Trigger Warning:
This chapter contains themes of violence and sexual trauma that may be upsetting for some readers. Discretion is strongly advised.
Chapter 14
The House Of Strays
A low hanging tree branch showering in mid-day sunlight along with the rest of the green growth in this spring time meadow is hovering tranquilly at rest. The yellows of minuscule flowers that grow in the grass make the greens look lighter. The vibrancy of all the colors creates a blissful haze. The low hanging branch is swatted by a young child's hand as they hurry through the area. Moving the branch and other plants out of their path. Their breathing is heavy, pausing for swallows to keep their throat from drying out. It is a young boy and he keeps moving forward seemingly in search of a new route to take while passing up dead ends. The tweed overalls he wears come half way up his shins. His black leather shoes are small, close to the size of a six year old's. Cutting through a puddle, the child ignores it to continue running for his life. With his mouth agape and his cheeks and brow under his light brown hair cooking pink as a dog's paw it is evident this endeavor has been going on for quite some time. The outright imperativeness of his nerve-racking disposition paints the implication of a dire situation.
He comes to a stop, pushing down the body of loose shrubbery. There he sees before looking up he has unveiled a pair of gigantic, leather, cobbled shoes. He lifts his head to see that in those shoes is the creature.
It is standing upright dressed in merlot red wool clothes. The child is diminished meager in the creatures mountainous form. The black of the shadow's triangle under its eyes. A dark place in the meadow hidden away from the sun. Under dimness. Glooming is its semi-transparent skin in a grey deceased shade. Those prominent blue veins of its cardiovascular system scarcely hide. Black somber hair, long with the matte of a wolf's, bloodless marshy yellow eyes and ivory teeth that showed of a brighter state in contrast behind thin black lips. There is no running now, they are done for.
"I found you!" with his tiny voice the boy yells. With his tiny voice the boy laughs. So tremendous a laugh that it is filled with all the might in his tiny stomach. Pushed to its absolute limit only to produce a mighty-tiny laugh. Playfully he accosts the creature whom then falls back into the shrubbery as it is clearly rendered powerless to the young boy's attack. The boy tugs at the creature's shirt, throttles it's wrists, restrains it from getting up. Surrendering to every manipulation the boy directs it to move for he was just too powerful. Laughing all the while in the conquering of the creature. Doomed, there was no way they could win against the likes of the mighty-tiny boy.
Sitting in a rocking chair, now closer to dusk, the creature grips a book with the boy asleep in their lap. Tuckered out from an afternoon of terrorizing the creature in the meadows. Behind the rocking chair is a clothesline where a petite woman in a white dress wrapped in a blue apron who has burnished red hair hangs clothes to dry.
In the evening the creature sits at a dinner table still gripping the same book. A window rests at its back as it sits on a bench built into the wall. Docile, it eats slowly and with refined social behavior, unlike the two children at the table. He sits across from the woman who is feeding a young girl who looks to be four. In a Scottish accent the boy asks the woman with a snarl on his nose but without any peculiarities of anger, "Will you Feed me as well?" without losing their place in the book the creature spears a potato on their plate and raises the fork to the boys mouth. With a mighty laugh the boy chomps the potato off the fork. The woman looks upon them indulging in the contemplation of her evident happiness.
Shortly after dinner has concluded; the tapping of a dog's nails on the wood boarded floors can be heard in high performance from the lounge room across from the dining room. The young boy riles up his giant leonberger dog.
The dog has a thick coat with a lion mane like fluff and their fur is a charcoal color around their face and mane with the rest of their body in a reddish-brown fur. The dog's beady bright yellow eyes follow the bouncy boy. As he trots so does his fur bounce delighting the four year old girl as professed in her giggling. The book the creature has been reading is closed now, sitting on the bench beside them. The red headed woman still sitting across from them talks to the creature with a zeal using their hands to animate their overzealous expression at times.
