Monsters in Melinsk

The only portion of a story that I could salvage :(

A soft of continuation of Midnight Train to Melinsk. It's the same narrator, but I couldn't finish the story for them, just this portion. I'm only putting it out here because it felt decent enough in isolation. 

Transcript

Even in the shadows, I could make out that the thing was a good seven feet tall. It shambled about on its limbs as though every move of its muscles made it unsteady, the energy it could provide to its body not nearly enough to combat the ever present lure of gravity. Its mandibles flayed up and about as though only loosely attached to the jaws beneath, indiscriminately lashing out against wooden and stone columns alike. The former it could crush fairly easily, but the second? Even from a full block away I could hear the thing’s whimpers, as though it were a toddler who couldn’t help but put its hand out to touch a burning stone. Although the thing was clearly an engine of destruction, I… I felt sad for it. If there was a consciousness embedded in that body, it was trapped in throes of suffering the likes of which I might not have felt in my entire life, save for perhaps that time I caught cholera in the Easterlings’ camp. My troubles had always been relatively ephemeral. Sure, I’d been impoverished a couple of times, had my trouble getting enough food to fill my belly, but that pain was over and done with in a day or two. This thing? It’s very physical structure was an affront to its dignity, it’s wanderings and destructive tendencies only the most rational response to being construed into so terrible a body.


Yes, I felt sorrow for the monster. But to assuage your fears, I knew that sorrow only had one outlet, one solution: the thing’s death. As we cautiously approached each other from down the street, I could make out more and more of the thing’s malformed body. It seemed as though the entire thing were covered in scales, but these scales shone with such a light that I’d never known any reptilian beast’s to do. It was rather like the flashy geodes the Easterling drivers craved so much, a sort of rock. But even though it was tougher than flesh, and certainly weighed on the thing’s muscles and bones with more force than could be comfortable, it only served as armor against the ignorant. If its skin was truly crystalline, it would be easy to break it. I simply had to find the right angle, jam my bayonet down, and the entire lattice structure should have collapsed with a snap. After all, that was what the Easterlings had done with their geodes whenever they wanted to reward one of their underlings. They looked for the lines, then broke along the lines, shattering a large block of stone into dozens of tiny, brittle shards that could be crushed in turn.

That was my window of opportunity. It was nothing more than providence sent straight to me from the heavens. I had eyes. That had pretty much been my only boon in the days before, besides my sometimes faster than average brain. And here I was, the vagaries of my future fortune and ushering back into the society of the living hinging on the one advantage I had in life.

Some sputtery, bubbly feeling rose in my gut and raced through every inch of my body like an electrical shock. It took me a wile to recognize it. Happiness. Optimism. The knowledge that things were okay, and could get better, and in fact would get better through my own personal effort. I focused my vision on the thing, letting the odd and mundane details of the neighborhood fade into nothing more than background static. Sure enough, there was the lattice. The pale light from the street lamps was forced to speed up and slow down through the beast’s flesh along those lines, and from just watching the point at which the light careened off itself as the thing shambled its way towards me, I could perfectly see the markings. 

Granted, the lattice was almost perpendicular to the beast’s skin, but not quite. So, even had my eyes not been blessed by the angels of Stanislav, I probably still could have guessed correctly. My mark in sight, my muscles ginned up with optimism, I was ready to charge in, to finally save some day for someone instead of letting the tides of time wash over and drown me. 

But that old cynicism hadn’t left me. The thing was, what? A meter and a half across? It must have weighed a good eight times what I did. One lash of its claws and I would be dead, there was no getting around that. I could have donned the Easterling’s armor itself and still be crushed by the sheer weight of those talons. 

I steeled myself against the nervous jitters running through my skin. I had to convince myself that this was like taking a chicken’s life; a simple act of survival, nothing more. I had to put the glory I wanted to gain out of my mind. There was no hope for calm in that. It was simply I, struggling against the eternal forces of the universe which conspired to toss myself and every other human into the mud. It was the same conflict, with one exception: I was going to win. 
I kept my eyes on the lattice as my feet pounded forward, hurtling me straight towards the beasts’ thrashing mandibles. I skittered from side to side as the beast scrambled in vain to get a feel of my scent or sight. All it heard was the clattering of boots on the cobblestones, and saw nothing more than a gray and brown blur, barely contrasted against the shadows of night.
But I, a natural creature of this world, saw and heard all. I was not the one to raise my throat to the heaves to shout in confusion. No, I was the one who tossed himself straight at thing’s back, my legs just barely dodging the clatter of the beast’s tearing pincers, only to watch as the shining steel of my bayonet came crashing down no more than a millimeter away from its intended target. 

