The Red Beast

Once upon a time there lived a beast that was red. We gave him that legend from many tragedies, of how many buckets of blood that was shedded. The Red Beast stole apples for sweetness, he stole the towns sheeps for thirst. At dawn, he would growl through the night, then bring the corpses back into the stables. We assumed he didn't like to finish completely, or rather he didn't want to waste his time with cleaning but waste our time instead. The sheep's stomachs more or less intact, and their ears were ripped, they were shredded in half.

The Red Beast lived inside the forest, with the saints and the devils. They came out at night for their greedy lust and savaged on the children. The townspeople practiced witchcraft for security, but nothing worked. When the Red Beast would travel through the dark trees, their candle flares would flicker and vanish exposing the burnt candle. He would hunt in the night and if there were no farmed animals, he would growl at the town, making it shake. We would then awake to children missing, then some blood patches along the grass, with the mother weeping over her dead child. The Red Beast brought them back again, but with their hands missing, and with a hole where their heart was.

Their hearts were put to rest.

The Red Beast made a home inside the townpeople's heads. He told us that he will be back in the morning but for a sacrifice. The Red Beast wanted a new rule and agreement with the town. But it wasn't really the Red Beast who said this, it was the town's voice. The agreement was settled over the desperation they had to end the massacres of the red. The Red Beast control them. He laughed throughout the night, creating screams of terror and sacrifices yelped and there were attempts to stay chained up on the cross in front of the church. But the Red Beast ripped the chains off. At dawn, the bones of the sacrifice were rotting into the ground, leaving a dent in the brown grass.

I, too, became once upon a time. In every dusk, a sacrifice was chained up onto a cross and was baiting the Red Beast all night, until he finally creeped. Every single night, and this night was my time.

The day after the fifth sacrifice, it was the town's leader who was bondaged on. The conflict between him and the church didn't settle and so he was voted against his own will.

He screamed all night until his guts dropped.

I was now traveling in the forest, with the Red Beast carrying me. I felt droplets of blood slide down my neck as I hung upside down. I felt the breeze against my arms, against my ears, against the hole in my chest where my heart was. My eyes rolled back to see the town's dawn torches spark up in the mist, and the Red Beast lived once again to see another reddened sky, to shed more buckets of blood.