It is the spring of 1810 in the Southeast of Germany and the following morning as dawn's light cuts across the alder and pine forest canopy the creature sits outside near the front door. No book, just clasping their hands together while watching the sunrise. There is a thought there as they look on but it is not displayed as the creature appears dead when in stillness. A gloomy expressionless face forever adorns them. The metal clanks on the door latch as it opens. Red hair parted down the middle and loosely falling to her mid-back the woman of the house steps outside and takes a seat. Her skin is of a pale complexion and her chin comes to a point. She adjusts her arisaid dress lifting the green skirt off the ground and wrapping it around her legs and then covering up her shoulders with a red and white tartan. The two look at each other and she smiles with a high smile as she looks at the creature with her deep set eyes. The creature stares back with it's droopy downturned eyes and it says to her, "This morning has gifted me with my memory."
With a spring the woman sits upright in her chair, eagerly awaiting for them to continue.
Fire. Thunder. Destruction. The creature speaks of the night it was created in 1805. It opens it's eyes to blistering white flames that have charred the floors and walls black. Too powerful to be put out by the rain that falls in from a destroyed ceiling.
"I was born into a laboratory amidst a disaster." Shortly after waking it remembers the feeling of an uncontrollable rage run through their body. They remember the thunder's roar and the lightning's blinding flash scared them. This extreme anger was involuntary and felt like it was dictated by a force of nature. They explored beyond the laboratory to a high balcony. There they were confronted by people. People they would never recognize. People they relentlessly killed.
"I remember the lightning dispersing like the dance of two lovers coming to an end.".
The creature says in their deep course Scottish accent, "I remember for that is when I stopped being afraid.".
The creature stumbles through the burning castle and eventually make their way down stairs. Nearing the front entrance they stop to look at a large painting hanging in a room, "The painting is of a woman. There was a plaque on the bottom. It read -Victoria. The rest had been scorched black."
"If I was born of fire, in that castle, and she was the master of that castle. Than thus be the basis for my imaginative assumption that there is no other who can claim to be my giver of life. Till I can know more, Victoria is my mother.".
The creature walks out the front doors. They turn around to see the castle is fully lost in fire. The pants they were wearing had been burned off. They wander across the bridge, down a winding road to the arch entrance of the town Mill Valley. In the rain they cry out. "I plead for help for I felt remorse. The heart I sensed in my chest yearned in repentance. I grieved as I recalled then to what atrocities I had committed moments prior and I sorrowfully sought help. I didn't know what was happening to me. I had no control when I killed those people. I could hardly speak when as eager as I had been to understand. I felt as if I was born. A child's mind, naked, alone and scared.".
A crowd begins to grow. The town's people gawk and sneer with disgust. Some shudder. They group into a mob, screaming with intent to run the creature off all while toting mindless religious chants like immoral extremists. The creature overwhelmed, eludes the vile mob as it disappears in the forests tree-line outside of town.
"I never returned lest I cause another uproar amongst those people. I recall their fear. They were as alone and as afraid as me. As I recall it, they were not children however they're actions conveyed they were in their minds, children still. Aged by time in wrinkled shells with no merit of wisdom withheld."
The creature awakes the following day to a frost covered wilderness, "Fragile. The frost breaking in my step. Crumbling away at a touch. The grass, flowers, the leaves without control yielding in submission to a force of nature that froze them. I know now I share their burden to be an organism in life that must endure what nature dictates. I saw then I was delicate. Equating my pain to that of flowers suffering in winter. I perceive now it was then that I had only the one comparison to reflect my woe upon. Be it what may what twas true then thus holds true now. Taking it upon myself to make a nature in of myself of the same nature as the flower. What quiet peace the flower must timelessly be acclaiming in natures inescapable silent serenade. I wish not to be in the realm of red handed death. The maker of fear. I want a stillness. I wish to be the flower admiring the meadows. Lost are my wishes on the listening ears of nature, I am sure. I know now it is only a season away that I must helplessly watch a beautiful thing suffer as the flower freezes over again against it's will."
Over the course of the winter of 1805 into 1806 the creature traveled from the southwest of Germany to the Southeast living in the woods the entire way. One morning, late January, while the red haired woman was chopping wood near her wooden cabin she saw the eight foot naked creature walking through the forest. Frightened she takes her axe with her to confront it. Yelling, with her axe raised the creature cowers and she restrains herself to recognize this unfortunate creature abandoned in the snow.
