{Part of the scrapped backstory of my in-the-works 2011 NaNoWriMo, "Angels" - for the 3 of you that read the first 5 chapters of my first draft (still up on the site), you might remember my long-winded history about the demon/human relations... well, this is part of it in story form}
Wasteland—a wide, shifting plain of sulphurous muck, flames, and withered bushes and trees that inhaled toxins from the soil—its sky blanketed by sulphur clouds, and ridged on all sides by high, blue mountains that seemed to forever loom but never bring their promise of new climate any closer. Blind, bone-white things slithered through the Wasteland’s stagnant pools—creatures with leathery black skin beat their wings against its humid air—and its muddy dunes were walked by strange, scuttling beings, twisted forms of something better. It was a cage—a prison for rejected life-forms, fenced in by mountains, sealed off from those wiser, prettier things beyond.
The Matron walked among the scuttling beings—she was the closest thing to human that the Wasteland had to offer; she had the form of a woman, but she sported no hair, and her skin was made of tough, translucent film. Her fingers were extended, sharp-edged claws, and her legs were bent backwards like the hind limbs of a goat. Most often, she walked hunched over, on all fours, her pointed fingers spearing smaller creatures that had the misfortune of being in her way. When she stopped to sleep, she would chew their gore from her hands for her supper.
Things that lived in the Wasteland had few emotions—they felt only sorrow, anger, and fear, and even though an animalistic urge to survive forced them to live, their only wish was to meet Death as quickly as possible. But not the Matron—the Matron held inside of her the barest spark of hope; she was the only child of the Wasteland to ever enjoy the taste of her food, to ever feel happy when the clouds of sulphur parted and a ray of sunshine hit her face. For the Matron had a purpose, a drive that no other creature in the Wasteland had—her spark of hope cleared her mind, allowed her to realize the truth about the prison she called home. She knew that the only way to free herself from that prison was to travel beyond the mountains—and so she decided to try.
Hope was the only thing kept the Matron’s sorrow from engulfing her—for she had been heading towards the mountains since the day she first crawled out of the Wasteland’s muck, and she had never even come close. Any one of the twisted things she impaled on her fingers would have collapsed from exhaustion, from despair, long ago—and yet the Matron kept walking. She knew that there had to be an end to the Wasteland, for where else could the beautiful things have gone?
Finally, one day, the Matron found herself at the base of a great mound of stone that towered high above the sulphur clouds—she knew it was a mountain, and yet for a moment, became confused as to the strange obstacle in her path. Then she looked behind her and saw the Wasteland spread wide into the distance, and she remembered where she was and felt her heart swell with sudden happiness. She clambered over rubble until she found a pathway, a thin, dark passage through the mountain that, unbeknownst to the Matron, led all the way through to the other side. For weeks she walked through the passage, her skin so unused to the rough touch of stone that she quickly became bruised and bloody—she lived off the insects that crawled through the mountain with her. Her eyes, accustomed to the twilight of the cloud-covered Wasteland, could easily see in the pitch darkness—as she neared the other side of the mountain, and the narrow pathway widened into gaping caverns, she began to test her sight by climbing the stalactites and snatching bats from the stone ceilings.
On the third day of the third week, she emerged, bloodied but well-fed, on the other side of the mountain, the Wasteland left far behind her. The Matron cringed and cowered as the sun, hidden from her for so long, beat down on her, glaring as if displeased at the sight of her. It pained her pale skin, and she felt it grow red and peel almost instantly. Her eyes stung as if she had accidentally stabbed them with her own claw-like fingers, and she wept for hours, lamenting that she couldn’t properly see this world of beautiful things she had stumbled upon.
When she could finally open her eyes, the Matron found that she was, indeed, in a world of beautiful things. A great green forest, lush and healthy, was spread across the valley below, and she could see smoke rising from the chimneys of a dozen little houses erected at its centre. Meadows full of flowers bordered the forest, and attempted to climb the mountains—the Matron felt grass beneath her feet, and, cautiously, she poked one of her fingertips through the stalk of a pure white flower. Raising it to her face, the Matron gazed at the pretty little plant for a moment before popping it into her mouth. It took only a single chew for her to realize that beautiful things weren’t meant to be eaten.
The sight of this perfect world banished all anger, all fear, all sorrow from the Matron’s heart, even as she spat the chewed-up flower into the grass. Suddenly coursing with joy and excitement, she bounded down the mountainside, into the thick of the meadow, where the aroma of the plants overwhelmed her, and she collapsed, drinking in their scent. So different this was from the Wasteland, where the air was perfumed with sulphur, where the tongue of every creature was forever stained with the grit of mud, the tang of blood. There, beauty could only be found in the rare rays of sunlight that pierced the clouds. Here, it was everywhere. The Matron knew that, for as long as she might live, she would never return to the Wasteland.
Suddenly, she felt something burning in the pit of her stomach, and she began to retch violently, until something slimy and black slid through her throat and out of her mouth into the grass. It looked for all the world like a clot of shadow—it was the taint of the Wasteland, and the Matron had finally beaten it. The clot burned through the green, leaving a black ring of smoke and dead grass around it—the Matron watched with horror as a dark sick, stemming from the clot, began to spread through the meadow, killing everything it touched. Birds, mice, small creatures that had been hidden by the grass shrieked, raising a cacophony that pained the poor Matron’s ears—she covered them, weeping as she saw the corpses of the animals the taint had killed amongst the rotting blades of grass. Without thinking, she snatched up the clot—the taint stopped spreading, to the Matron’s relief, but the clot burned her hand, and, letting loose a terrible howl, the poor creature threw it back into the grass and fled into the forest, sobbing for the damage she had done to the wondrous valley.
