You got me on this lindworm shit. It's good shit. Curse you
I wrote this during my lunch break and itâs less fun but more, uh, personal?Â
Heâd been a monster, once. Abhorrent. Unnatural. Grotesque. He was a thing that should not be. There had been a perverse pleasure in knowing that, and he had reveled in the fear and disgust he inspired even as he hated himself. The mere sight of his physique had been enough to send battle-seasoned warriors running in terror at the sight of it, tripping over their boots to escape the horror of his flesh.Â
Yard after yard of sinewy coils gleamed blue-black in the sunlight, a great and terrible nakedness trailing behind him when he stretched himself across a road to bask in the full heat of the day. No man nor beast dared to touch him even when he drowsed with his head in his arms, and no brave knight had ever wounded him with spear or sword. His armored body could crush both horse and rider in a single embrace. He was a blight, a reckoning, a mutilation upon the body of the world, and the softness and sweetness of humanity that should have been his birthright were denied to him.
Heâd been a monster, once, and he was a monster still. The strength he had commanded was lost, the weapon of his body discarded on the floor. Now he was weak, with limbs that trembled and skin that split at the slightest pressure of a blade. There was a tender thing between his legs that twitched and swayed and promised pain and never, ever went away. He loathed itâthe whole shivering, aching, sweating, stinking heap of his new containment. He had always been a captive of his flesh, but now he was tormented by a dreadful vulnerability he had never known before. Anyone with a will to hurt him could do so now, easily. A single lucky bodkin in his belly would end his life. Even a child could gut him with a knife.
âHow do you bear it?â he asked the woman who had remade him, when she held his fragile body in her arms and kissed away the water that leaked from his eyes. Her body was smaller and no less vulgar than his own, but she wore it fiercely, as though beneath her thin and fragile skin writhed the fearless majesty of a wyrm.
âItâs not all bad,â she said, and touched his lips, his throat, his belly, his thigh. She touched the whole revolting carcass and did not flinch. He hoped, madly, that she might command him to peel back the layers of his flesh once more and free the thing inside, the thing that was purely himânot monster, not man, but him. It was there, he knew, blazing somewhere behind the bars of his ribcage.
The command did not come. Instead, her order was simple: âKiss me,â she said. âLove me. Be good to me, forever and always.â
And so he kissed her, and he loved her, and he was good to her in every way he knew. He learned how to make her laugh, how to dress her wounds, how to knead the soreness from her muscles with his own small soft clawless hands. He learned to use the suffering instrument of his body to make good thingsâa garden, a meal, a treaty of peaceâand that was almost enough.
There were always days in which he shuddered and cringed and thought only of monstrosity and decay, but there were also days in which he danced and held small children in his arms. She was right, he realized. It was not all bad.
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