While it feared from getting a rise out of her, she put down the axe and welcomed the creature to come with her. It was a slow process but she did everything she could to foster a calm atmosphere. Once she could get them inside she helped clean them and clothe them. Over the span of the next four years she taught it to speak and read. High in comprehension the creature elevated at both quickly. She was gentle, patient and understanding. Despite that the creature was able to communicate now they were having trouble recollecting who they were and where they had come from, forgetting so much of the traumatic killings at their hands and the town that ran them off. It was a year after their arrival that in a lesson of reading the creature heard the name of a character in a book of Hesiod's "Theogony".
"I like… this name. I choose to this… for-for-for to my name." The red haired woman nods in approval and says, "Prometheus? Very well, we have found you a name. A beautiful name for a beautiful person. Prometheus."
The red haired woman likes to sit with Prometheus after breakfast has concluded and see if there is more that they remember. When a dead end is met she continues to find out how far Prometheus's progress has come. She lingers with them after dinner as well. This is almost an unspoken tradition that holds up week after week to then continue over the years. On one occasion Prometheus asks her, "Catriona? How did you get here? How did you and your children come to be living in the forest?".
Usually enthusiastic to talk, Catriona pauses for a moment to look at her children who are in the other room. "I was a girl in Scotland when I was traveling with my family. I am not sure how they died but I awoke to find both my father and mother had passed. I wandered till I found the nearest village where a widow took me in. She showed me kindness. She said she gave me the love that was meant for the children she ne'er had. I came of age and a traveler came into the village and stole my heart. I married him soon after and traveled with him. We traveled for years together and I was without exhaust for his company thus be my many cups of joy. William was his name. He was Germanic so time came to return to his home. It was when we were passing through Germany that we discovered two abandoned children." She points to the children in the other room, "I named them both. William and Adelaide. William was two, Adelaide was under a year at least. William new the fondness of my heart as I lay eyes on abandoned children and saw the child of myself. I thought of all the futures that would be destroyed and I wanted to give my effort to care for them for I knew, that for the children, being abandoned will surely destroy their world. He would not bare to have me lament. Therefore we took them under our own. Soon we arrived in this our home and it was not long after that William fell ill. He passed peacefully in the night. Six months had passed since then when you arrived in the snow. Sickly, naked. You appeared hurt. The world had abandoned you. I could not simply disregard you so easily.".
In the years to pass Prometheus would recall glimpses of a memory and they would try to recollect the rest but it has been without success. Till now.
The red haired woman, Catriona, and the creature, Prometheus bask with the morning sun having climbed to suspend over the forest during their conversation in 1810; Prometheus concludes, "I see it fit to ready myself for departure. You have no reason to feel safe with me having learned the atrocities of my past actions. I should not make you to live with it. I deem I shall try to find the woman in the painting thus it has been so long now I cannot recall how to get back. I am certain of one thing, I greatly perceive myself the same as what the town's people screamed at me when they shunned me to the forest- a monster."
She shakes her head in disagreement. "I have seen what is positive of your nature. I have examined you carefully in many possible actions. I accept without doubt that goodness is what is true of you. It is evident as many times as my hand is wet when I pull it from the river. I shall prove it; What is your favorite color?" She asks. Prometheus says, "Red, I have grown an affinity for the sight of your hair."
She blushes and continues, "Well… What is your favorite food to eat?"
They respond, "Your gingerbread in winter."
"There is no makings of a bad person within you. No Deficiency of morals. You process qualities in a remarkable degree that never find a place in the hearts of men else where. You are no monster. Even the sight of you is beautiful. You will be staying. You will feel the warmth of light here and feel your belly full here. You are wanted here. I want you here."
"This is a happy life here."
"This life together is perfect." She says. Prometheus decides to abide by Catriona's wishes and they did not leave. The forest provided a new wonder everyday to appreciate the rest of summer. When Autumn came its dry copper colored leaves piled around the cabin and their fragrance perfumed the icy air.
The winter of 1810 abruptly arrived and the cold was callous burdening Catriona's health and the health of William. The illness forced them to be bedridden most of the season. Prometheus took on Adalaide's care along with all the house work. Prometheus fed Catriona hot meals and soup to help her regain her strength. Some days she seemed to get better to only fall back into crippling sickness the next day. William got better before Catriona and was most eager to be a helping hand at any moment for Prometheus. With winter soon coming to an end Catriona awoke one morning having finally beaten her illness. The light of her softness bloomed once more throughout the house. Nights of conversations after dinner continued and games made up of chase and tickles with the children periodically occurred in the warmth before the fire place on endlessly white days. The laughter of William and Adalaide defined the moments they obtained memories of joy and that joy added a key ingredient to the fortitude of those walls where happiness forever lived untouchable.