She ran until her legs gave out beneath her, and she collapsed, curled up into a ball, the underbrush sheltering her from unwanted sight. Filthy, sore, and wounded, the Matron wished that she had been born a beautiful thing, so that she might not be rejected by this world beyond. She inspected the hand that had been burnt by the clot—a black hole gaped in the centre of her palm, weeping pus and surrounded by raw, bloody flesh. It throbbed relentlessly, and she wondered how she had ever survived with that thing inside of her.
That night, the Matron slept in the world of beautiful things for the first time. When she awoke, it was only to find that, in the terror of the previous day, she had failed to notice that her chosen bed was just on the outskirts of the cluster of houses she had seen upon leaving the mountain. She saw the humans walking about their village, heard their chatter, and envied them, for they were the most beautiful creatures she had ever seen. The Matron slowly sat up and found herself to be weak with hunger—for once, there was nothing but dirt on her fingers, and she glanced about in dismay, until she spied a fat worm poking its head out from the soil. She snatched at it and gobbled it up in an instant, and began to dig about for more—eight worms did she eat in all, and that was enough to sustain her for the time being.
But her hunger brought with it unfortunate consequences—for a child, only five years old, had spied her, and was waddling away from his preoccupied mother, curiosity eclipsing any apprehension. The little boy pulled back the underbrush that concealed the Matron, and gazed at the raw, twisted creature with his head cocked to one side. “What is it?” he babbled to himself—the Matron, of course, having not encountered the concept of language before, did not understand him. But she saw the innocence in his eyes, the pure jollity on his face, and was seized by an emotion most would call love. All it took was a moment, and the Matron’s maternal heart swelled with love and wonder for the child—she reached forward to touch him, but when he saw her claws and the clot’s wicked wound, he grew frightened and tried to run away.
Yet the Matron was loath to let him go—for love is an intoxicating thing at the best of times, and for a child of the Wasteland, it is a singular and incredible emotion to feel after having been plagued so long by shadow. So she snatched at him, her fingers curling around his chubby little arm, and before he could call for his mother, she was shooting through the underbrush with the boy tucked under her arm, the terrified screams of a woman who has just noticed the absence of her child echoing in her ears.
They were deep in the woods before the Matron stopped, and set down the child, who was sobbing relentlessly, his little hands curled into fists which he had been using to pummel the Matron’s tender, sun-torn skin. “Mama!” he screamed, “Mama! Help me, Mama!”
The Matron, irritated by the noise and confused by those strange sounds called words, gave him a firm shove. He toppled over and stared at her, suddenly silent and equally confused. He sniffed and wiped the snot from his nose on the back of his hand. The Matron wasn’t sure what to do with him, but recalled what she had seen some of the humans do to each other in the cluster of homes. She gathered the boy in her arms and held him tight against her chest. He wriggled a little in protest, and she dropped him, not wanting to cause any discomfort to the child. They gazed at each other for a moment, boy and beast, until the boy, gripped for a moment by that mad humour that finds all folk in such situations, broke into a broad grin.
After a moment, the Matron’s mouth twitched into a smile of her own—the first ever worn by a child of the Wasteland. She liked it very much.
“My name is Simon,” he told her, pointing to his chest. She didn’t understand him, but, like all mothers who cannot understand their children, she listened politely. “What are you?” Simon asked her. She didn’t answer, of course.
“Monsters must not understand words,” he muttered to himself, and stood up. The Matron, fearing he would try to run again, scrabbled at him until she got a grip on both his arms, her eyes wide and fearful. Simon struggled, for, indeed, though he was happy to have found a creature all his own, he wanted to go home and see his mother.
The Matron’s grip tightened, and, desperately, she hugged him to her chest again, his face pressed nearly flat against her ruined skin. His own chest was being compressed awfully by the Matron’s strong arms, and he gasped for air—she hugged him even tighter, her claws raking his flesh. She didn’t want him to leave her, and she didn’t want him to make those strange sounds—she wanted to keep a silent little boy all her own, she wanted to love him and feed him and have him curl up at her side each night. She never wanted to let the child go.
Finally, Simon stopped his struggling, his foul formation of words. Satisfied, the Matron loosened her grip—but this time, the boy didn’t sit up when she dropped him. He fell limply to the ground and stayed there, his face purple, his arms and neck bleeding where she had cut him. Confused, the Matron prodded him. Her finger pierced the flesh of his arm once more and she withdrew it quickly. How had she not noticed how fragile his skin was? Carefully, she lifted him and stood him up—his head lolled and he collapsed like a bag of bones the moment she released him. She touched his cheek gently, and watched, transfixed, as blood from her fingertips left their stain on his face. The Matron gazed at him, his half-open eyes and his gaping mouth—she smiled tentatively at him, hoping to see him mirror her as she had first mirrored him. But Simon didn’t move.
As the realization hit her, the Matron felt as if her heart had been torn in two—she had only wanted to love the child! She had only wanted to join this world of beautiful things, to become like the happy humans she had seen in their cluster of houses—but her clot had destroyed the meadow, and her fervour had killed little Simon. She was made for the Wasteland—she was not born for beautiful things.
Horrified, the Matron ran. She ran far away from the child’s corpse, from the cluster of human homes, from the lush forest—she ran through the dead, blackened meadow that her taint had destroyed, she ran up the mountain face until she found herself once more in the narrow passage that had taken her from Wasteland to paradise. She crawled through it, hiding herself away in a damp nest of stones. Her bloodstained fingers pierced through the meat of several crawling insects, but when she raised her hand to eat them, she tasted Simon’s blood and spat them back out.
And there, in her nest of stones, her heart heavy with sorrow of her own making, did the Matron finally die.
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