
The girl visibly flinched at that. "He's not a monster! He's my father!"
"It's not your father any more, you idiot!" In his fury, Link felt like just running the gilded sword through the father and daughter, just to get it done and over with. First townspeople who didn't believe the moon would fall even as it glared them in the face, and now this. Why were the people of Termia so stupid? "It's a dead body that has no mind of its own, brought alive by magic. So stand aside and let me kill it!"
He moved to grab the idiotic child, to throw her to the floor as he slaughtered the beast, (so what if it was her father, it's not anymore) but found himself frozen stiff as the mummy shrieked again.
The girl, however, appeared to be immune to the scream of the dead. Instead, she began to talk to it. "Don't! It's me! It's Pamela!"
A slight glimmer of recognition sparked in the corpse's blood red eyes. Cradling his head in his hands, Pamela's father continued to wail, leaving Link helpless as the child gently guided her dead father back into the dark confines of the closet.
After she secured the doors, Pamela turned back to Link. Although her face was slick with tears, her voice was cold and hard. "Get out. Forget everything you've seen here and get out!"
Link got out.
"Do you mind telling me what the hell that was all about, Mr. Bigshot Hero?" Tatl hissed, fluttering next to the teenager. She surprised herself by feeling wary of Link, and had left more space between them than she used to.
"Don't even start on me," Link snarled, whirling on her. Startled—and, for the first time since she met him, scared—Tatl flew away from him, putting in between them as much distance as she dared. Something in Link had snapped back in that house, and now he was only a ticking time bomb, just dying to explode, taking everything around him with him.
"Link, you could tell as well as I could that that man in there was no normal mummy. He was special. I could feel…I could feel his soul crying out to me, begging to be healed—"
"That thing was just freshly dead. Nothing more, nothing less. The girl is stupid and delusional, just like everyone else in this goddess's forsaken place."
"Link, that was her father—"
"That thing was a monster!" He howled, running his hands through his hair jerkily. If he didn't stop soon, he would start tearing out chunks. The triforce pulsed as it worked to mend the broken wrist again and again with each rough tug.
Abruptly, Link stalked back in the direction he'd been coming, back to the house.
"Link, what're you—?"
"Shut up!" He barked. "I'm going to fix this. I'm going to go back in there, and I'll—"
"Link, wait. Please, just stop for a minute and listen to yourself. You sound like—like a deranged madman. This isn't you."
The Hero of Time laughed mirthlessly. "Tatl, you don't know me. You don't know who I am, what I've done, what I've seen. The only reason we're talking right now is because you needed me."
Without giving the fairy a chance to respond he continued on back to the Music Box House. Against her instincts, she trolled along after him.
"Link," Tatl asked cagily. "What are you going to do to him?"
Link didn't answer her at first, and Tatl felt the worry that had been lapping at her gut turn into a raging tsunami.
She asked him again. "What are you going to do to him?"
"Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to." He muttered, having arrived at the door. The gaudy music was still bleating from the speakers as he knocked.
Unsurprisingly, his knock was met with a shout from Pamela. "Go away!" She screamed. "Go away and pretend this never happened!"
"I'm afraid I cannot do that, Pamela." Link said shortly. "I'm going to give you until the count of three to open the door."
He stepped back to get a running start.
"One…"
"Link, why are you doing this? Why don't we just go back in time, and—"
He squared his shoulders to prepare them for the blow.
"Two…"
"Link, you need to stop and think. Please. Please calm down and listen to me."
"Three!"
Strengthened by years of saving the world, Link rammed hard into the colorful door. Flesh and wood connected with a solid bang before the latter gave way, splintering and groaning as it fell. Pamela screamed, as if she hadn't expected him to actually get through.
Eyes blazing and sword drawn, Link began to make his way to the basement when the young girl once again got in his way. Uttering an inhumane growl, he glared at her. Clutching a small dagger, Pamela glared straight back at him; however, even Tatl could see her tremble and quake in fear. And who could blame her? Her father was a mummy, and a madman was trying to kill him, and she was all alone and oh so young.
"Move," Link spat, waving the gilded sword threateningly. "I won't ask you again."
Pamela stood firm. "No, I—"
She was cut off as Link lurched forward, grabbing her tightly by her shirt. His wrist burned, but such minor pain was far beyond him by now.
"Stop it! Let go!" She cried, clawing at his hands. The sharp nails bit the flesh, drawing crescent shaped flecks of blood.
Growling once again, Link hurled Pamela into the table. The back of her head collided nastily with the wood, and she slumped to the ground, lifeless. Slowly but surely, blood started to pool around her brown hair.
