Killing Us Softly
By: Sebastian Sd
Tags: Flash Fiction, A Season Of Strange, Dark, Fiction, Short Story

I remember the elders telling stories like this when I was merely a small one. They claimed to have seen The Beast in its fits of rage, seen it ravage entire families. I thought it nonsense at the time. How I wish I had paid heed.

It is hard to define, our relationship with The Beast. We are mere visitors in its realm, and it holds a power far beyond our comprehension. We have to take refuge in its structures to escape the fatal cold of the outside, fully aware of our contentious relationship with The Beast. A few elder ones remember a group that worshipped it as a God. This was before The Beast started its first attack on them, of course. Still, some refer to it as a godlike figure even now. They don’t do it in public of course, but we know. We know.

I reject this vision entirely, The Beast is more akin to a demon. There is something crooked in the way it rejoices when one of our own is captured. Something wicked in how it starves us out by inundating the structures we live in with toxic waste. Something sickening in how the bodies of our fallen are disparaged and discarded without hesitation.

I still remember Colin’s death. It was gruesome. The two of us had ventured out of the caves looking for food for our families. We were chosen as we were the strongest ones, best suited to survive the pestilent environment The Beast kept for us. Or so we thought.

We are a persecuted race. I know that, Colin knew that, everyone knows that. Truth is, there are plenty of others that would rather see us dead. Our sin is merely existing. But The Beast doesn’t just want us dead. It wants to see us die. Slowly. Painfully.

I felt lightheaded just a few steps out of our cave, Colin seemed to be taking it better. In an instant I stopped cold. I was feeling nauseous and knew I wouldn’t last long if I kept moving. Colin just kept moving, and only after a while did he look back and asked me, “are you okay?” He took a step back in my direction but suddenly he stumbled, clearly losing control of his body. “Let’s get out of here,” I yelled at him immediately. And then, we heard the sound.

The Beast had spotted us. I took a deep breath, told Colin to run to safety and started running myself without looking back. I made it back to our cave, but he wasn’t fast enough. With only one strike, The Beast mortally wounded him.

I couldn’t look away. Shyly peering from the inside of our cave, I could still see Colin suffering, clamoring for a final blow. The first hit had struck him on the left side, and with such force that he had lost three out of his six limbs. At this point, he wouldn’t even be able to crawl back to safety.

The Beast, in its infinite sadism, didn’t hit Colin again, but instead brought the toxic gas with which it terrorizes us and aimed it directly at him. Purely for fun, I’m sure. Colin started choking, his remaining limbs moving uncontrollably.

Only after The Beast had satiated its own dark desires did it take Colin’s lifeless body and disposed of it unceremoniously. Just one more in The Beast’s long tally of lives it takes with no second thought at all.

Sure, we are a persecuted race in general, but The Beast kills everything with no remorse. Spiders, ants, even other creatures that prey on us. Some may still think of The Beast as a godlike figure. But I know it’s a demon. A demon, after all, is just a monstrous God that has gone mad.