Author's Note: My literature teacher asked us to write a short-story based on The Tempest. I chose to explore Caliban's attempt to - er, procreate with Miranda. I'd always felt a little sorry for Caliban and believed his actions were biologically based as he spent his life relying on his animalistic instincts for survival. This being said, I should mention that I don't approve of what Caliban attempted to do, however, I do have a little sympathy for him. The short story is based on this event from Caliban's perspective. The only reason why I decided to upload this is because I recently graduated and didn't really know what else to do with this story. I kind of like it - I suppose.
Initially, he was not an intruder. They came in desuetude, both half-shadows of his impending future. Clouded by his naivety; he swallowed the language of another tongue. They explored the isle as near equals, Prospero, distinguished by his intellect, spun the servant into a cocoon, cushioned by the servant's own zeal. An incorrupt being, devoured in his own innate goodness, free from constrains of a fraudulent society, wept in his master's cocoon. He revealed the qualities the rich island birthed, and his master, with his greed and intrigue of the labyrinth, fertilized the soil with his self-indulgence.
The second of them was a penumbra of beauty. While she suggested muted softness, a feminine and delicate portrayal of a woman, he proposed the abrasive edges of a disheveled unfamiliarity to her. She was Miranda, who was presented as a speckled entity for his consumption. Considerably many things, but on the dotted line, a female. Caliban did not intrigue her like she did him, yet was a mere capricious presence she avoided. She unraveled him at his edges, unintentionally, with a delicate ivory complexion, an artist's mimicry of human flesh. She pulled him apart and gorged at his center, lurching at his strings like a puppet master. A light that pressed against his eyes until they bulged. He watched, with a gush of blood, her crafted structure, his native instincts pulsating thickly in his mind.
Despite golden hair that could be cut and spun, lovingly, into straw, he remained fascinated by dewy lips, coated in a slick layer of saliva and her wide-set hips, her cynosure. She came to him out of the water, a silver yam on a moonbeam platter, her body the most delectable of feasts. He salivated lovingly, starved for his feast, craving to carve her delicate skin. Her odor irritated his wet nose, sickly, consumedly sweet. Like a human fly she trickled over his senses, the gentle buzz a dalliance crawling over his rotting flesh.
He lacked forbearance and crumbled under his dry mouth, his tongue darted like a lizard's to wet his crusted lips. A soft cacophony purred, imprisoned in the back of his throat. It was the hot air that forced its way into his lungs; the poisonous sting of his organs expanding that stirred the rough electric currents. Something in the air, like violent desire, gave him a starved and desperate look. Isolated and desolate as he once was, his eyes had narrowed, cat-like and thirstily, untoward her. He winded a thread like gossamer behind him, spinning his web, larger and larger, all consuming. A ravenous creature, begging for a scrap of decaying meat, for it he howled and beat his tail, gnawed at his rope until it frayed and broke.
The animal lunged with a snapping jaw, ferocious and eager. Fingers desperately seized clumps of golden hair, of which he would spin into straw, although unlovingly. His agile claws sunk into the desultory meat, which was so ripe, and of such an ivory colour. The creature moved musically, his sluggish prey a symphony of sound. It was going well, he had decided, she was cleverer but he was quicker.
"Animal, monster!" The creature snarled, but not within his own chest. An external sound, from the master who had spun him his own cocoon. "You rancid, neurotic slave! Cease, monster!"
A lightning rod struck the ravenous creature in the stomach and he recoiled, howling and quivering, a despondent lump wound around the earth. The creature panted and struggled against himself, fingers balled into blunt, worthless fists.
"My foulest slave," Whisked lips buzzed, fugacious at his ear. "You dare attempt to desecrate my daughter? What malignant thing dares?"
Imprisoned in his throat, the words of another tongue burned white hot, once again, lost and unsaid. Bulged eyed, his retinas burst and clouded his vision in a milky haze as the creature absorbed another bolt of lightning. Saliva dribbled down his chin, marking him as a brand of disabled. His master looked down on him, unraveling his cocoon with slender fingers.
"I kept you in my own cell," The creature above Caliban snarled, unwinding the thread further. "I see it fit to banish you, putrid monster. Alienate you, I will, oh! Confine you inside the walls of your own simple mind!"
The cocoon disentangled until the loose ends attached at his master's fingertips. The servant, made up of metal plates and loose screws, in which he lived, a mind in a machine.
Initially, he was not an intruder. Casting a chafe presence, an obstreperous, rancid creature, sentenced to alienation by his mother who had made him a bastard and a master who had made him a servant. Imprisoned in the formidable cage of his master's frame, he was, dependably, always a hollowed carving held at bay, gnawing at the rope until it frayed.