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Darkness Falls

© Cederwyn Whitefurr

11thApril, 2023

All Rights Reserved.

This Week's Writing Challenge: Not all injuries are permanent; not all traumas are temporary.

At least 1000 words, don't worry if you go over.

Tag all prompts with: WritingGroupChallenge.

Add all prompts to a separate folder.

Put the prompt description at the beginning of your story.

As always, comments are gratefully received! I'd love to know what you think, please, let me know! Did you know? I'm also on Patreon! Want to support me, even a little? Patreon.com/Cederwyn

Darkness Falls

Dylan had spent a week out in the edge of the forest, living rough - he idly scratched at the week old growth of beard. It itched abominably, as he scratched, he saw out of the corner of his eye - movement. Like a statue, he froze for a second, staring out through dark hazel eyes, before squinting into the distance.

His hand curled around the rifle, each movement, even each beat of his heart, seemed to take eternity from one to the next as he brought it up and tucked it into his shoulder.

"Just another step...another - "

With a quiet exhalation, he carefully squeezed the trigger...

Pin met primer...

Gunpowder exploded, forcing the projectile to shriek from the end of the rifle...

He grunted as it kicked back against his shoulder, momentarily blinded but blinking away the flash before he looked - his target -

Gone...

Placing the gun in the rack, Dylan breathed out and made his way from the hide in which he'd sat. Quickly, his orange vest gleaming in the twilight, he made his way across the large clearing towards approximately, he suspected the buck had dropped. He'd gone for the heart, he wasn't inexperienced - he _knew_a heart shot was fatal...

"I shot a buck, not my first, now where..."

He began a search-like pattern, the whitetail's coat almost the same colour as the grass, it'd blend in almost perfectly - yet his eyes couldn't see the antlers that should stand out like...

Branches...

Dead branches...

He seen it - laying where he knew it would be...

His eyes widened, before he sank to his knees, placing a hand on the beautiful coat, feeling the warmth of what had been a young, beautiful creature of nature - one he _knew_he had no right to take - for the belly was heavy...

A doe... I shot a pregnant doe - those branches made it look like a prime breeding stag and...

Her flanks heaving, sweat soaking through her fur, she coughed up blood and her wild, feral eyes rolled in her head.

Drawing his hunting knife, he held a palm over her eyes, before he hung his head and in one swift motion - drew the blade across her throat...

She did not linger in pain...he could grant her that much at least.

A snap of a twig behind him made him begin to turn - when suddenly his left arm shattered like a dry pine tree as a cloven hoof flashed and kicked him. With a scream, he dropped the knife, falling against the doe as he rolled over onto his back as he stared wild-eyed up at the Whitetail stag who had attacked him. Foam flecked its muzzle, its eyes were filled with an unspeakable rage that blazed forth like a bonfire. Dylan screamed, holding up an arm to protect himself, seeing the razor sharp tines on the antlers as he stag roared and dropped his head.

Agony...teeth - terrible, sharp, bone crushing...

Its jaws locked around his upheld forearm...

Impossibly sharp teeth...

They carved through his clothes like razors...

Skin punctured...

Blood welling...

He could feel the teeth grinding his very forearm bones...

A sharp snap as they cracked and splintered...

Driven by the adrenaline that surged through him, Dylan grabbed the bloodied knife - then began stabbing this stag again and again. More blood gushed, as the Stag seemed to scream - throwing its head back, the scream turned to a choking gurgle, the blade piercing through the underside of the stags head and up out between his eyes. Instantly, he went limp, slumping down onto Dylan and crushing him beneath the surprising weight.

"Fuck... you..." Dylan wheezed, the pain doubling - tripling - driving him into what he felt would be unrelenting darkness...

At least the pain will stop...

*

Dylan woke in a hospital bed, groggy, confused and bewildered - beside him, machinery beeped and chirped - an IV slid into his vein on his right arm, the other one swathed in plaster from elbow to wrist.

