Excerpt for "This Little Light of Mine" -- Oh, He Was Anything But Nice

Notes: So, this is background stuff I wrote on my character Veidese (he's an antagonist, not the main character). Actually, you could say this is mostly about his mother, but it also shows how he originated. The chapter is called "Oh, He Was Anything But Nice" and it's for a story titled "This Little Light of Mine." (Yeah, like that song...) This is definitely NOT the first chapter. I don't know exactly where it goes in the story, or what chapter number it gets... But anyways, feedback is appreciated.1

OH, HE WAS ANYTHING BUT NICE2

The first thing they told him upon his arrival at the school for NyteMayres was, “You’re too nice. We’ll fix that.” Veidese merely laughed. Oh, he was anything but nice.3

He knew from their glances and whispers that they didn’t think he fit in. He couldn’t blame them, but it irked him all the same. He certainly didn’t look like he fit in here, among their gleaming fangs and claws, their crooked half-smiles, their pointed horns. He spoke with a calculated gentleness in his tone, with bright white teeth, and his face was clean-shaven, his eyes thoughtful. There was nothing in his appearance to suggest malice, nothing to suggest a demonic nature. But oh, he was anything but nice.4

His blood – his crimson human blood as well as the acidic black demon blood – boiled with the desire to rip and tear human flesh, to snap their heads and spill the sticky red elixir from their fragile bodies. Certainly he was human himself, half-human for what it counted, and with a human appearance, but he did not consider himself a human, not after what a wretched human had done to his mother.5

His mother Marat had been a fine demon, cold and proud as demons should have been. Her young face was beautiful, but when it twisted itself up with rage it was the ugliest thing in all the world. At the age of fourteen she could manipulate it to prompt tears from the bravest heart, to make any mortal whimper with fear. Among the demons she had been held with high respect, a child genius, and among the humans it was her name that was used to frighten the children into good behavior. Yet she had never killed or taken a human’s blood, and though she was cold and harsh it was all for show, all to please her peers and elders. In truth, she was innocent, and as she worked to prove herself among her people, her heart remained light and merry.6

That was before she was disgraced before her entire species on her sixteenth birthday. She had been walking among the high hills near a small human village, and thought to herself that she would see what presents they would give to a beautiful human girl.7

It was easy enough to assume to guise of a human; such parlor tricks had been the heart of many party games she had played as a young demonchild. Almost effortlessly she coaxed her ash scales to a creamy peach-white skin, her horns to retreat within her skull, her claws to become slender fingers and toes, her swishing tail to fade into newly soft skin until it was completely concealed. Her hair she brushed down slowly and lovingly, murmuring spell words to it until it was completely tamed.8

When she entered the human village she was admired for her beauty, and the village girls asked her repeatedly how she got her skin so soft, how she got her hair so fine. Laughingly she said that her skin was softer today than it usually was, that her hair often grew wild and that their hair was more natural. In their ignorance they thought she was being modest, but she decided she didn’t mind.
“It’s my birthday today; give me a present,” she said when she tired of their chatter, and they responded quite readily. They gave her flowers and bangles, hair ribbons and handkerchiefs, and many other sorts of trinkets, but all these were trinkets and nothing more; there were plenty to be had, but they could not rouse excitement in her. She had seen them all before, and many such things already filled her mansion.9

She was looking for something new, something the demons could not give her. She wanted something distinctly human. The girls read the disappointment in her face and suggested, a bit sourly, that she learn to appreciate what she had been given.10

“Of course,” she said politely, and wondered if there was anything more to be found here, to be found among humans. Or were they simply demons in different bodies?11

Beside the girls on the hill stood a man with scraggly hair on his face and dirt on his clothes. He was watching them. He was not the only other person on the hill, but he was the only one watching them.12

“I have a present for you,” he said after some time, slurring the words. “My name is Furtificus, but Furs is perhaps easier.” He motioned for her to come, and his present changed Marat’s life.13

As Marat followed him, she noted briefly that there was something in him that might have given her mind the image of a demon, if she had not been a demon herself. The something was not in the stubble on his face or the grease of his hair, not in the wrinkles of his garments or the crookedness of his teeth. Such things were purely physical; they could not tell her what was in his heart. But she knew without question -- although she didn’t know how -- that something about him was off. Something was not the way it was supposed to be.14

They arrived at his house, a straw hut, and when she saw it the familiar children’s tale of a wolf and three pigs surfaced within her mind. Impatience and idleness showed themselves in the making of his dwelling. She supposed they were the reasons he did not bother to shave his face, to wash his hair, to clean his clothes. He did not care about such matters because there were things he needed to have, and they were all he could see. He was a man who could not take the time to build a house of bricks rather than one of flimsy straw. When he wanted something, he wanted it right then. Such a man could not learn to wait.15

Inside the hut, he busied himself with showing her each of his possessions. “Look, look at this,” he often said, gesturing to a vase or a stunning piece of jewelry, or a particularly aesthetic bowl. “Isn’t it fine? Isn’t it beautiful?”16

“Yes,” she said, again and again. This was her answer every time he asked; it never changed. The objects he brought out were all quite visually stimulating, but they did not feel right in his straw hut. They did not feel right in his hands.17

