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In the beginning, he was stronger.
It didn’t understand humans. It knew enough about them to know how to torment them, and it knew a lot about their fears. It knew how fear tasted, and how it spread, and the thousands of different ways it could creep up and consume a person. All of this it regarded itself as somewhat of an expert in, but knowing one specific thing intimately did not a whole picture make. It found that out too late.
Anything with sentience is capable of making a mistake, and its biggest mistake was regarding one Michael Shelley. A useless thing, even for his species; it had been aware of Michael since he had been a boy, though back then it had been more interested in Michael’s friend. It did not remember the name of Michael’s friend now, as it had forgotten his name along with the names of all its other victims – such things were not important, and these inferior creatures did not deserve names. Names were useless, a human folly, and it resented the fact that it remembered Michael’s name every day. It did not remember Michael’s name when they met again, but Michael’s fear tasted the same, and in the beginning it was delightful. The boy was beyond terrified, and at first it thought that he was simply too stupid to know when to stop. Humans acted oddly when they were terrified: some of them cowered, some of them fled, and some of them forged ahead. Michael had forged ahead, blindly, it thought, searching for a way out, or an explanation, which for humans were often one and the same. It had known that he would not find one, so it was content to wait, and to watch, and to torment. Only too late did it realise just what it was, that thing Michael clutched in his hands. In that moment it realised the depth of its mistake, and for a long time after that, it was nothing but howling rage.
For that reason, Michael was the stronger of them at first. Embarrassing, really, though it resented the fact it could even feel such a thing. Humans were terrible fools, but they were also brutally adaptable. Time after time, it had had to rethink its plans, because humans could get used to just about anything. Therefore, despite his terror, and despite his horror, Michael quickly worked out what had happened and set about trying to make it right. It knew that there was no going back from this – it could feel it in the very core of its being. But Michael was not aware of that fact, and blessed with human arrogance, he tried anyway. When he failed to come up with any idea regarding reversing the whole thing, he set about, rather resolutely, trying to kill them.
It would have been lying if it claimed to not wonder, even if only briefly, what would happen if Michael succeeded. If it would really be… such a bad thing.
While at first the horror of feeding was something they both shared, Michael eventually used it to his advantage in classic human fashion. It had never had a mouth before; it had never had a physical form. Feeding had been a metaphorical thing. Now, with claws and teeth as it had, and that damned Michael with his associations and expectations, it took on a very literal meaning. It couldn’t say that it was overly bothered by the mess; by the blood and the gore and the cracking bone. What it hated most of all was the fact that it was even necessary. That it even could. The mutilation of a body was not something that bothered it, but the feel of warm, slick flesh sliding down its throat, heavy in its stomach… that was too much. That was too much entirely. The only satisfaction that it got, aside from the expected quieting of its need to feed, was the fact that Michael was as disgusted as it was.
Your fault, it would remind him. Your fault. Your fault.
But where were the lines? It wanted to blame Michael. It wanted to hate Michael. It did blame Michael. It did hate Michael. But could it really place all of this on one single human’s shoulders? Hadn’t it been guilty of underestimating – the thing which no sentient, reasonably intelligent being should catch itself doing? What was this feeling, now? Shame, it supposed. What a base feeling; a human feeling. Shame. Yet it could not find fault with its logic.
For some time, they edged around one another as though it was even remotely possible that the other could be avoided. It did not understand how this worked, but it managed it all the same; later, when observing humans with this new insight, it realised that this was a common reaction to situations that made humans uncomfortable. Still it could not see the point in doing so, but it did it all the same; it tried to ignore Michael, and he it, and it would go well until the moment that their opinions clashed. It did not want to think of itself as having an opinion, because it simply was, but now that it was forced to be in such a solid, tangible way, it found itself forced to interact with the world on a much more minute and degrading level. It discovered it had preferences, and likes, and wants. It also discovered that some of these were in opposition to Michael’s preferences, and likes, and wants. It hated this, but it could not help it; nor could it help the fact that it felt rage and grief and frustration when it lost out.
Because, of course, Michael was the stronger of the two of them then.