It was spring now.
"Come with me!" Catriona exclaimed at Prometheus. She took them by the hand out into the first spring rains. "Can you feel that? That is what beauty feels like."
"I can." Prometheus says, "Each drop plays a cord in me as though I was a piano. Nature makes music that can ne'er be heard, only recited for the soul to feel."
Catriona stops moving to stare at Prometheus in the heavy down pour trying as much as she can to look at him. "A soul. The beautiful song of rain for a beautiful soul." She lays her arm from her elbow to her fingertips against Prometheus's chest. She pulls at their shirt with no force, as a gesture to lean down. Prometheus leans down. Catriona slowly presses her lips into theirs. She pulls away to look Prometheus over.
"Can you feel me?"
Hours pass long after they returned inside and dried in front of the fireplace. They both reside in brown leather chairs. Prometheus says to her, "Your beauty is of a strong nature. In Earnest and in truth, ones self is void of sexual desire. There is a love I am capable of though I am not sure what days may need to be to pass where I conceive an affection to give you in return. To speak of what is materialized, there is no lover's passion I can compose therefore I am not a being that has set an endeavor to mate, nor any desire to find one. I may not look it though I profess my wonder for life is within its infancy. There is a winter I wish to see on the abyssal waters of the ocean. Rain on the a vast desert. The life of spring in lands that see only snow. There is much to discover of myself. So much I must learn of myself if I am ever to find the woman in the painting. Victoria. I am trying to discover the sweetness of life I can obtain despite the lack of bitterness. I feel sensation and not pain. Those are answers surely she holds. Therefore to find her I must leave here."
Catriona was wounded. To love and not be loved in return is a monster no matter how it is gained. Not but an hour and a half on horse back is a town to the east and on a visit she happened to run into a fisherman she has twice purchased from in the past. In their conversation he tells her that he will be traveling to work in Burges, in the kingdom of Holland to fish in the North Sea.
In her return home she tells Prometheus, "I spoke with the fisherman today. He is traveling up Germany soon to fish near the Kingdom of Holland. I asked him if he needed a second working hand. I professed I knew of someone who wants to travel." With her eyes wet she looks at Prometheus from across the dining room. "Do you want to leave?"
In a decent timely manner he responds, "I would rather much like that." Softly said, withdrawing enthusiasm for Catriona's pain is all too obvious.
The next week Catriona, William and Adalaide took Prometheus to town where they were seeing them off. Before he would load into the fisherman's carriage Prometheus lingered. William cried and it made Catriona struggle to fight back her own tears. William asks, "When will you be back?"
Catriona answers William, "They are not coming back." shocked William says in his mighty-tiny voice, "You must! You must come back! I will miss you terribly! I love you father."
Catriona breaks, weeping into William as she picks him up. It is the first he has ever proclaimed Prometheus as his father. Prometheus will go out into the unwelcoming world to learn more of themselves without certainty there will ever be another place where they are as wanted and as loved as they are here.
Catriona feels the gentle touch of Prometheus's immense hand persuading her to turn, she looks up to see them presented before her. They lean down and say, "I will come home to you again. I love you Catriona." They slowly lean in. Catriona is without hesitation and collides into them to kiss with verve.
"Here I have a name. A family. Here is where I will find the perfect life of a quiet flower. I will come back to thou."
"You will?" she says through tears. "I will." She hears them say. The three of them watch as Prometheus is carried away by the carriage growing smaller and smaller till they disappear into the hills.
The dangerous North Seas, October 1813. Wave after angry wave punches the fishing trawler. White mist exploding up against the ship relentlessly. The rough waves toss the small vessel around as if with a ruthless vendetta. Both The fisherman and Prometheus are in the cabin when the purple ocean sky lights up in a blink when lightning carves through it.