Let me go... A fever-like thought floated through his mind - it _sounded_like his mental voice, the one he'd always heard as an internal monologue - yet it was _not_his inner voice.

"Where..." Dylan moaned, shaking his head. "Stag..."

A cool cloth touched his sweaty brow, then as his vision cleared, he seen a young male nurse standing beside the bed, holding a damp cloth. Without warning, Dylan's plastered hand shot out and he grabbed the nurse by the throat and began squeezing...

No, stop it! Dylan screamed - or thought he did - commanding his body to stop, to let go - it only squeezed tighter and tighter... My arm was broken...stop, let...go...

Feral, beast like snarls tore from his throat, as the nurse dropped to his knees, both hands clawing at Dylan's arm.

"Weak, pathetic..."

Words come from his throat - words that were not his, as his second hand joined the first, squeezing, choking then mercifully - snapping - with a soft crunch, the nurses neck broke and he slumped lifeless to the linoleum floor.

What do I do... That wasn't me, I'd never...

Something, like a mental slap, struck him savagely and nearly broke him.

Primal emotions flooded every cell in his body - fear, then a new one - pure, animal like rage...

He leapt from the bed, tearing the monitoring cables and IV out of his arm, gazing around like some wild, feral animal trapped in a cage.

A single word come to his mind - overpowering, intense, primitive -

Escape...

Something- something inhuman, possessed him, crushing his humanity beneath it, grinding it down until he was a mere mote - less than a mote - in his own mind, as the _something_with strength beyond a human - tore the door off like a cruel child would tear the wings off a butterfly...

It did what it had to do -

It fled...

*

Days past in a blur - Dylan's fragile hold on that mote of his humanity, diminished more and more. He was a silent, screaming passenger the first full moon - as his body collapsed to the forest floor, pain, excruciating, agonising, words couldn't express it as it built within him. Wildly, he tore the rags off his filthy, dirt encrusted body - for that was all that remained of the hospital gown - a he stared down horrified and sickened...

His fingers fused together, one to another - forming what looked like -

_No..._He screamed - or tried too - whatever malevolent force had claimed him strangled the voice cords and silenced him.

Fingers turned black as midnight, forming a cloven hoof - just like a deer - tawny coloured fur sprouting from his skin and spreading up his arms to his shoulder - his chest - neck... Bones cracked and split, muscles tore asunder - he was helpless - he couldn't scream, he couldn't even understand - what was happening to him...

Mercifully, the pain grew too much, and he plunged once more back into the abyss - this time - willingly and thankfully...

*

Weak, pathetic - Come a voice out of the darkness.

With a gasp, Dylan seemed to come out of whatever had taken him - only to find himself a literal prisoner in his own mind. Long, tubular ears twitched too and fro, a brown pelt rippled, strong, muscular legs stepped from one cloven hoof to another, as if testing them, ensuring they would work as this _thing_commanded.

"You are unworthy of the gift that you have received," That dark, inner voice flailed at his mind like a scourge. "Unworthy and ignorant! Humans - pah - you are cattle, food, to one such as I... Yet you will serve me, oh, go ahead, please! Scream, fight, try to take back that which you stole from ME..."

That last word exploded like a mid-summer thunder crack, so intense and powerful, it continued to resonate through what remained of Dylan's very humanity - threatening to extinguish it for good.

Dylan fought - he fought with every ounce his years of Army service and discipline had taught him - he fought...

He lost...

*

Months past, the - beast- Dylan had become - looked like a Whitetail Stag, in every way, a hunters dream of that one magnificent beast to claim as a trophy Buck...

They tried...

Every one of them died beneath the antlers, fangs and cloven hooves of what Dylan had become...

He was helpless, powerless, his psyche twisted more and more with each horrific, grisly death he was an unwilling participant in. Some died swiftly - taken unawares, their ending mercifully quick...

Others, this beast_would hamstring, powerful canines severing tendons and muscles with ease - seemingly to actually _savour - the screams and tears and worst of all - the _pleading_cries for mercy...

