Chapter 57
The Beast's Story

I wanted more than anything to find John and to embrace him. Then I'd tell him everything that happened since he left and hopefully unload some of the horrible, awful things that had been done to me since coming here. With him here now, I felt an indistinguishable sense of safety, but it was marred by the act I was forced to keep up.

I still hadn't been able to approach him. To talk to him and let him hold me. More than anything, I wanted to fall into those arms, where there was safety and security inside, just like when I was little.

He may have been the only living person in the world that knew me completely. Knew all the things that I struggled with. Even if it was years ago, I hadn't changed so much that he would no longer recognize me. He himself could not have been so different

Flashback

"I don't understand. You're like me?"

We had gone back to the island, sharing a pot of tea with honey as John explained the phenomenon.

"No… not like you, Judith. I've never seen anyone like you." He glanced down at his large pale hand and flexed it. "The dead ones don't harm me because they believe… I'm one of them."

"What? Do you mean your coat is covered with…"

"No. Not that way." He cut me off, knowing I was regarding the messy trick of covering an outer layer of clothes with walker guts and blood to mask a person's scent so they could sneak within a horde undetected. Some people used that tactic to get passed the walkers as a last resort in dire situations.

"It's just me." John put a hand to his chest as he gripped his mug of steaming tea. "Judith, I don't know how much of my story you'll even believe. It's too strange and too unbelievable to be true. Even a child wouldn't believe it."

I sat up straighter in my chair, puffing my chest up purposefully. "I believe in ghosts and monsters and witches and zombies and Santa himself! How unbelievable could it possibly be for me to believe?"

There was an additional look of guilt on him. "It's not a very happy story either. I've... I've done things, Judith. Very terrible things. I may have even killed people and you might just hate me after you hear what I tell you."

"Everyone I know has killed people." I told him. "If it was for a reason, I could forgive you for that."

He regarded me skeptically, before finally sighing. "Alright, let me start at the beginning then."

John

I am very old. The oldest man you've ever met. Even if you look at me very close you would never guess my age correctly.

I am twenty-two and one hundred years.

I've lived two lives. The first was ever brief. I lived to my fortieth year and fathered a single son Jack with a woman named Margery, though I did not remember them till years after my transformation. I can only assume there had been an accident that led to a tragic death. In truth I can't remember what happened, how I may have passed from that life. But what I do know is that my remains were quickly collected by a scientist that sought to create life from out of death and with me, he found success.

It was a difficult birth, there was no doubt. I was born in sheer, terrified agony. This was not the Protean man my creator envisioned. This was not a golden triumph over morality, the lyrical Adonais of which Shelley wrote.

This was abomination.

I woke to screams pouring from my mouth, much like the wails of a newborn babe… yet proper fathers do not flee the sound of his children's shrieks.

The first human action that I experienced was rejection. I waited, but my father did not return. I was abandoned, left to learn the ways of the world on my own. Has there ever been a creature that was so alone… so utterly helpless? Was every newborn creature abandoned the moment they were born?

No. Only one.

The laboratory that gave me life served as much my sanctuary as my prison. There was a window I would look through. It became my salvation and my tutor as I learned the ways of man and all his cruelty. What he valued and what he despised. How animals were treated…

There was no doubt in my mind that I was an animal.

How could there be a doubt? Was it not a countenance made for predation?

Forgive me. I forget who my audience is.

Eventually, I learned words and how to speak. There were books that I flipped through; my creator's beloved volumes of poetry were my primers. And after some time studying the markings inscribed within, I gradually remembered the skill to read.

From the penciled notations I discovered among them, I realized my creator favored Wordsworth and the old Romantics. No wonder he fled from me. I am not a creation of the antique pastoral world.

I am modernity personified.

Did he know that's what he was creating? The modern age?

Once I resolved to track my father I knew where to look. I knew in which occupation I would find him engaged; the cutting of flesh, the work of the surgeon, and the butcher.