"No" Prometheus says terrified. "What?" The fisherman asks, "What is it? Are you afraid of a little lightning?" the fisherman fights to steer the wheel when he begins to lose his grounding in logic from what he is seeing. Prometheus holds out their hands when their veins bloom of an ultra-violet blue light with a milky white color at its center. The light rises as it permeates through their veins. All the while flashes of lightning and the acoustic shocks of thunder are echoing in the creatures transformation.
"Lightning… Lightning bad." Prometheus musters before the glow branches on the sides of their face and their eyes shine like lighthouse beacons. An angry zombified face overcomes Prometheus as they attack the fisherman. His screams are drowned out by the ships wood as it gives way to the roaring ocean waves under the booming thunder of a North Sea storm.
The Zwin North Sea Coast, November 1813. Ten days later meshed with sand and wooden debris of the fishing trawler Prometheus lies on the shore. Moved only by the pulse of the tide. As they stand up they are grieving for they remember killing the fisherman. Weeping, rendering them unmotivated to leave the shores as they remorse in their guilty conscience.
It is still dark just before the sun is to rise and Prometheus, still wearing his fisherman attire walks off shore into the Zwin forest. Crossing the forest they come to the tree-line where a windmill can be seen nearby. Before reaching the wind mill Prometheus notices two little girls heading in their direction. Afraid, they turn back to the forest to hide within its canopy. They come to a pond. They pass by its still waters and find shrubbery to conceal themselves in about a hundred or so feet from the pond. They lay in the grass in leisure. Most of the hours are spent in fear of when the next storm will come, when they will again be rendered futile to the forces of nature. How Prometheus wishes they could understand the occurrence more and why it happens. Maybe then they could piece together a way to counteract it. For to watch in protest of it all and still feel so worthless in the wake of an absolute super power digs out a cavern in the heart. A powerlessness in looking upon the helpless as they are slaughtered. Prometheus is highly cognitive and perceives the sorrow and pain of people with an intelligent empathy. Prometheus philosophizes in their rumination that immorality is the state where intelligence is absent. How cognizant, comprehensive, reasonable, and intelligent can one truly be if one was never educated in the many understandings of empathy. They fear the lightning because in it's presence Prometheus is robbed of all their intelligence to be only a brute destructive force fueled in temper. No empathy, humanity, or intelligence prevails.
Nightfall comes and goes and as a new morning arrives before the sun can dawn on the day Prometheus hears a scream. The colors of the forest are dulled in a grim dim vision. The sky grey with stirring phantom clouds.
A child's scream echoes again. There is a crying. Then there is the crying of a second child. Prometheus can see that a light frost decorates the trees and leaves. They must lay still in an effort to not draw attention to themselves. The sound of cries abruptly stops. Their is something rustling in the leaves and the grass near the pond. Twigs can be heard snapping. The noise of grass being brushed over repeatedly. Slowly Prometheus sits up attempting to make as little noise as possible. A dreary blue light is flowing through the air.
Peering through the shrubs that conceal them, they see an unpleasant man. It is Benji. He stands up from the ponds edge. His trousers around his calves. As he pulls them up, a taller man who is thin in stature comes up from off the ground. He turns around and Prometheus can see he has half lid eyes, a bushy mustache with grey peppered in his black hair. He is smiling as he pulls up his untied trousers to cover up his naked groin. Prometheus hears Benji say, "The village will be in strife when they find what you've done to these simple girls."
"And you will hang with me for your inexorable actions." He says, laughing. Benji says with a smile, "Maybe we are wrong Bernardo. Perhaps they will award us for ridding the village of the burden of looking after the simpletons." Together a laugh erupts between Bernardo and Benji as they fix their trousers. Bernardo commands, "Come, together we will put there corpses in the pond and cover them in loose grass. All shall fail to manifest foul intentions. Tis within there, they will be stupefied being none the wiser."
As Benji walks closer to the pond he questions, "What of that incessant woman? Victoria?"
Bernardo replies, "You need not worry, brother. I have proven myself to be quite a valuable distraction. Knowledgeable as she may be, that bitch could never reach the heights of a man's knowledge."
Together Bernardo and Benji toss two bodies in the pond like emptied plates discarded half haphazardly after dining. These men make little effort to shroud the bodies in loose branches and grass. The same way one could kick dirt over a mess like it wasn't an atrocity.
