Before They Hatch

She had come, as usual, to escape her life and to frolic for much of the day, away from the tedious duties of prosaic life when, just as she may have been preparing to turn around and depart for the day, she witnessed him emerging from behind the stones of the ruinous tower and step easily over the encircling hedge-fence. He had come from where the clouds had gathered into a wall just behind the far-off mountain line, to form a screen, and in the last few hours of sunlight- a light that was heavier, fuller of amber, and falling harder to the ground- his side was lit up in profile as it traversed past her, and each of his brown hairs tinted reddish. She watched him walk across the field- yellow in the light and dark green in the shades- in a body almost as tall as the ruins themselves, and she continued to watch separated from him by the quiet river and the fence of crooked wooden posts strung together by wire on the opposite shore. He rounded the corner, out of frame, and disappeared into the tree line once again.

She waded ankle-deep into the river, and felt cooled by the balm of water on her skin, and thought better than to follow him, for though he moved at a languid pace, he was enormous and had covered tremendous ground quickly. She could not risk becoming lost in the forest just as night was falling.

But that single sighting had been enough, and now she could feel the need stirring torrentially inside of herself, and blowing about like a twister with outstretched arms. She needed to know at once everything he had ever felt or seen. Did he pleasure himself, and could he think of her while he did it? She wanted to see it. She wanted to burrow inside all of his depravities and become part of them. She fantasized of being thrown around like paper, and of being drenched in the full array of his fluids. She had loved him upon first sight.

She turned the encounter over and over as she walked home- a coin becoming iron-hot in her frantic handling- still barefoot and caking her delicate feet in layers of mud, and shit, and leaves, as she arrived at her home just as the moon had risen, condemned to endure the night defeated by lust, and curiosity, and sleep.

She returned to the site again and again and yet only managed to glimpse him one more time in the days that ensued, still she awaited the monster like the ailing tongue awaits water, for her thirst was tremendous. As she played in the grass one day, a dormouse scurried up to her hand and she exclaimed in delight. What a cute little creature, what are you doing here, are you hungry, would you like some bread, of course you would, and as it nibbled away, she reached out and pinched its tiny bulging cheek, at which it gave a shriek, and in an instant dropped the morsel of bread and bit her, drawing blood from her finger. She scoffed, then picked up her shoe and smacked the thing to death.  

Shortly after that, he had finally appeared, and walked along the wooden-post fence, much closer to her than the first time, and so she had managed to behold the glint of dew upon the trellises of his unkempt mane, and the floating movements of his extraordinarily long limbs, and she had smelt the freshly snapped branches tangled around his extremities, as well as the drying blood dampening the air with the thick cloud of flies circling him, and thought he must be gentle for the way he weaved awkwardly, but with care between the nature.

She could only thank the heavens, she thought, that she had not still not managed to see his face clearly, for then she would have surely melted into a pool of her own desirous juices. She had returned home at once, resolved to murder her husband but it had not gone well, for he proved immediately to be immune to her traitorous advances.

Never having considered her husband as anything other than mundane and absurdly generous, or provided much thought to his mortality- or lack of it- she was immensely surprised to encounter the incredible resistance her husband demonstrated towards dying. She had attempted several methods and come away with the following conclusions: that knives could not pierce his skin, or even bruise him in any minor way; bullets could be discharged from guns in his presence, but then would be immediately- absorbed?- by his shape; other deadly items had a habit of presenting idly in their positions one moment, and then vanishing into thin air as she moved to reach for them; and when the only remaining solution seemed to be to annihilate him from the outside-in, she could not manage to produce any kind of result with countless doses of even the most deadly toxins.

On several occasions, after she had jumped out from behind some hidden space to surprise him with a murderous attack and failed, he had looked at her and smiled briefly but with genuine feeling, as if he was grateful for her attentions, but he was too busy to play along at the moment. She had stared each time in disbelief as he walked away, unburdened, and occasionally, turned to flash her that sympathetically reassuring smile once more.

This went on until finally, exasperated, she confronted him:

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean why had you never mentioned that you couldn’t die?”

“Oh… couldn’t I…?”

Disgusted even further by her husband, she ached more and more for the monster. She did not wonder too long at the size of his sex for, although carnally expressing, she knew that hers was a love that was pure and not dependent on such lude details. It was also, she maintained at the far reaches of her mind, bound to be significant anyway due to the sheer size of the rest of his figure. Sometimes, she lay awake well into the night, strategizing as to how best to fully absorb it and fantasizing at taking it into her mouth. It would be difficult, for sure, but such is the nature of love: there are mountains yet soaring over them is Love- the unshaken beholder of the tempest- triumphant in its capacity to surmount whatever, so how should she fear?

Overall, she did not spend too much time on the details of his physicality, for although it was his body she would be making love to, it was his mind that would make the millions of decisions over and over again.

And as she became obsessed with the monster, she obsessed over what the monster might think of her when they would meet, finally. She spent hours a day envisioning herself from his eyes and attempting to decipher what impression he might draw from her, and how hard she would have to work at winning his affections. She was obviously beautiful and trusted her beauty to capture his attention. She examined and re-examined her naked body in the mirror, and imagined his stupefaction at her perfection. She attempted to fondle the hills and valleys of her privates as he would, and envisage his style and techniques.