It noticed immediately, what Michael was trying to do. It was impossible to be subtle about it, because Michael’s refusal to feed went in violation of everything it was. It could not function without that fear; without the very thing that it existed for. Like a machine with only one single purpose, it was lost. It had never occurred to it to stop what it was doing, because why would it think of such a thing? It had been achieving its only goal, it had been acting in its nature, and there was no need to question it. It was instinctive. It had never even considered that it could stop, but Michael had worked it out. Michael, with his arrogance and his rage and his stubbornness, and all the other disgusting human traits he had polluted it with, corrupted it with, so that it had become a grotesque parody of itself, gnawing at its jagged nails and pacing itself, outside itself and within itself, both itself and not itself, a thought and a fear and a place and a concept become a disgusting, physical thing. Its horror was complete, its confusion like an exposed nerve; it shied away from itself, it tried to forget, and yet it still knew. It still knew, because the hunger was more than itself, more, even than Michael. It was, it was their reason for being, and the longer Michael resisted the more it grew. It was maddening, it was excruciating, but still Michael would not budge. He refused to engage. He refused to give in to what it had once seen as so much more than this single, naïve little human. Michael endured with stoicism and a deep sense of calm that terrified it more than anything else. In this calm was perfect peace. Michael would sooner die than give in to this nature, and there was nothing it could do about it.
Michael was human. Michael did not have to feed in this way; he did not have to feed at all, in any way, now that they have become one and the same. Michael did not feel the agony, he did not feel the cravings, he did not feel the maddening emptiness. For him it was all too simple. For it, it was torture.
You deserve this, Michael thought, and it knew it was directed at it. Michael, human though he was, could feel the residue of the pain; the longer this went on, the more it hurt. Still, he remained stubborn. You deserve this, for everything you’ve done. How do you like it? How do you like suffering in here? This is what you would have done to so many. This is what you get.
And, despite itself, it would reply. It would engage. It had no choice. It was he, he was it. Where the lines crossed, so did their desires. If Michael wanted a response, it was too confused to resist. Tell me, it replied, do you blame the lion for killing the antelope? Do you blame the snake for injecting its venom? Do you blame the shark for scenting blood, and going after the source? No? Then why do you blame me? I am only acting within my nature.
Me and I and my – words that curdled on the tongue that was now its, words that tasted and smelled and felt viscous, rotting, thick, cloying. But to be Michael was to speak; was to know; was to be forced to put things into words. How it hated words. How it loathed them. Useless things, so caught up in meaning. What humans called nuance was nothing. There was nothing too nuanced it could not be put into thought or into word or into feeling. It had once existed beyond that, and now it was here. Trapped; trapped forever, and now starved like an animal in a cage.
Do you intend to kill me? it asked. Do you think it will work? Michael did not reply, and that confused it further. Did Michael know what he wanted? Was that within the realms of humans, who had so many wants to choose from? It understood something of that; it could smell such a thing, when they would hesitate on its threshold, wanting to run and to continue in equal amounts. It now considered the fact that this indecision and confusion could apply to other things; perhaps everything. It thought that was no way to live, and then it remembered, yet again, that that was now its fate.
Michael’s own agony continued to grow, and yet he did not back down. It explained, time and time again, that they could not be killed, that this was a useless endeavour – but Michael would not listen. One day, it said, I will bleed into you as much as you have bled into me. And then you will feed. Michael clenched their jaw, and it recoiled at the grinding of teeth on teeth; at the feel of them cutting through gum and cheek, and the drip of blood on its skin.
It starved so terribly that it could not think; could not be. Michael wandered aimlessly, still clinging to the hope that he might find some way to correct this, and it was too weak even to taunt him. Occasionally it would regain some form of sentient control, but never for long. It did not want to be there. It did not want to be. It had thought itself beyond horror, beyond terror – it was the horror, the terror, the thing that people feared. It was not supposed to feel this way itself, and in its own home, its own self. Yet this was how it existed now, trapped and helpless and utterly confused, reeling from a shock that it felt should have long passed, wondering if it would ever regain its own calibration.
Michael left the hallways; left themselves, left it; sometimes Michael left. The outside world was not a mystery to it, because it had been out there itself, albeit not quite the same way. Still, Michael would do strange things that it had never done before. He would walk in parks and sit on benches. He would sit in coffee shops, even if he took nothing. He would wander, and ride buses, and sometimes it knew that he was thinking about returning to the Institute, but he never did. Instead he seemed to take some advantage of his new properties, and he explored cities in distant lands, and wandered through buildings he had no business being in, and sometimes appeared so nosy that it wondered just how this had happened, when the Eye had such a firm grip on the boy. Weak as he was, Michael seemed somehow bolstered by the fact that his death was impossible, and he walked and wandered and watched until it could barely stand it. It tried to force itself outwards, tried to take up more space in what they were, but it was still impossible. The slightest moment of physicality, the moment where it felt itself feeling itself – it was too much. It could not. It was as though ground glass covered its skin, which was an unpleasant and painful feeling, made all the more unpleasant and all the more painful by the fact that it was not supposed to know what that felt like.