Prometheus waits in silence for more than a half hour after the two men have long gone. When they were sure the men had gone far enough they come out of concealment, rising out of the shrubbery. Slowly they make their way to the pond. In the clearing's eerie silence Prometheus can hear leaves crunch under every step. Blades of grass encased in frost snap. They feel their heart beat faster as they become more and more afraid of what they'll come to find. Their worrisome breath growing louder adding to the few ominous sounds they can hear. When Prometheus sets their eyes on the pond there is a few seconds of stillness within them. Anyone would need to take pause the way Prometheus does in order to understand what they were looking at. A combination of all of natures materials made out to be a collage or even abstract art. How one can look on an oil painting to then take the time to decipher the brush strokes of each color. Like the mind unfolding the image till it becomes clear and an epiphany hits. Prometheus sees in the water, under the twigs and branches with loose grass and chrysanthemum flowers shrewdly skewed about, there are the sides of pale white faces. They barely float above the water. Motionless.
Without sparing another thought Prometheus explodes into a flight of distress plunging into the pond. Walls of water are thrown around as they tear through the pond to get to the children. Careful not to hurt them they are still gentle to remove the shrubs that cover their bodies.
With a conscious courtesy Prometheus puts each child in the fold of their elbow and carries the young girls bodies out of the pond. They look at them and see how much they resemble the mighty-tiny William and Adalaide. Prometheus cannot refrain from weeping, stopping time and time again to sob. They shake them repeatedly, the smallness of their bodies feeling all too familiar, "Wake up. You are safe now. I have got you… you… you, you are not abandoned. Be mighty, children, do not fret. You are… safe," Prometheus can't control the sorrow that exerts their face as they cry the tears of an empathetic father, "Now… you are safe, now." they cry to the trees, to the up rooted chrysanthemums, to the settling waters of the pond. For there is no life in the girls to hear the creatures harrowing cries.
The sun moves up but a greyness keeps the day from harnessing a warmth. Prometheus never lets them go. Lamenting over a thousand futures lost. Mourning the world destroyed. Prometheus never leaves them, even as dusk occurs. They sit with their legs folded out for hours often swaying them in cradle. A cradle Prometheus wants more than anything for them to feel instead of whatever their last pain may have been. Prometheus never leaves them, even as darkness settles on their eyes. They remain there with the girls. Never abandoning them. Holding their bodies… till a storm came.
Dim orange light resonates from the oil lamps behind Prometheus. They lay the two girls down to rest on the shore of the pond. They see the lightning flashing through the forests canopy in the distance. Prometheus is in such a state of remorse it has become an agony in which it is the most pain they have ever felt. They recognize Benji's voice when he calls him "monster". Turning around, Prometheus knows it is out of their control what will come as that burning bright light travels through their body and they say, "Monster." They hears gangs of thunder crashing in ten's ferociously attacking the night before blacking out.
When they come to consciousness early sun has risen and there is the makings of a wind mill burned down around them. Smoke still searing from the embers. Exploring the fields they find bodies and parts of bodies and burned bodies. It is a horror and they soon remember that all of this was their doing. Prometheus understands this and takes some time to grieve in regret. After some time Prometheus thinks to themselves, "One who is intelligent in empathetic, and one who is empathetic feels remorse. I cant change what I have done therefore the goodwill within can still be ethical and do right by the ones I have wronged. Prometheus gathers every last one of the bodies and digs them an individual grave. They use planks to mark where the graves lie without anything engraved on them. Except for Susanna's and Madelief's, who he buried close together side by side with an engraving on their plank:
"Here lies two mighty girls."
Prometheus travels west. While in the town of Knokke, there in the crowd they catch only a glimpse but they know it is Victoria. A face that is imprinted on their mind. That lives in thoughts and dreams that cant be explained. Mother or not there is no one else with a key to who they are or how they were born. Prometheus never stops in pursuit to find her as she leaves the Kingdom of Hollands and descends down the border of France keeping close in step all the way to heart of the Arctic.
THANK YOU FOR READING! For updates and news about the Dread Legacies follow us on:
@thedreadlegacies.bsky.social
You can check out the playlist for The Dread Legacies to listen to the music that inspired the story on Spotify and Youtube. We are now on Ko-fi, buy me a coffee, Substacks and Tumblr.