As she dressed, she questioned whether he would prefer her in this dress or that one, and how might he like her tied, and would he make a habit of pulling it while they were intimate. Which shoes? What jewellery? She dreamt up endless conversations they would have, writing both parts of the dialogue herself, and spent so much time doing this that she would find herself simply speaking as if to him out loud as she moved throughout her day- he had become a permanent fixture in her mind.

To seek aid in fulfilling her schemes, she frequented the apothecary, of whom she had become very fond. The apothecary’s feelings towards her were unclear, however, as their interactions contained mostly long, unstructured ramblings of her lust for the monster, and fantasies of what adventures their life together would entail. At the end of these monologues, she would turn to look at the apothecary through thick, sweeping lashes and explain that this is why she needed to be rid of her husband once and for all and is there anything else I haven’t tried yet?

The apothecary was not so much interested in the monster as the challenge before them. Actually, they had warned her against turning to such dire action as murder, before establishing any sort of connection with the monster, first, but she had acted exasperated and said that sort of precaution was unnecessary, and she was already sure of everything in her soul.

The apothecary would pause for several moments in deep thought and, not saying a word, disappear into their backroom to re-emerge with either some concoction or tool of assassination. She would eye it up and down while nodding, then reach out for it, thank them and be on her way once more. Inevitably, she would always return to complain of her failures.

“I need something stronger,” she would insist.

“No, no, it would kill a horse in an hour.”

But she’d been adding heaps of it to his porridge for a fortnight now and he had not so much as slept in later than his usual five am.

“No, no, it would kill a horse,” the apothecary insisted.

To fill the silence that ensued, the apothecary asked if her husband was growing tired yet of her constantly trying to kill him, but she had replied that he didn’t seem to mind. At this, she had burst out into tears, doubled over the desk in pieces about her destiny to love an ethereal monster wholeheartedly and yet be trapped; anchored to a man who could not die. The longer this ordeal had dragged on, she explained, the more she had begun to feel the hands of her own desires clutch around her chest and restrict her from deep breathing. The claustrophobia of her life was pinching her mind in at all sides. What could she do? Failing to kill her husband had kept her so busy that she had not even managed to glimpse the monster for weeks- she was going to die if she couldn’t even see him. How could she rid herself of the cruelty of such a treacherous fate?

The apothecary did not reach out to comfort her, but they had developed genuine interest in her plight, over time. They were not green to the practice of selling poisons to vengeful or bored spouses, but they had never failed to provide an effective brew for the specified job. They did not even usually charge for these special tinctures, but drew enough satisfaction from the opportunity to expand the love of their craft, alone. They had expected her case to be straightforward, and even prescribed a reliable favourite, for they had seen her husband on several occasions and, surely, the man would not require much to be rid of, and yet nothing had worked so far, and they had even considered beginning to charge the woman for her bottomless needs, but then thought better against it as, for the first time in decades, they had been presented with a genuine challenge.

In moments of complete fluster, they had provided the woman with weapons of death from their expansive and exotic collection, but she had claimed the items had either broken apart upon touching his skin, or disappeared completely, and they had been brought even deeper into the puzzle. They had considered that the woman might be an idiot, and did not know at all what she was saying, or how to maneuver anything correctly, but they had her demonstrate her actions and concluded that she may be stupid, but she was still capable of being effective, under normal circumstances.

They had considered, even, that the potions they had been supplying to her were simply ineffective, but to test this, they had slipped a few drops of their most recent prescription into the tea of their assistant- a young, unmarried lady with a small child who would accompany her into the store on days off. On such a day, the assistant had come in to drop off a key she had carried home with her by accident and, true to form, carrying the child, balancing on her hip. The apothecary offered her a cup of tea, and she had sipped something so as not to be impolite, then turned with the child to leave, but dropped dead instantly upon arriving at the threshold of the front door. So, it wasn’t their products, after all. They sighed in relief.

Despite their initial interest and all their investment into this conundrum, countless failures had driven them to their breaking point, and on this day, they could no longer endure this puzzle of immortality.

            “You may take the poison yourself- put yourself out of your misery,” suggested the apothecary, supporting their head in their hands.

At this, she ceased to weep and glanced at them through the wetness of her sorrow.

Ye-es, she could, but the way she felt now she knew this tide of longing would follow and flood her to even the highest peaks of Heaven, pin her upon the shores of her own to drown her over and over. She could never be free.

“You may kill the monster then.”

Now this made sense, she thought: conquer her desire through destruction, for love- oh love!- would leave them free to each other in deathly fantasy. Excellent. She borrowed with gratitude the dark, slick shotgun hanging like an oil stain on the wall behind the apothecary and set out happily to do her work. As she strode along, she hopped on and off the thinnest bristles of the wind, riding them with bliss and easiness to her destination, and singing with a perfected joy. How lucky she was, she thought, to be in the throes of love in all its snags and softness, for love had brought her to this place and love, that eternal music of the Universe, would float her gently in cupped hands away from there.