And so, I came to his city: London; cruel as the Harlot's curse.

That first day I was assaulted by a group of men, whom were repulsed by the twistedness of my face. They beat me till I could not move from petrifying terror and once they satisfied their need for vehemence, they left.

And so, it was how I learned mankind's capacity for hatred… and mercy, in a single night.

A man saw me crumpled on the ground. Perhaps he was merely curious to see who it was and the moment he caught sight of the whiteness of my skin and the winding scar on my face, his expression broke with a smile and he offered me a drink.

He was charismatic, declaring out of nowhere that he would buy me dinner. Once my belly was filled, I sat silently as I listened to his theatrical anecdotes. He was a skilled actor and a captivating storyteller and I listened as though I had never heard sound or words in all my life. And in that one dinner, he offered to take me to his land of drama, sonnets, comedy and gore. He took me straight to the land of dreams and horror and called it the Grand Guignol.

He gave me my name there; Caliban after the subhuman son of the malevolent witch Sycorax. It was a suitable fit but not one I dually preferred.

And so, I discovered what kindness was.

Could there have been a more appropriate place for me? Night after night the players died gruesomely and then came back to life again for the next show. They were undying, like me, creatures of perpetual resurrection.

But I was not welcomed by all. How could I, with this face, fit with ease amongst the mortal and the beautiful? I learned to stay in the shadows to protect the heart my creator gave me. Still, I remained with the stage and I proved an able and agile worker. He made me strong and tireless. If only he had made me handsome. Once I found my occupation at the theater, it was simple to slip out at night and hunt for my maker.

I found where he lived soon enough and stalked him for several days before night I finally chose to reveal myself. That day, I saw him progressing with another of my kind; a younger brother, as it were.

I felt such rage as I watched him and this new creation he had brought into the world. I watched this thing in its strange docility, and realized with bitterness that this had been his ideal creation. Not the horror of his roaring, wailing firstborn that was me and my birth.

I lingered by as this thing interacted with the world like a child seeing for the first time. How curious and innocent he looked. A bitter seed of jealousy rose in me at the sight of it all.

I must admit that I was furious, and the actions that followed haunt me to this day. What I did, is for sure, a stain I will never scrub out of my soul.

I concealed myself in the shadows of my creator's lab, and when the fledgling was in reach I drove my hand through his heart. I slew my kin and wiped the blood of his death over my creator, declaring my disgust in his abandonment and this irate attempt to replace me. I told him my story and demanded what I wanted of him.

A companion—a mate, in my image and make so we could witness the years together and fear not of being alone as mankind lived and died around us.

This is what I asked of him. I demanded this and promised to slay all those nearest him if he did not give me what I was owed for his carelessness and neglect. He agreed, but time wore on and I grew impatient with his procrastinating. I intended to remind him of his promise and slew an acquaintance. The merciless brutality of that act haunts my dreams still. How much like a child I acted! Impatient and screaming like a toddler whose parent would not give him a toy. Decades have passed and I remain appalled by my tantrum.

And then I lost my job at the theater.

In my mission for affection I misread one of the actress's gestures of friendship and kindness as romantic advances. I was ashamed, I am still ashamed.

I had to grow so much in that first year, and on my own, too.

My maturity was somewhat eased by the introduction of a singular friend; Miss Ives.

I met her in the catacombs beneath the city where other dejected creatures collected when there was no shelter for us above. It was a squalor and many who gathered there lived in poor conditions with little privacy. But at least it was a roof and it was a cut above wandering the streets in the evening. It was there that I met her.

The first thing she did was offer me a bowl of soup. It was tepid at best and lacked flavor, but it filled the stomach and it was at least better than nothing. She was friendly and for some reason she was drawn to me, taking a seat next to me and scarcely reacting to my complexion as we engaged in conversation. We encountered one another many times after trading conversation back and forth and a refreshing friendship inspired.

I was grateful to her, though I still longed for the companionship of a true mate.