“Isn’t it fine? Isn’t it beautiful?” He always asked this a second time, as if he hadn’t heard the first answer.18

“Yes.”19

“But it doesn’t make me worth anything. I stole it. I hate it.” This was always his conclusion, the last thing he said before moving on to some other item.20

She wondered why he was telling her this. Humans didn’t normally tell others of their wrongdoing, if what she had heard of them could be trusted. Furs had promised her a present when he first spoke to her – was that a stolen good? As a demon, she supposed she should have been happy to learn of his thievery.
When he had shown her the last possession, he looked at her and said, “There is something else I will steal.”21

Marat said nothing. She was trying to suppress the image of a human corpse; this was the first time such an image had thrown itself at her, and she did not want it. She knew it was because of her birthday, because it was around the age of sixteen that most demons first noticed the beauty of a corpse, first started wondering about how it felt to snap a limp body and feel the bones cracking. She had wondered before, when the elder demons spoke of it with dark pleasure in their faces, but she had never wondered so furiously.22

Furticus was looking at her with live eyes, but all she saw were his unseeing ones, in his lifeless form, the face contorted with pain and his blood still wet. She sucked in a breath and knew she had to get away fast, because her heart was not ready for killing and it would die if it had to bear her thoughts of death for much longer. She wanted – no, a part of her wanted – to kill him right then and there. But to do so would be to become like him, to become impatient, to become someone who could not control her own emotions. It would be shameful. She could not do it to herself. She could not do it to her heart.23

“I’m sorry, I have to leave,” she said with the merest hint of a quiver in her voice, and she turned away from the prospect of a corpse.24

“Your present first,” said he, and two things happened very fast.
First, something snaked out to trip her – she wasn’t quite sure whether it was an arm or a leg, but whatever it was, it did its job. She found the ground coming up to her body very fast, and as her back smacked against it she was forcefully reminded of her forbidden fantasy: the cracking of human bodies.25

The second thing was that his arms came down on both sides of her, like prison bars, and her head hurt and she could smell his breath and-- shewantedtospillhisinsidesacrossthefloor.26

That thought rushed through her mind, threatening to overpower her heart, and for a moment she believed she would willingly succumb to what her demon’s body was telling her she wanted. She nearly lost control of her human form as she was wracked with her demon’s body’s longing for her to let it out, for her to spear the man’s flesh on her horns and gouge out his eyes with her claws. But her fragile little heart was afraid to lose control, so she mastered herself and held back.27

“I know you are a demon,” said Furticus, breathing on her face, “and I can give you what demons cannot; demons cannot love, but I will give you love.”28

For a moment she could only stare, a certain wistfulness in her eyes, and she wished that his words were true, but everything she had witnessed told her they were not. He was right, of course, that demons could not love, and she knew humans could. And she wanted love, although she knew she could not return it; she wanted to see what separated humans from demons.29

But Furticus could not love her.30

Furticus was a thief in everything, and nothing he said was of any value, even if the items that filled his house were the rarest in the world.31

That day, he gave life to what would later become Marat’s son. And even in fathering he was a thief.32

What he stole from her was not her heart, for hearts could not be stolen. They could only be killed. Marat’s heart died that day, died while she told herself she could not kill him, died while he breathed his filthy breath on her and whispered, “Aren’t you fine? Aren’t you beautiful?”33

“Yes,” she said, because it was the only thing she could say. Her thoughts were scrambling about in a sort of dead panic, trying to reach her heart, to wake it, but it had been forever silenced.34

“But you don’t make me worth anything. I stole you. I hate you.”35

“The feeling is mutual,” she whispered. The image of his corpse overpowered her once more, thriving in her veins, shrieking in her ears, flooding her entire body with a living, breathing malice. She saw him die a thousand different ways, saw herself laughing without mirth and wiping her dry eyes, saw his scream dying in his throat as her teeth sink into his neck and twist it off. The urge pumped through her, barbaric and bestial.36

This time there was no heart to stop it.37

She threw him to Hell with one swift move: her horns protruded from her head and slashed off his head. There was a short scream; he had turned at the sound of a low growling rumbling from her throat and saw her coming just as she reached him. She caught some of the blood in her mouth, and drank of it deeply. It made her a bit light-headed, and she wasn’t sure whether or not she liked it, but she kept drinking anyway. The head stayed cupped in her hands, her eyes held captive by its frozen gaze.38

She had killed and drank of human blood. She was a true demon now. Yet no demon would respect her ever again after what that human had done to her.39

A child was born to her two weeks later, for demons had a much shorter period of pregnancy than that of humans, and the first thing she told her baby was, “You are a demon, and you are my son only. You do not have a father. You will not let humans take from you as they have taken from me.”40

And so it was that Veidese grew to hate all humans, even while with each day he grew to look more and more like one of them. He had no tail, no horns, no claws, no scales. It seemed the only part of him that was demon was his blood, and he held just as much human blood. But he was his mother’s son, and even with a smile as bright as sunshine and eyes like a bright blue sky, oh, he was anything but nice.