A rainy afternoon in a park, and a small child caught sight of their reflection. Michael was sitting on a bench, staring at the water of a nearby lake, half-watching the ducks. The rain was spitting down, but neither Michael nor it were overly bothered. Such things had never been of note for it, and now for Michael it seemed inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Michael was so lost in thoughts that it had no interest observing that he did not notice the mother and child at first; it noticed, and watched, and waited. It did not know what was to happen, but it watched all the same. Perhaps it was some kind of intuition – wasn’t that what the humans called it? The woman walked with a pram, and her small child walked slightly ahead, toddling clumsily, jumping in the puddles with both feet. The child was wearing a purple raincoat with the hood pulled up, and the hood had ears on it, rounded like a mouse. The boots were bright red. The child went from puddle to puddle, jumping and splashing, while the mother looked indulgently on. She called out to mind the nice man on the bench. The child went to the far side of the large puddle, crouched to jump, and then looked full into the water’s reflective surface and screamed. The child screamed so loudly and so terribly that the mother’s face went slack and pale, and she abandoned the empty pram, hurrying forward to see what the matter was. She could see nothing, of course, but it knew; it could feel the child’s fear. Even so small, with so little known about the world, the child knew that what it saw in the puddle was wrong. It knew that grown ups should not be so tall, or so thin, or made of so many terrible angles. The child knew that hair should not spiral and curl and hover around a head, and the child knew that hands were not supposed to be so long or sharp or big. The child knew all of these things, and could not understand why they existed, and so the child screamed and screamed and screamed; the child screamed so hard that the sound became raspy, and the face became slightly blue. The mother frantically tried to calm the child, but to no avail; she looked helplessly around, not registering anything strange about Michael on the bench, not bothering to look at the puddle. Eventually she bundled her child into the pram and hurried away at a near run.
You have marked your first one, it crooned. How does it feel? Michael did not satisfy it with a response, but it could feel that he – that it – that they – that this form of theirs – was crying.
It hoped that it would make some of its own progress after that, but Michael still remained stubborn and with no real food, it remained weak. Not long after the incident in the park, Michael visited his revenge, even if it was unplanned and unintentional; he could not have known such a thing was possible, because it had not known it was possible. It so happened that it got lost in itself.
It was weak, and it was hungry, and it was alien to itself. All of these were reasons, but they did not provide much comfort. It should have been impossible to get lost in itself, because it was itself. To get lost implied a separation from this fact. This, more than anything, disturbed it. It had become physical; it had become something, but it had dealt with that under the assumption that this something was not separate from its everything. So when it got lost in itself, as though it was just another intruder, another idiotic human who had heeded the call to come in, doomed to wander aimlessly until it decided the time was up, it was more than it could take. A cruelty, an atrocity, a horror – all of these words and more ricocheted around a head it did not want and made panic claw up a throat it should not have. Their thoughts collided again, both of them wanting, in their own right, a place that was familiar; when it stumbled out of itself, purely by chance, it found itself in Michael’s old flat. This, now, was how its wants – curse its wants! – had translated; its idea of itself crashing against Michael’s idea of safety and familiarity, and here they were, in a dusty old flat still shut up waiting for a person who was never coming back.
I am back! Michael had said then, and it had not been able to resist responding, arguing, acting outside itself. It was too much, the horror of it all, and it was hysterical. This was not something it had ever been before. This was not something it should have been capable of being. You are not back! it screamed, and finally its voice cracked, and it was no longer Michael’s voice but something else, something that made Michael flinch away. In that moment it was almost itself again; it lashed out, fingers digging into the wall, and ripped five great, deep gashes in the plaster. The sensation was satisfying and nauseating all at once. You are not back! You are not you! I am not I! I do not want to be an I!
Michael had seemed shocked then. He remained shocked for some time. I did not know you would care, he said, and it could not respond.
Gradually Michael faded. He did not vanish. He could not vanish. He fused; they fused; they became one and the other, the other and one. Like ink vanishing into water, they equalised, they recalibrated. It did not like this, and it did not feel correct, and it did not feel right. But if it had to feel, and it had to think, and it had to be, it was, it supposed, better to be this way than how it had been before. At least it might stand a chance now – at least it might be able to act.
