Page 2

Chapter 2

Erik

S ix months. Six full moon cycles since I last shifted. The longest I’ve ever gone.

The first few weeks were the hardest. Spring is a long, slow thaw on this desolate island. At times, it felt like there was no escape from the cold and wet. I longed to just give in to the monster within and hibernate in the lake depths.

But in good faith, I couldn’t. The longer I stay in that cursed form, the more I feel myself changing permanently. As if there might be someday I shift and never change back.

My previous record of four months in my human body was broken in a frenzied haze, brought on by the rush of tourists in the early summer. I’d been unprepared, already hungry after a long winter surviving on small fish alone, and my monster had gotten desperate. Too desperate. I’d lost control.

But not this time. Last winter, I prepared. Allowed myself to shift to hunt large game while the humans weren’t around in the cold season. Found purpose for some abandoned equipment left by campers, using their grills and charcoal to prepare feasts of meat and fish and keep the monster satisfied.

There was a time, long ago, when I’d kept count of how many days I’d been trapped here in this place. An inland loch seemingly as vast as the ocean I once crossed to arrive in this new land, this new world: so green and full of promise.

Until it was only full of regrets.

I am the last remaining member of my once great crew: explorers of the Northern sea, settlers of lands unknown. The greatest shame of our people was this failed journey, and I am its sole bearer.

I’ve since lost track of the years I have been trapped here by the curse. I know it must be in the hundreds. But now, I have reason to count again.

I can control the monster.

And if I can control it, then maybe I can at last escape it.

The small, horseshoe-shaped island in this giant loch I’ve been cursed to call home is limited. Each summer, I find myself trapped here, self-contained in my small wilderness, where I hide in the secluded lagoon that has remained isolated from the many humans that vacation here in the warm months. Families with young children stay close to the loch’s broad southern shores, and the fishermen in their boats steer clear of the rocky entrance to my oasis’ waters. Those who have ventured too close over the years have not returned.

They became tribute to the monster within.

I am grateful for the end of summer this year. When the humans leave, I find comfort and safety in my solitude. I feel the approach of autumn on the breeze, and my body yearns for it. Perhaps the season’s chill can contain the heat that boils beneath my skin. Perhaps, without the temptation of easy human prey, I can maintain my human form—maintain control of the monster.

I try to ignore the tension building inside me like the falling sands of the hourglass. It is a pull: a horrible, deep urge like nothing I have known as a man, but that I instinctively recognize as something powerful and monstrous.

Time to breed.

In all the years I have been trapped here, it has only happened once before. The fever overtook me on a full moon, brought on by an all-consuming wave of heat—one that still haunts my nightmares to this day.

She was the daughter of a fisherman. A sweet thing, waife-like and ruddy-faced. The nymph of my dreams. I watched her from my rocky shore at nights by the light of the stars and waxing moon. In the cool summer evenings, she would shed her clothing, submerge herself in the cool lake waters, and bathe by the celestial lights.

I was foolish then. I did not know that my desires would stoke the monster’s, too, until it was too late.

The pull within me increased with the moon. The night it hung pregnant in the sky, illuminating her precious body like a beacon, I could no longer suppress it. Every night I watched her, thinking it was only my loneliness that stirred the heat within my belly. Rising with the heat of summer, hotter and hotter as the days grew long and heavy with unrequited longing.

I didn’t realize that I was not the only one who longed for her.

I can still feel the way the desire coursed through my body, first tickling, then burning its way through my lungs, to my bloodstream, through my muscles and into the furthest reaches of my limbs. I dove into the lake, my limbs outside of my control. My body shifted in a delicious shudder until I was more monster than man.

Its movements were mine, but I was helpless to stop them. I could only watch as my tentacles wrapped around her legs, yanked her under the water. Horrified, I took in the havoc my grotesque body unleashed upon her. My beak, nipping along her achingly soft breasts. My tongue, lapping at her nipples hungrily.

Her arms submitted to my unbreakable grip. And when she was bent, back arched like a bow primed to launch a deadly arrow, it was my cock that pierced her perfect flesh. It was my seed that filled her. And it was my uncontrollable lust that kept her submerged far too long. My carelessness that killed her.

