Written by Rhaego. Posted on Jan 26, 10:33 AM.

The Tree

So, have any of you guys had to completely retool a project? Cause I sure have.
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Formoii hated churches.

As the freezing rain plagued an otherwise beautiful sunset, like so many irritating pigeons descending on a town square, he stared up at the cross affixed to the top of the building’s steeple. The rain was plunging onto the fat and ugly gray drifts that had piled higher and higher along the deserted street through the week’s snows.

“Where are you…” he whispered to himself. The rain had drenched his long coat, and he knew that his black jeans were soaked. He shivered, feeling the cold biting through his thermal shirt. He looked at the name plate beside the church’s front door. He had finally found it.

He walked past the stairs and into the fenced garden beside the church. The trees shaded this glorified weed-patch from the road that ran in front of the church. His quarry was here.

She was covered in layers and rags of half-rotted and ripped clothing. She was grungy in every sort and application of the word, with boils and warts covering her chins (all three of them, Formoii observed) and she had a patchy and half bald scalp.

“Hello, miss, how are you this evening?” Formoii said, smiling widely. His long black hair had run free from its usual tie and was lank in his face. He brushed the loch out of his eyes.

“Who are you…who…who are you?” the woman’s voice was the half rasp and half bark of one who had seen too many cigarettes. She sat up groggily.

“I am Formoii Uriel Sandalphon, and you have something I need.” He walked to the blanket that she had stretched on the ground to sleep upon. It was stained with fluids Formoii scarcely wanted to hypothesize the origin of. He did not sit.

“I aint…haven’t got nothing you need, handsome man,” she said. Her eyes appraised Formoii up and down. Her skin flushed.

He was attractive to humans, he supposed. His long black hair, though often pulled back, was full of luscious curls. His smiles were quick and bright, and he held himself with a casual confidence. He was tall and his muscles were lean, but strong.

But there was something predatory in his animal-yellow eyes.

“Ah, but you do. You see, if you could find me a way into this church, I would be very much in your debt.” His eyes seemed to hungrily devour her squat and immobile form.

I don’t care what Yellimen says; next time, he plays love struck with the swine. He thought, full of disgust for the animal before him. His lips were still pulled back in a smile, however.

“Well…there’s a cellar over by that bench…I used to get into it to take extra food from their pantry,” she said, mesmerized by his looks and sweet words.

“Could you, I don’t know, get into it for me? I am in need of a place to sleep, and I don’t think anyone is in.” Formoii bit his lip nervously, and looked away from the woman’s eyes. I’m over doing it, he thought.

“I guess I could…you could bed down here for the night, if you wanted…” she trailed off.

Or not, he thought. “I don’t think that would be wise; I need to protect my virtue,” he said.

I hate this so much; Yellimen is sending someone who owes me to do his next assignment. What kind of arrested development do you have to be in to still believe in ‘virtue’ or chivalrous young men? he thought, chuckling mentally.

She lurched to her feet and waddled off to the corner she had alluded to earlier. She bent over (an act Formoii thought he could go several more mortal lifetimes without seeing ever again) and jerked on a lock, long broken, but replaced as if it were still functioning. She swung the doors wide open, and the rain died.

“Thank you, I owe you,” he said. “What is it you would want me to do?” he regretted it as he spoke the words.

He was surprised by the answer.

“Could you just…could you just look at me like you did, like I was beautiful? Just one more time? It’s been so long since anyone looked at me like I was worth looking at,” she said.

There was a vulnerability in her that spoke the truth of her words. Formoii could see it; the looks of pity and contempt that people would give her; the scorn and disgust people would shower on a face like hers. Tears were pooling in her eyes, he saw in the twilight.

“Yeah, I guess I could,” he said, grinning. He stared her full in the eyes.

“Uh…wha-…what is…” she had a look of confusion on her face.

Then the part Formoii most cherished began.

She had a look of abject and total fear on her face. Her jaw went slack, and her eyes widened.

His eyes were so…primal, so animal and bestial. The pupil seemed to warp into a vertical slit, and she could swear she heard hisses and growls in the dusky garden. She couldn’t look away.

Her heart fluttered, and then beat hysterically. She could only think of terrible, terrible things. Gray skinned humanoids feasting on a corpse, tearing its still bleeding entrails to their gaping and raw mouths; fire consuming her, feeling the terrible heat melting her hair to her head; drifting to the bottom of a lake covered in ice, water rushing and plunging into her lungs and eviscerating her will to live; the total and all-consuming terror of being lost and without any place to go and without anyone to care about you.

She felt the touch of scales on her calf; the fluttering of a hairy leg crawling across her neck; the sting of a terrible wasp. She felt as if her skin was covered in the creeping, crawling, horrific things of the dark. It seemed to last a lifetime.

Formoii turned from her corpse, and descended into the basement.

Heart attacks always take them before I can really hear them scream, he thought.

Tagged as Critique, Rhaego.

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