Sometimes it thought of itself as Michael. Every time, it was as though the thought began at the top of its head and trickled through it like acid. It could not help itself; not with that, nor with anything else.
Still, it could not feed. Michael was too stubborn; it was the only place where his strength returned. It wondered if his intentions had changed; if they had turned from disgust and refusal and were now more akin to habit or perhaps a last grasp of control. It was impossible to tell. Still it was weak, far too weak, weaker than it had ever been, and still Michael revelled in it, enjoyed it. This was another all too sharp edge it wished it could not feel. It did not like being punished. It did not like being tormented. That was not how things were supposed to work.
If there was one single advantage to its human appearance, it was that it was easy to lure humans closer. Michael’s body was tall but not broad; his curls and his rounded face seemed to inspire trust. Despite his height people did not seem threatened by him, and if he sat still for long enough, away from any reflective surfaces or transparent barriers where somebody might catch a glimpse of his true state, people would usually strike up a conversation. In this way it learned a little more about humans, about what they found sympathetic rather than terrifying; it learned that there was no end to the depth of a human’s expectations, and therefore no end to the ways in which these expectations could be violated and new horrors unleashed. It was quite the learning experience, proving that even the nastiest of situations could have their advantages, though it was a small piece of compensation. The only other advantage such a thing brought was that it knew that Michael loathed this pretence; loathed interacting with something that should have been a comfort, but was now just a harsh underlining of how far he had fallen. Michael, of course, also knew that it had no intention of remaining pleasant; he must have worked out what it was doing far before it finally succeeded, but by that point they had fused too closely, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.
Perhaps, at around that time, Michael had finally realised that he wanted it.
Now that the two of them were so closely bound, Michael’s suffering increased with its own. The hunger affected them both equally, and it was an ungodly torment for a human mind. It should know – it was not free of these new sensations either. Now Michael’s focus became more insular, and it realised, with some amusement, that it was no longer the target. Do you mean to do penance by this? it taunted, but Michael absolutely refused to engage in discussion. It thought he was humiliated, and while it disliked the fact it could now identify human emotions so easily, it enjoyed thinking of this one. Humiliation, to its understanding, meant that a human knew their endeavour was useless.
The fact was, that with a human body it was able to make human friends, and humans – especially lonely humans, humans being tormented by things that could not be real and therefore were not being believed – were eager for friendship. If that friend then believed them, and supported them, well. Even better. And if the thing that they feared so much happened to be a simple yellow door? How would they know that it was also the very man sitting next to them? In the end it all came together rather delightfully. No, it would never be compensation – but it was better than nothing at all.
Michael’s stubbornness was still an issue, but one it worried about less and less. Eventually he would cave; such a thing was inevitable. And there was more than one way to feed, even if some ways were better than others. The torment was enough to take the edge off; the endless wandering, the terror. It was enough to get by on, and with that much, it could be patient. It could bide its time, it could wait, it could drink in what it could. It could go out into the real world and bask in the deception. There was always something new to discover, and with every advantage it found, Michael lost a little more of his determination. The boy was stupid, but not an idiot – he knew a lost cause when he saw one. With this realisation his own self-hatred grew, his own frustration and hurt; it was too much for him to keep hold of, too exhausting. Why fight the inevitable, when there are so many other things that hurt? Why add to your own suffering? And why, it asked, punish yourself, when there is another to blame?
It did not believe that, of course. It thought Michael was just as much to blame as the Archivist – perhaps even more so. The Archivist was closer to it, acting in its nature, as all monsters would. Michael was the one who had allowed himself to be fooled, and that was simply embarrassing. But it had no problem lying to him, if bit by bit, whisper by whisper, it could stoke Michael’s despair into hatred, and direct him to something alien to him. Michael was not a bloodthirsty man; he was not prone to revenge. It was not practical for the kind of life they now shared. The more Michael hated, the easier he was to mould; the more Michael hated, the less he cared about strangers. There was no room for others, in a heart so full of rage.
So it was patient. It waited. A punishment was still a punishment, humiliating and juvenile and human, but it had learned some tricks of its own. It had learned spite, and it had learned stubbornness. It had learned what it was to be human, but Michael had not yet learned what it was to be a monster. One adjustment, it was sure, was harder than the other. In this way, it knew, it would one day be the stronger.
Until then, it was all just a matter of patience.