It did not matter that the monster had overtaken my will and forced me to action. I was the one who was responsible. The monster had killed before, of course, but always in self-preservation.

A child here, a lone sailor there. Women, men… I lost count of how many humans died to the insatiable hunger of the lake beast. His hunting sustained us both, and while I mourned the death of my fellow humans, I could not fault the monster for eating to survive.

Hunger, I understand. For a beast is still a being of nature. It still deserves to eat, does it not? Just as men eat the fish of the lake, or the fowl of the sky. But before that night, the monster always feasted for hunger.

Never for lust.

That, I could not justify. Nor would I lend it my body to achieve its perverted ends.

I have stayed secluded on my island ever since.

To my knowledge, the monster has no children. Other than that one tragedy, I have resisted the pull of the monster to breed. The maiden perished in the attack, and the heat quickly abated in its grief over the failed mating. But many years have passed, and now that heat has begun to build again.

I cannot give into it. I will not.

Yet as I submerge myself for a celebratory swim— six moons without succumbing to the beast! —I reach for it. Express gratitude for its compliance. A summer with no kills is an admirable feat indeed, and I am grateful. Now that the warm season is coming to an end, we can once again hunt our waters without fear of the temptation to seek out human prey.

As I float peacefully, knowing I am alone, I allow the beast to uncurl its many legs. A warm wave envelops my body as my own muscled limbs transform and multiply. The giant tentacles unfurl and lengthen, undulating in the cool and soothing lake water.

And then a paralyzing scent wafts through the waves.

No.

The monster growls within me, its beak clicking hungrily.

Mate…

I try to clamp down on the monster, but it is too late. As one, my legs coil and forcefully push themselves straight, rocketing us toward the delectable scent. One I have not allowed myself or the monster to breathe in for so long: woman.

Weaving through the sharp rocks of the lagoon’s entrance, the monster takes control, speeding toward the coast. And then I see her.

She is nothing like the fisherman’s daughter. Where she had been small and slender, this maiden is strong, rounded. Her legs and arms drift gracefully through the loch’s undulating waters, her sweet breasts’ splendid points peek out above the waves. Her hair spreads in a shining, golden halo around her head.

The man in me, the one who has fought for and claimed dominance over the monster for months as its hunger built, rages.

No, I scream at it, you will not destroy this maiden like you did the other!

Using every ounce of internal strength I’ve built for the past six months, I bring the beast to heel.

It screeches inside my mind, and once again I feel that devastating heat. The pulsing low in my belly, the desire . In the middle of the swirl of tentacles, I feel my cock begin to rise and harden.

No!

My mind is a hazy fog of lust and primal desire. It is untenable, nigh all-consuming, but my will is strong. I force it down, opening my eyes…

Only to realize that my human body has gained control somehow. I have human eyes to open, and a human head for them to reside in. My arms and legs are back to their tanned and muscled shape, my fingers and toes separated and grasping as I paddle through the water.

One thing, however, stays the same. My cock is still pulsing with desire, unlike anything I’ve felt for over a hundred years. That heat still scorches in my loins, coiled and tense.

I look up towards the surface of the water. Instinctively, I swim closer to the curvaceous shadow of the beautiful woman above me. Her golden hair is so close, I could almost touch it. Weave my fingers through it. Feel her softness across my skin…

We do not have to kill her.

The voice of the monster is low and deep as it slithers in from the furthest reaches of my mind.

I blink. No. This voice is not mine. So why is it saying such things?

It does not make sense. He wants only to kill. All he has ever brought is destruction and danger. It is why I cannot allow myself near humans, why I should not be here now. Why I have resisted shifting for so long…

No, human. Neither of us want to kill.

I freeze. Water passes in and out of the slits along my neck, an evolution I acquired from the curse of the monster those centuries ago. That, and my immortality. Condemning me to a long and hungry life in this lonely loch.

I breathe in slowly, the warm pulse of desire still a current in my veins.

What do you want? I ask the monster.

This is dangerous, I know. Entertaining the beast within me. Letting him spin falsehoods in my brain.

The same thing as you. To break the curse.

What? I pause.

