The Monster’s Corner: Stories Through Inhuman Eyes

THE SCREAMING ROOM by Sarah Pinborough

IT HAD BEEN QUIET for too long. She knew that because the serpents whispered in her ears as she slept, awakening memories of when the world had been different. A time before the island, so long ago that most days she barely remembered it at all. Only in these dreams would it come back to her. She had been someone else then — a rare beauty, admired and desired by all. Men would ache for just one glance from her to them alone. Days of love and laughter and constant attention. She’d known her power and she had reveled in it. So many, many moons had passed that she barely recognized herself in the dreams. A stranger’s pale arms and slim legs and long blond hair.

The rising sun baked away the chill of the night, and she opened her eyes and sighed. The snakes settled into coils against her scalp, their voices hushed to a gentle hiss here and there. She let one hand run in and between them, enjoying the cool scales that curled momentarily around her fingers. It wasn’t their voices that she needed to fill the endless silence. She needed a new singer. It had been an age since she’d been sung to, and she ached for the music. She stretched across the vast bed and ran her hands over her rough body. The softness had gone, replaced by sinew and thick muscle, and her skin was coarse. What magic started, salt water had finished. There was no bathing in milk and water anymore. Now she swam in the ocean’s firm grip. As the centuries passed she came to prefer it. Funny how things changed.

Finally, she hauled herself up and rolled her head around her shoulders, easing away the last of the night’s tension. She looked down at herself and smiled. She wasn’t doing bad for a woman of her age. The snakes hissed, and she allowed herself a small laugh. She still had her sense of humor, and unlike in that land of the past that her dreams took her to, now when she had a man’s attention, she knew she had it forever.

In the night more plaster had crumbled from the ceiling, but she ignored the dust that had settled on her sheets. When this part of the palace was ruined she would simply move to a different set of rooms that weren’t being destroyed by the plant life that ate its way through the cracks, or hadn’t been beaten down by the wind. There were centuries more years of living to be had from this prison fortress. Centuries more silent existence with only the occasional singer to ease her pain. Sometimes she wondered if the loneliness might drive her mad.

The sea sent a breeze dancing through the open windows, and she pulled a silk wrap free from the arms of an old lover and wound it round herself. His arms stayed as they were, stone stretched out toward her. At some point, she was sure, there had been a dagger in his hand, but that was long gone, lost in the underground caves where she stored all the other useless weapons her lovers brought with them. She paused to look at him, something she hadn’t done in a long time, and a memory of flesh and skin and blond hair flashed behind her eyes. He had been handsome once, she recalled, even with his mouth fixed forever wide. This one had sung right up until the moment his breath had stopped. She had been fond of him, and he had sung to her for years, much longer than some of the rest. How could she have forgotten? She leaned forward and ran her tongue down his smooth face before leaving him where he stood.

The sun was barely in the sky, and she frowned. She was not normally up so early. She peered out beyond the walls of her derelict palace and to the sparkling crystal of the ocean beyond. The snakes hissed, woken from their slumber, as her heart thumped. She hadn’t woken naturally. Something had roused her — sounds not heard for such a long, long time. Sounds that she ached to hear with every passing day. The creak of oars, the cry of voices. They were distant, but real. This time, it wasn’t her fevered imagination torturing her with a promise of company only to leave her raging in disappointment for weeks. This time there truly was a brown fleck in the blue — a boat filled with human warmth. She moaned slightly. They were coming. They always came, the beautiful brave men. Her heart raced and heat rushed to her loins. She had to hurry. The boat was still hours away, but she had preparations to make.

By the time she was done, her rough body was thick with sweat and the snakes were writhing and twisting and hissing, unable to settle and fueled by her excitement. She pushed them out of her shining eyes and smiled. Food and wine were laid out on the rocks on the cove where the ship would land. The sun was getting hotter, and she wanted her guests to be comfortable. Heat and wine while they sent their hero to her, that was what they needed. There was only ever one from every boat that climbed the steep cliffs to reach her. None ever followed. Not once the song started. She drained a glass of red, heady wine. It was nearly time for the seduction to start. Her mouth watered in anticipation, thick strands of saliva running through the crevices on either side of her mouth. She wiped them away.

From the beach so far below, hearty cries drifted toward her as the sailors weighed anchor and sent a small rowing boat to her shores. She hurried down to the gloomy atrium on the ground floor of her ancient home. It was cool here, and her breath was wet and hard as she settled onto the chaise lounge hidden in the far shadows. She waited.

It’s hot on the island, but wading from the boat to the shore has cooled his skin. He feels energized and ready for the task ahead. His life has been waiting for this moment of destiny. The journey was uneventful and the water clear. This is fate. His heart pounds as his strong legs lead him to where his men are rifling through the plates of food and jugs of wine they’ve found on the rocks. He can feel the fear that sings clearly from their faces as they glance up at the palace built on the cliff tops, its shadow reaching down to clutch at them.