"Oh, goddesses, you killed—"
"She's not dead." Link interrupted listlessly. With single minded determination, he headed downstairs. "She's merely unconscious. She'll live."
The Hylian threw open the doors to the closet, this time ready for the mummy when it came flying out at him.
Groaning, Pamela's deceased father lumped towards Link. Its arms were wide and outstretched, not with the intention to squeeze the life out of the child in front of him but to beg. Its eyes, beginning to loll out of their sockets, were soul shatteringly begging.
Link didn't give the corpse a chance to scream; rather, he cleanly and quickly lopped off the head. The decaying head thunked onto the ground, rolling away into the darkness, joining the scattered parchments, pictures, and inkwells.
The decapitated body itself sagged to the ground on its knees, before collapsing completely. A few maggots and blood spilled forth from the open wound. Link wiped his sword clean uncaringly on the corpse's clothes.
"Why?"
Link replaced the sword in its scabbard as he turned towards the voice. Pamela had dragged herself down the steps just in time to see her father slaughtered.
"Why?" She asked again, voice cracking with emotion.
"Because that thing wasn't your father anymore, Pamela," Link explained darkly. "It was a monster. An uncaring monster that wouldn't hesitate to kill you. These are dark times, Pamela. You cannot expect the best."
The brunette glared at him. "The only monster I see here is you."
"Me, a monster? I do believe I just saved your life."
"What, am I supposed to be grateful now?" Pamela asked bitterly. She was still lying on the cool floor of the basement, unable to get up due to her throbbing skull. In other words, she was utterly defenseless. She knew she should stop now, should let the crazy boy leave before he killed her, too, but she couldn't seem to shut her mouth.
Link snarled with rage, his breath snorting through his nostrils, and began to walk towards her when something cold clamped around his ankle. Uttering a cry of horror, Link tried to shake the arm off. But the headless corpse had latched on, and wasn't letting go without a fight.
Fumbling with the scabbard to draw his sword, Link didn't notice Pamela disappear from his peripheral vision.
It was too little too late, as the corpse grabbled both ankles and tugged hard, sending Link sprawled out flat on his black. Winded, Link could only cough and gasp as his sword clattered out of his hand and was sent skidding across the room. The headless mummy then heaved itself on top of the Hylian. Choking on the foul stench of death, Link pushed at the broad chest, but it seemed that the more he struggled the heavier the body (—and oh goddesses, the stench, the stench was on him and was seeping into him he could feel it and he was dying, dying, dying—) became.
Link found himself panicking. The Triforce of Courage pulsed with warning, but its reassuring calls were engulfed in the rising fear. Link was finding it harder and harder to draw each lunch rattling breath. The stink of the corpse was smothering him now, creeping down his throat, cutting off his windpipe, depriving his brain of precious oxygen, and oh Farore he couldn't breathe.
Link passed out in a dead faint.
"Link?" Tatl, not knowing quite what she was going to do, fluttered closer to where the decapitated body and the unconscious Link laid. She'd just reached his head, about to call out to him again, when—
—The corpse flickered to life again and, faster than lightning, snatched the fairy up into its rotting palm, and then squeezed. Hard.
The corpse didn't stop its death grip until the yellow light in his clenched palm dimmed, until fresh lifeblood seeped through his bloated fingers. Only then did it release the newly dead fairy, and let Tatl's limp form slide from its palm and onto the ground next to Link.
It was at that moment that Pamela limped out from the shroud of darkness, nestling her father's moaning head in the crook of one arm and Link's sword in the other. After placing her father's head gently beside his body, she turned to the unconscious hero. As if predicting her next moves, the Triforce of Courage fled from Link's unmoving body.
Drawing up the sword, Pamela took revenge for her decapitated father. She stabbed Link in the throat, causing him to jolt awake. Choking on his own blood, the Hero of Time died, his last thought being that he couldn't breathe. Jerkily, Pamela hacked at the dead teenager's throat until it was severed from his body completely. See was inexperienced, and it showed: the hero's blood was everywhere and several chunks of his throat were splattered all around.
"An eye for an eye," Pamela said evenly, dropping the bloodied blade.
She returned to her father's side. His limps were flailing helplessly, and his blue eyes were rolling frantically in his head, searching for her.
"It's all right now, father. You had a bad dream. You were just having a little nightmare." Pamela shushed the animated corpse of her father, stroking his limp hair soothingly.
Pamela rocked the head in her lap back and forth, back and forth, until it began to snore.
-Fin-
In the beginning, I'd planned to have Link come back and heal Pamela's father. But then the story kind of…took control of itself. I didn't mean to kill Link, I swear.
-The-Sharp-Machete-