So many years. Uncountable, the number of days I have lived this cursed life, and all this time… there has been a way to free myself?

How… it can be broken?

It whispers simply, its voice a teasing tendril stroking my brain into a fuzz. So gentle, I could almost forget the horrors it has wrought around me.

I must breed. To break the curse, I must bear young.

Above me, the beautiful woman kicks her legs. I watch eddies form around her toes, swirling a current up her delectable thighs. Delicious thighs…

No, I respond, fighting back against the way I can feel the voice altering my senses. My vision blurs slightly around the edges, and I know this is the monster’s doing. Before, the heat in my veins had brought about an eerily sharp focus, but the shapes around me are soft and pulsing now. Stop it. Stop your lies.

I will not die with you, it whispers. I know you’ve been waiting to take me with you from the world. A noble pursuit indeed. But as long as I am with you, you will never die.

My stomach roils.

So that is why. And he has known. The weeks I subjected myself to hunger in an effort to starve myself. The recklessness with which I first navigated the rocky shores, throwing myself against them, years and years ago.

It never worked. I would always survive. He would always take over, and I would heal. I would eat. I would live.

It is not I that am immortal. The monster inside me is. And I am cursed to live for as long as I carry him.

So if I am to die…

Then I must breed. Around me, the colors of the pebbles below and the sky above intensify. My vision pulses once more, and then… returns to normal.

The sun has set now. The moon is a warbly globe above the current, and the beautiful woman above me is backlit by the white light of its full face.

The heat surges anew in my loins. My cock pulses hungrily. It is not only the monster. I, too, want this woman. Want to bury myself within her. Want her to take my seed. It has been so long since I have felt the softness of a woman in my bed, and I am so lonely…

No! No, Beast. You will kill her.

I will not , it argues sweetly, assuringly. For if I kill her, she will not bear my young, and we will not be free. We will love her. We will take care of her. And together we will break our curse.

I swallow, the tingling desire almost too much to bear. My hands twitch, desperate to relieve the ache in my cock, but I know it will not be enough. This is not merely my human desire. This is the desire of the monster, the drive of the curse.

I cannot fight this forever. If not this woman, it will be another. I will only be delaying the inevitable, like I have been for years.

She must choose it, I insist at last. The realization sits bitter in my throat: the beast will not die until it breeds. I cannot kill it. And it will not let me kill myself. I will not subject her to carry this curse unwillingly. I will not let you rape this woman. Please. Allow her the choice.

The monster coils within me, considering, and with each passing second the heat of its lust and frustration build. My cock feels as though it may burst. Could I withhold the beast if it decided not to heed my direction? It has taken me over before.

Am I actually strong enough to contain it?

I gasp out a breath as the pressure becomes unbearable. Bubbles escape my open mouth, and I choke a bit on the water entering my lungs through the wrong hole.

Acceptable. The monster gives in at last. Persuade her.

No, I insist, emboldened by the hope rising in my chest. Not persuade. She must choose it—of her own free will and desire. And she must survive after.

For a moment, I feel the monster’s tension writhe inside my stomach, and the heat flares again. I grunt, fighting the overwhelming drive, its anger shooting a twisted dart of pleasure through my loins, as if it might finally consume me once and for all. I concentrate with all my might, keeping myself from giving into the urges. I will not let this creature’s lust betray my honor ever again.

Stop it! I plead. You shall not take control this time! I am stronger now. You need me!

She will survive! It snaps back, as if it is insulted. As if this agony inside me is a punishment for me doubting its sincerity. She will thrive! And at the end of her term, so shall my children.

At his words, an unbearable climax pulses through me. And then, just as quickly as it spikes, the wave subsides. I feel myself soften, the desperate ache in my cock receding to a dull throb. I breathe out in relief, a column of bubbles spiraling out of my lips.

You have three days. Or I will eat her and her friend.

Another body appears at the shore of the lake. A more slender frame, but with a slight swell to her belly. She is with child.

But I–

You will lose strength eventually. Just as you always have. You humans are all the same. You think you are invincible. But you are not.

The threat weighs heavy in my gut. If I cannot stop him, he will devour these two women. Just as he did the fisherman’s daughter.

I pray it will not come to that.