Die Alchemie des Terrors

I think I was created a short time ago. The Master said it was a thing called 1931, but I do not know what this means. I started as a “head” and watched the Master move his “fingers” about to create me. I couldn’t jump when I started and I couldn’t flap my wings or fly. But I could watch.

First, I opened my eyes and saw the Master smile, twitching his fingers. But then he started working again and soon I felt a thing attached to my head. It was long and scaly and had five smaller things attached, with hard, sharp things at the end of those. I don’t know why, but I thought I could move it … and I tried, and it twitched! I was excited! Then the master stroked my head. I smiled. Then he turned the lights out, and left me.

The dark was scary, but I had this feeling inside that made me close my eyes – it was as if my body was heavier. It was hard to move the thing that I had moved earlier… the Master had called it an “arm”, and the things on the end of it “fingers”, and on those, “claws”. I closed my eyes, and felt very happy, and I opened them again, and the outside of the room was bright.

The Master kept working, over several of the dark-and-light times, the eye-closings… and he gave me “wings” with little round, dry things on them, called “scales”. And I moved them, and my body lifted a bit. So I kept moving them, and soon I was in the air … I heard the Master scream and I thought he was hurt, so I “flew” down to him, but he was smiling, and all of a sudden he grabbed me, and wouldn’t let me go. I felt a great warmness inside of me, like I was loved.

Then the master gave me feet, covered in scales, with toes at the end. I stretched them, and I found out that if you “jump”, it makes it easier to “fly”.

The Master taught me about myself, but he never let me look in a mirror. He said it would hurt me. He showed me where my “heart” was, and my “lungs”, and taught me how they worked. He said he got them from other places that weren’t me. He taught me how to speak, and I got very good at it!

He taught me a lot of things… about how to fly, how to get along in public, how to ride the subway, how to eat without making a mess. He taught me about love, but he told me that there would never be another of me. He said that the world would never tolerate that. I loved the Master.

One day, I was hanging from my perch, and I heard the Master shouting. I flew to the door, but it wouldn’t open like it should, so I flew up to the ceiling and opened a hole to the outside. I flew around. In front of the house, there were eleven tiny pink things with arms, and legs, and heads… but no wings. They looked like the Master. They had “hair” different than the Master’s though (the Master didn’t have much hair!), and different “noses” and “eyes”. Not as big as they were, the Master stood up to them angrily.

The pink things were shouting at the Master, and the Master was pointing at my bedroom and shouting back. I heard a lot of words… I couldn’t understand them all, but I tried. One of the pink things shouted “It’s dangerous!” and “You can’t keep it around!” and “What if it learns? What will you do then?”. And the Master was trying to stay calm – I could tell, because the Master taught me faces. The Master pointed, and stared, and yelled. And then, the Master grabbed himself and fell.

The pink things looked at each other, and looked up at me, and then ran away. I didn’t know what happened – the Master wouldn’t tell me when I asked him. I shook him, thinking he might be trying to have an eye-closing, but he wouldn’t talk to me. And then he got very cold. So I put him by the fire with a blanket, and made him coffee. Without the master, I didn’t know what I’d do.

I went back to where the pink things were. A tiny pink thing was talking to nothing, and holding a gun (Master had told me never to hold one).

“He’s.. ah…” it said to itself, “I… killed him”.

I asked him what he meant, but he wouldn’t talk to me.

“He’s dead… oh, God. I’m… oh, God!”

The Master had talked about “dead”, but all I knew about it was that old and sick people did it, and then didn’t come back.

I shouted, “The Master’s not coming back!?”.

The pink thing turned and I think he saw me, and he started screaming.

“Oh.... shit! Was Sind sie? Get away, back off!”

The pink thing ran away, crying, screaming, and shouting.

I tried to tell him that I was myself, that I was me, but he didn’t seem to understand. I grabbed him, but one of my “claws” went into his “neck”, and red, sticky stuff started dripping out.

“I’m me!” I shouted, “Tell me what happened to the Master.”

“Ah, fuck, get off me! GET OFF ME!”

It started spitting and coughing, and then he fell down and wouldn’t get up. I thought about the Master… whatever happened to Master, he was “dead”… I knew that. He wouldn’t be coming back… and then I felt a thing in my chest, and it was big and moving, and it hurt. I think that’s what the Master called my “heart.”

The Master built me. He took parts from everything in the whole world and put them to each other, and sewed them up, and now I can fly and jump and swim and walk and talk. So why couldn’t I build the Master?

The next time the dark came, instead of going into an eye-closing, I went out looking for the little pink things. There was a dirt road right outside our house, and I often saw the little pink things walking up and down the line.

Late at night, I stood by the dirt line, and the pink things walked up and down. One of them came within a claw of me… I reached out and grabbed the pink thing by the mouth, so it would stay quiet. The pink thing screamed and screamed, but none of it came out. I poked the pink thing with a claw where I poked the last one, between his body and his head. The pink thing’s eyes rolled up into his forehead, and it whimpered a little. And then it stopped. Very sneaky, very careful, I took a claw and cut the thing’s “chest”, inside was a bunch of goop.

I looked for the heart. Master had showed be pictures before – the heart was this little red thing made out of muscle that made your blood clean and made it move, and kept you alive. It was kind of round, but kind of big. I found something that looked like the picture.

Over the next couple of nights, and eye closings, I picked away and stole a “liver”, some “lungs” (three of them!), five “kidneys”, and many other squishies. The pink things kept coming down the path, sometimes with lights, sometimes with guns. Everytime they did, I would grab one and take a squishie. For some reason, I did not believe the pink things would live if I took more than one.

When I had all the squishies, I went back to the Master… very carefully, I picked him up and put him on the big cold slab in the middle of my room. He smelled very bad, like rotting fruit, and his eyes were bulging and watery. I took out his squishies one by one, and put in my stolen squishies (they smelled bad too). They wouldn’t stay in! I tried and tried, for hours on end, but none of the squishies would work.

Then I looked at the Master, with his chest apart, and his eyes big, and my heart began to hurt again. Soon, I felt an itching behind my eyes, and water came out. But I didn’t hate the water… it felt like I should make more. Soon, I picked myself up and thought about what was wrong… there were many kidneys, and many lungs, but I had only one heart.

So that night, I went out to get another. When I was standing beside the path, the pink things came and walk up and down – but this time they had plastic things that shone bright, and small guns, and bigger guns with wood on them… like the one that made the Master fall. They poked up and down the trail… one came close to me.

Then the pink things started finding the pink things that I had poked with my claw… and acted very scared, and very surprised. I didn’t know what they were scared about. They should have just picked up their friends and shaken them to wake them up. Some started thumbing smallm black metal things into their guns. Others started waving their light-machines around, pointing them at the bushes and shouting. I felt a something heavy fall on me, and I bit and snapped at it.

It scream, and instantly I realized it was one of the pink things. “Er ist hier! He’s over here!” it shouted. The pink things all pointed their light-machines. One of the pink things twitched, and I felt something hot tear my leg, which stung and bled. I fell over and shrieked – the pink things must not have liked it, because they covered their ears. Then I closed my eyes – I did not feel heavy this time, but the stinging was too big.

Now, I am walking to this big wooden platform. They are poking me in the back with sharp things, and telling me “Beweg dein dicken Arsch! Keep moving, arschwichser!”. The other pink things, the ones that aren’t behind me, are spitting on me so much that I am wet. One of them is trying to throw rocks at me, and one hits me in my eye. There is a big wooden, upside-down L on the platform, with a rope hanging from it.

It looks like it would be fun to hang on it and go to sleep. I hope they let me sleep on it.