It made no distinction, human, deer, male or female - it killed at first for sustenance and survival - then- it killed purely for sport and pleasure...

Each human that fell to this beast- Dylan's fragile hold on his humanity crumbled and cracked a little more. Truly, he was helpless, unable to even twitch a single hair, a passenger scared almost to the point of madness itself - in an unending carnival ride from hell.

*

One last victim - the beast _claimed_as a buck claimed a doe - it made Dylan sick to his very last vestiges of his soul - yet there remained that single, minuscule spark. Wrapping it in his hands, or so he imagined, he gently blew on that tiny spark - fear mixing with hope - then that spark glowed...

Then began to grow...

*

"What - " Come a thought through his mind. "What are you..."

Somehow, Dylan nurtured that spark, pushing back the encroaching darkness a single inch at a time.

He heard a scream, a primal, throat rupturing scream of pain and suffering that was torn from the stag's throat and muzzle.

"No...STOP...you can not...I will not..."

Dylan fed all the hate, the rage, the sickness in what remained of his soul, into the candle flame of his last vestiges of humanity. Somehow, it grew brighter, hotter, consuming these and growing brighter and hotter - spreading further and further.

I command you to walk - Dylan screamed mentally. Obey me, beast...

It fought back, cruelly, savagely, yet he caught a glimpse - the merest flicker of motion - that stag standing in his mind, head bowed, antlers glistening with gore and blood.

"Fight me human... you will _not_like what I can do to you..." It bellowed in challenge - the words more animal than human.

I will not fight you, for I understand what you are now - see how the light burns you?

It screamed in agony, feeling like its left leg was on fire - like it had stumbled into a campfire.

"Stop this, what I did to you will look like - "

Again, Dylan fed the fire within him, it was like a torch now - flaring and bright - he mentally set alight the other leg, the belly, the very tail- in agony, the stag thrashed and rolled, squealing and screaming - unable to stop the agonising pain that flared randomly.

You tried to break me beast - but I know now, what I did not know then - creatures such as you, vile, dark, unrepentant - uncaring of who or what you hurt, so long as your cruel, base urges are satiated... It was - me - who gave you your power, you fed upon my very soul like a tick fit to burst! Yet its not enough - is it? It'll never be enough - how many must die, to satiate you? Ten? A hundred? A THOUSAND? No, no more - listen to me beast, I take back everything I gave to you, my fear, my anger, my negativity that lived in my heart - you know my mind, you know what horrors I have fought hard and long to suppress - what I was ordered to do!...

Again, the stag screamed, thrashing its antlered head back and forth as it fought that which it could not - it fought its own dark, diseased and black heart and mind...

As I command, beast, you shall obey...

"NO!" Screamed the Stag, tears running down his cheeks, yet his right hoof stepped forwards, then the left, the back ones... "No, I will not, I will not..."

Dylan fanned the fires even hotter...

A roar come from nearby, faint at first, then louder, louder still,_deafening_as the air grew thick and heavy with the spray of the massive waterfall.

"No..." Screamed the stag, digging his cloven front hooves into the dirt, trying to force himself to stop. "What do you want? I'll do anything..."

Anything? Dylan shot back mentally. I want one thing, beast... can you bring back those you've killed? No? Can you erase the torture you've inflicted upon me? Do you even care? Are you - capable - of such?

Dylan forced it to take another step - the water ice cold and splashing up its front legs.

"I will do anything, please - you don't know what I can offer you - I'll submit, I'll surrender - is that what you want? I can teach you things, your fragile, human mind could never dream of..."

Ice water splashed the belly, growing deeper and deeper - up the flanks, almost over the back - compelled towards the mist and the drop that lay beyond...

You have taught me one thing - for this - I thank you. Not all injuries are permanent; not all traumas are temporary... No,I do not need the likes of - you - to dream for me Beast... I can dream now beast, oh... you can not imagine - what I can dream of now...

Bunching muscles grew taut as Dylan forced the Stag to spring up and out - the stag's last screams lost in the mists below....

END