At last my creator prepared to forge me a bride, but his skills had refined since me. He made her too beautiful, too perfect for me. I was the prototype of his vision and she was his masterpiece. She was repelled by the entitlement I implied to her. She was not mine; I could not expect her to fall into my arms at my command. She was not a toy or a slave. She felt and thought and moved to her own tune. Even this creation that had been sculpted especially for me was not really mine.

Again, I was a fool.

So, I left, accepting what I was and what would always be; people would not love what they would not love. So, I would go to the furthest reaches of the world, to the coldest most remote wasteland I found. Only I never made it that far. My first life, the life my body lived before the fatal accident that brought his grisly death and my repugnant rebirth, returned to me in those years and called me back to London.

I remembered my family; my wife Margery and my son, Jack. My beautiful little boy whom I left behind in death.

Before this transformation I was a living man with an occupation, a home, and people who did love me. How could I have abandoned the ones who cared so for me? They were all alone. The closer I came back to them the more that affection for those people returned to me.

When I found them at last, my wife was working day and night in a filthy coal factory, polluting the air she breathed with soot and ash. The two were living in the poorest of homes, with only filth to breathe in. My son, my little son, was deathly ill and so weak and there was no money they could earn to find him proper medicine. I was filled with a bitter resentment that it was not enough for my life to suffer, but those I cared for were, too.

So, I took to robbery. I took to waiting in the dark to stalk and ambush rich aristocrats, taking all they had on them and vanishing in the dark, like a drop in the ocean.

The money I took was given to them in secret for I was frightened to return to them in this state. I couldn't stay away forever, though, I should have. When I revealed myself to my son he was frightened and screamed in horror for what I had turned into. I fled from him feeling more pain from this single rejection than all the insults in the world.

As much as I wished I were able, I could not stay away. But before I saw them again I sought out Miss Ives once again for her friendship and some advice, desperately in need of guidance for the best way I should proceed. She was encouraging and I felt better once I had spoken to her. In addition, she revealed that she and I had known each other in the life I had led before, though I held no memory of it and it had taken her time to recall it all herself.

At least now I understood better why she was able to accept me where others had not.

The next time I revealed myself was to my wife, this time with care and caution surrounded by people so that if she wished to flee she would not feel trapped.

To my astonishment she did not shy away but embraced me, taking me by the hand and reintroducing me to my son.

He did not scream this time. I should have known better than to reveal to him in his fevered state. Now that he could see me better, he saw his father again.

We lived for a few weeks in a surreal bubble of strangeness. I was there but the man they loved was not. I was too different, too altered, and I hated how I could not be the man they loved anymore.

In time, mortality and sickness took Jack from us. My wife pleaded with me to return to my maker and ask to resurrect him as I had been, but I advised against it. My time in this life was not kind, and I feared cursing my son with an identical fate.

This is not life. What I am is no longer flesh and bone. This body is as artificial as petrified wood. To impose such an existence on a child would be far worse. They would never again grow to become an adult. Their mind may mature, but they would be doomed to toil forever in an adolescent body, yearning for growth but never achieving it.

My wife presented me with an ultimatum: return with our son resurrected or don't return at all.

So, I did not return.

His body I laid to rest in the waves of the river, carried away as swiftly and calmly as the ending of a bitterly sweet tune, existing only in memory.

I sought the comforting words of a friend and thought I would be at least able to revisit Miss Ives to seek her advice once again. But it was not to be.

The same day I put my son to rest in the river was the same day Miss Ives was being put to rest in the Earth. I knelt at her grave, overwhelmed with dysphoria and feeling the strength of so much loss in one day.

In just one day I lost my son, my wife, and my friend. It should not have been allowed for one single person to experience so much loss all at once.

I experienced a great depression after that, and I returned to Miss Ives' grave every night to find peace in sleep atop it. It was not true sleep, though, for I do not actually require it.