A sharp snap resonated throughout the air as bits and pieces of the silicate’s shell peppered my skin. It was just enough to spark a fracture in the thing’s skin, but not enough to outright murder it. My heart pumped with a ferocity it only had when I denied my hands death. Now, here they were trembling the same as I failed to be the reaper. The death my past self had tried to win was coming. I saw the purple banners. Purple banners always.

The thing whimpered as a strange, viscous liquid bubbled out of the crack in its skin. I expected the monster’s mandibles to come crashing down on me, to break my feeble little spine in one single snap, but, needless to say since I’m still here to recount this, it didn’t. Instead, it merely heaved with all its miniature legs to shake its body and knock me off. I let it, I’m not sure why. Maybe I was just afraid of the blue liquid effusely pouring from its wound, maybe I was just astounded by the fact that I, a man who last week planned to be dead, had done something so miraculous and, well, demented. I landed on the pavement with a thud, and the creature ran shrieking away into the night, presumably to try and nurse itself back to health. It wouldn’t succeed, and spend the rest of its short numbered days whimpering away as its life force poured out of it.

And I had done that. I could have pursued the creature to seal its doom, drag back one of its mandibles to the local constable for the reward, but I didn’t. Again, it must have been out of shock. I never really thought I had it in me, after, well, after I spared that guy’s life all those years ago. I thought destruction had escaped me, that I would forever be a pawn crushed in its great game because I was too afraid to strike back and carve out a place for myself, to dare and shift something, anything in this rancid world. 

So I had struck back. And this was my strike. But was it good? Like really, actually good? I didn’t know. That’s what shocked me. The entire time I’d walked up to the beast I’d been crafting justifications for myself as to why the beast needed to die. It was malformed, I said, in so much pain that its very existence was a crime. And yet I just imposed great pain on the thing to fight its pain. Fought fire with fire. Could I really judge if that was worth it? I had not crept into the thing’s mind, seen the machinations of joy and fatigue that happened in there. For all I knew, the thing enjoyed its odd life. There are plenty of content cripples, would I simply look at them and say that because they were missing a leg that they deserved death? It… it felt so wrong.
Even still, I could see eyes peering at me from behind the boarded up windows. They were all widened with surprise, but also a little joy. Nobody called out to me, probably in fear of drawing the thing’s attention back to their neighborhood, but I could tell that they were all silently praising me. Even if the thing had been happy with its life, it used its existence as a way to punish others. That much was clear. And now, with it dying and soon to be dead, all of the residents of this area would have safer, happier lives. Not to mention that I would be rich. Sure, the reward would be lower than that given on the poster since I could only provide the blue viscous liquid as evidence of my triumph, but even still… I was a monster hunter. And it felt okay. That was probably the most surprising thing. Dimitri was right. Of course he had been right. My madness was only half imposed by the outside world; much of it had been put on me by myself. And with this action, with this course of actions I hoped to be taking, not only would I be ridding the world of much of its pain, but I would ridding the pain from myself. 
I couldn’t lay there in smug enlightenment too long, of course, as the blue liquid began to get through my clothes and sting. It wasn’t the most acidic thing I’d ever felt, that of course being that horrid sludge they serve on Melinskian trains, but it was going to be enough to give me a rash in the morning.

I asked one of the watching pairs of eyes where I could find a bathhouse, or anywhere at all where I could lay my head for the remainder of the night. Though the house she lived in was sorely in need of care, the lady who responded was anything but rude, provided all I asked, and even gave me a couple coins and assurances that she’d vouch for my conquest in the morning. I couldn’t help but let the smile that was forming in the corner of my mouth spread into a full blown grin.

The air was cool, my back was hurting, I found a bed and a hot meal, and my hopes had started to be restored. I had been welcomed to Melinsk.