It’s been within me for months now. If I hadn’t been away from civilization I would know an exact time, down to the minute. I would know because when It possessed me, I killed my mother. Just writing that: I killed my mother. How can I come to grips with it? It doesn’t matter that it was not actually within my control; it was my body, these hands. These horribly deformed hands. If I were more of a man I would rip these talons from my fingertips and cast them into the bushes. But it’s a monster within me, an immortal monster I cannot escape, even if I lose my fingers.

I’ve chased monsters my entire life, I’ve read hundreds of books and listened to countless stories. If I’d just left those roots hanging in my room, if I’d listened to my mother she wouldn’t have had to pay for my obsession. I wonder now, am I hunted? Is my father tracking me even now, my beloved Loupe Garou hunting me down in ignorance. What am I to have killed my mother and be hunted by my father? These questions torment me; make me ache inside.

I’ve often thought that I am lucky I have only the final images of my mother. There are other times when I agonize over the moments, or hours between being myself and being possessed by It. There was so much confusion when I woke in that cave. I don’t even know how long it was between when I fell and when I rose, though I do know now what I had initially considered failure was a tragic success.

Mother was worried, pacing and I knew she was going to be angrier than ever before. I didn’t care though, I just wanted to get into my bed and figure out exactly what had happened. If only I’d taken the time to notice the changes within myself before I’d gone home. If only I had or hadn’t done a thousand things.

She screamed at me, I can only imagine what I looked like, long taloned fingers, shock-white hair, and glowing red eyes. My poor superstitious mother saw her nightmare walking towards her when all she wanted was her son back. She kept screaming, “Get back! Get back and don’t come back! Sabin is mine! Sabin is mine and I won’t relinquish him to you! I won’t!” Over and over she screamed that she would protect me, that she would save me from the darkness of the forests and she wouldn’t listen to me. So I turned, I turned to leave. Then the darkness grabbed me, twisted itself around my guts wound up into me and slithered around like an icy snake… except more than that the darkness was fluid. It was like poison sliding within me sickening me and I felt myself curving inwards, my own talons pricking my stomach.

I lived in that blackness. Time isn’t real with no boundaries, nothing to hold on to. After the initial fluid grip of blackness, blackness was all I knew. There was nothing but the slick coldness sloshing around and within me. I clawed; I clawed without moving, without knowing what it was that I struck out against with my feeble arms. Then I hit a soft underbelly and I knew the sound of pain, screams echoed and plagued. I’m still not sure whether those sounds were the dying sounds of my mother or the sounds of It giving me back my body.

A part of me wishes I hadn’t forced my out of It. The slick coldness is still within my belly, it’s never far from me and sometimes it pulses, swells, and grows. There are times when I wake up and I am uncertain whether I was dreaming or it had control over me. If I hadn’t escaped my father would be dead at my hands as well. I doubt that It would have left my dog alone either. So I suppose it’s good that I woke up but if I hadn’t escaped I never would have known. I never would have felt the horror of seeing my bloody hands dripping down onto my mother’s mauled body.

I don’t think I heard anything after looking in the mirror and seeing my own disfigurement. I knew when the door slammed open and my father’s faced flamed at the vision of me. I wasn’t me, but I was me and he knew it. He knew that my mother’s superstitions about demons in the forest were all justified and the demons were now his son. I don’t remember much after running. Just sequences of green and black, green meant there was light, black meant it was night. Either way I was running, running until I bled and running still. I suppose I ran from It but It was inside me and all the time It whispered and talked to me. It knows I’m weak and It knows when to take advantage of me and It knows that I can’t truly stop it. So I have this journal now, Book of the Monster I’ll call it. For that’s what it is, the story of a man who is now a monster. A man-monster with no way to change, no way to reshape himself, perhaps by writing I will become again more myself. If this doesn’t save me It will laugh when It’s won. For now I can only try to drown out the whispers with my own thoughts.