One night though, as I curled on the dirt, I heard a stirring underneath me, which brought me out of my rest. It startled me so much that I sat up in alarm to see what was happening. There was a loud pounding and I leapt away in surprise as something burst out of the grave.

I thought at first it may have been a demon, or a cemetery ghoul as they emerged from a grisly feast of rot and worms. Instead, it was Miss Ives crawling from the hole herself.

I was uncertain about this and admittedly afraid—who wouldn't be after all? But despite my fear I did not flee from her. I knew only too well what it was like to be feel rejection.

This miraculous resurrection was extreme in many different ways. It was much like the way I had been born anew, yet if it weren't for my unexpected attendance, she may have emerged from the earth alone and been left to learn on her own as I had done so. But I was with her, and I helped her the best I was able to.

She was very much like a newborn those first few weeks. There was little she actually remembered, but as it gradually came back to her, she explained to me of her tragic death... but that story is for another day.

Returning to the catacombs of London, we stayed there just long enough for us to recover while I simultaneously nursed her back to something resembling her former self. It was not an ideal place to live. Then she remembered someplace she expected we would be safe and that was how we found ourselves living in an old witch's hut.

It was a very odd place, but comforting at the same time somehow.

We lived there for a while peacefully, but peace does not always last. Vanessa's mind had changed since her resurrection. She received an odd dream one night, foretelling disaster upon our tranquil existence. The coming of the Great War was looming and she saw the bombs fall over our peaceful hut and reduce it to fire and ash. So we decided to leave.

I did not know where we intended to go and when confiding in Venessa, she would not elaborate. She still tried to ease my worries though, as we crossed the Atlantic and assured me that something would lead us the way.

We arrived in Boston and traveled South without map or reason why. I remained confused about our continued ambiguity but Vanessa repeatedly assured me that it was all with purpose. Finally, we reached the capitol of the States and I stood by my companion in confusion for this questionable choice of relocation. Vanessa continued to lead us the way until we found this place. The destruction was a few years old but the pagans never returned to it.

And this is where we built this home. My room was in the basement and hers in the attic. At that time, it was a very cozy area and I enjoyed the dark as I worked. The war that would destroy our old home soon started and the world was all but tossed upside down as the bombs fell over Europe. As saddening as it had been to leave our home, I was very grateful that we left when we had the chance.

They called it the Word War when it began. Countries against other countries and it seemed like there would be no end in sight at times.

When it was over, we both breathed a sigh of relief. For a few more decades we lived together and over time, I realized that neither she nor I had changed very much. Miss Ives aged, but slowly, like a tortoise or a tree, which is how she lived for so long; that is, before she met her final fate.

Our lives were self-sufficient and sheltered for the most part. We rarely made ventures into populated hamlets, except to buy or sell goods on occasion. Vanessa seemed content with this life, but in time, I grew bored and restless with such a stagnant existence and decided to travel out on my own. Mind you, it took a great amount of courage to do so. My prior experience with the world had not been kind, but the world grew more and more as time went by and I was curious and ready to explore it once again.

Vanessa would not join me though. So, we said goodbye to each other and parted ways.

I traveled around both North and South America, acquiring transport when I could find it and learning any trade that caught my fancy. I found I enjoyed learning; since the first moment I took breath in this odd life, it had been something I had always been exceptional at. After all, I had to teach myself much about the world as a fledgling. Imagine what I accomplished when I had proper tutors. If there was a knowledge I was in ignorance of, I sought it and studied until I achieved personal mastery. For the most part it was an enjoyable life, though I would never truly be free from the persecution of others.

My travels soon led me back to Europe, and through misfortune I found myself in Poland on a very bad night. Even after decades passed, I still have trouble sorting out what happened. There was fire and guns and before I knew it, someone had thrown me in the back of a truck and a few men managed to overpower me as they restrained my hand and legs with chains. A bag was thrown over my head and there was only darkness and offset voices while I tried to makes sense of what was going on.

In time, I found myself at the bottom of a cage, and in time a Nazi laboratory.

The lead scientist of that organization was familiar with my father's work and it was eventually revealed that the man leading this repugnant expedition was a previous student of my father's and soon I discovered copies of his original notes and journals among this man's things. His mission was much like Frankenstein's, though his mission was not sought for the glory of man but for his domination. This scientist sought to find the secret to ever-lasting life and had paid a king's ransom to anyone who could hunt down my master's old creations. had not heard of anything regarding Frankenstein since I left that final time. I did not even know if he made others after Lily. If he had learned anything, he wouldn't have.

I will say this about him, as neglectful as my father had been towards me, I did not believe his intentions had true malice in them. Not like this man's.

As much as the scientist studied though, he only had a partial copy of my father's instructions. So the man was forced to discover other methods to achieve his goal.

I suffered unspeakable torture at the hands of Nazi scientists and saw unspeakable torture being done to others. They did things you can't possibly imagine, things I will never speak of with anyone. I stayed captive there for years and years while they performed their cruelty on my body. They left their marks upon me, altering me from the inside out.

Finally, one day, one of the guards had been careless and I broke free from my restraints. That one mistake was enough for me, to bring that tower I suffered in, crumbling down on top of everything they were trying to build. In a single moment all their heinous crimes and experiments were snuffed out.

And I emerged from it all as if being reborn all over again.

When I found safety again, I discovered that several of my tormenters had escaped the blaze and I vowed that I would not rest until I hunted each and every single one of them down and slayed them.

After that day, I searched for them for years, always on their trail but always a step behind them. Sometimes I found one, only to loose the others like they had vanished. Whole decades seemed to pass before I picked up their trail again and I had to find ways to occupy myself till I was able to continue my search. Usually, it seemed I could find their scraps and their creatures, but I could never find them.

Finally, the day came when I at last tracked them down in the wastes of the Nevada Desert. The torture I endured by their hands, which they had labeled "experiments" had not been entirely fruitless for them as their aging had, in kind, been slowed to a crawl. Their youth was theirs and they had all the time in the world to use it how they wished. There was always more for them to test, and the experiments continued as they had before.

I almost lost myself looking for my revenge, but I prevailed and killed them along with everything I could find in that underground bunker I tracked them to.

I found my revenge not long before the dead began to rise, but since I technically died over a century before, the dead see me as one of their own.

One battle finished, just as another began.

That is where I have been for so long and why I have returned now to tell Vanessa where I was for so long; why I could not come back to her even when I wished to.

Judith

He ended with those final words and I looked at him, sorrow and hurt aching in my chest for him. It was so horrible and unfair—all of what he had to endure for so, so long. I got up from my seat and walked around so I could give him a hug. He was stiff for a moment but eventually returned it in kind.

His whole story was just so sad and it hurt to know that even during a time that I assumed was supposed to be better, he had been held prisoner and put under the worst conditions in the world. The realization that such a thing had been done to someone who was so kind and generous, made my chest hurt and my eyes sting.

"I'm sorry." I whispered. "I wish I knew what to say to make you feel better."

He leaned into my embrace, smiling softly. "The simple fact that you want to make me feel better already makes me feel better."

I hugged him a long moment, before at last pulling away and looking up at him. "I have so many questions for you, John, but I just want to say, I'm sorry you're hurting. I'm sorry you had to go through so much awful, but I hope you know that you're welcomed to stay here or in Alexandria with us, for always if you want. I won't ever treat you bad and I won't let anyone else do it either, because I know you now and I know you're good."

His gazed at me as if trying to find something in my face that would imply deceit. Maybe since it was all he knew, he could expect nothing less from me as well. Somehow, he couldn't find it though, and he smiled with my sincerity.

"Thank you for your words. It means so much to me."

"You're welcome."

Present day

Those days were bitter sweet for me and I yearned for the moment when I could speak with my dear friend and embrace him as I had done so after he told me his tale, sad as it was.

This time, he would have to embrace me after I told him my own sad tale.