He’s not afraid. He is barely twenty-five and full of adventure and has always known that he is destined for greatness. It’s not arrogance — merely a lifetime of being the strongest and most handsome. With his easy charm and quick skills, he has always been picked out as special. He’s come to believe that he must be. The whole kingdom can’t be wrong. He thinks of the girl waiting for him. She is the prize — the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. She is his destiny and he loves her. He will marry her and they will rule the kingdom when her father is gone. There is just this one thing to do. Bring back the head. Many have tried and failed, but he knows that he’s different. He can see it in the faces of those around him. His armor gleams in the sunshine. He smiles at his men and then starts to climb.

The once-opulent chair was now covered in dust, and as she stretched along the full length she could feel the grains settling into the pockmarks on her rough, dark skin. Too many years had passed since she’d lain here, and she never came to the atrium unless receiving visitors. Where the dust came from, she couldn’t tell. The ceiling perhaps, or maybe carried down through the levels of her home on a curious breeze. She didn’t much care. It was never her furniture they looked at, after all.

Finally, when her pounding heart could barely take any more anticipation, the huge doors at the far end, rusty on their unused hinges, creaked open. The sun flooded in first, stretching almost halfway toward where she was residing in the shadows, and then she heard quick footsteps as leather sandals ran to the nearest pillars. It was like a dance, this game they always played. Her at one end, him at the other; slowly, slowly getting closer until at last their eyes met.

She was sure she could almost hear his heart beating as he paused to weigh up his best approach, and she didn’t hush the snakes but let their hungry hisses echo around the marble like a siren song. Here I am, they whispered. Seduce me.

The atrium was well laid out, with many of her former lovers there to greet their newest member, and hide him on his approach. In the space closest to her, however, they were spread farther apart, and this was invariably where the bravest and cleverest succumbed to her charms. They just couldn’t help themselves. They had to look. Men always did.

More footsteps rang out, and as he ran between the statues she caught flashes of strong tanned arms and legs. His hair was dark and glossy, pulled back tight on his head. She could change that later. She preferred them with their hair down. She liked to run her fingers through it while they sang. She slid down the chaise lounge and brought herself into view. Sometimes she had more patience for the wooing game, but not this time; she had been too long alone. It was time for him to start his song to her.

The palace is a wreck, and as he runs behind the pillar he nearly gags on the thick scent of rotting flesh that hits him like a wave. He closes his mouth and breathes through his nose. Behind him sunlight pours through the open doors, and he waits for it to bring some fresh air, but if it does, the awful stench overpowers it. He presses his back against the cold, damp stone and closes his eyes for a second, trying to regain the excited sense of purpose and adventure that he’d had on the voyage over. Now that he is alone, he’s finding it hard to maintain. Behind him, snakes rattle and hiss, far too loudly for ordinary grass adders, and as his stomach chills he knows that he’s not alone — SHE is here. He grips his sword tightly, but his palm is sweaty despite the cool.

The sunshine outside looks inviting. It also looks like it exists in a different world; a world of the ship, and the men, and his sense of being special, and the girl. His mind stops when he thinks of the girl. He can’t go back a coward. He left with such great promises to her that if he turns around now, he might as well throw himself from the cliff as climb down it. This is no time to change his mind. He takes a deep breath of the foul air and, because he is a hero after all, calms his pounding heart and studies the layout of the room. Eventually, he runs forward. He keeps his eyes down. He can do this. He can. He can.

He hides behind a statue and pretends not to know what it once was. That’s an impossible task, though, with every gray inch of the figure showing how it had once lived and breathed and thought it could kill a monster, just like him. He glances up. The face, now stone, is stretched wide in a final scream. He wonders, for a brief second, whether the man had managed to release that scream before the stone claimed him. The hissing is much closer, and stretched across the filthy marble he can see the shadow of her hideous form. The serpents at her head dance in the dark floor, and his stomach lurches. She is so much more than he had been expecting. Forward. He must go forward.

He starts to run. He’s so close now. His sword is held high, ready to swing at her neck. He doesn’t care how many attempts it will take and how bloody it becomes, he just wants her head. Someone has to take it — why NOT him? His heart pounds. He lunges forward. He musn’t look up. He musn’t look up.

He musn’t —

And their eyes met. For a moment, the surprise on his face was almost matched by hers. The snakes stilled and stared, for she couldn’t remember such a handsome suitor. Then, as the realization of his fate dawned on him, his mouth opened wide and he began to sing. The first songs were always the best. They were fresh and full of energy. She settled back on her chair and fought the urge to touch him. There would be plenty of time for that. He would still be warm and soft for such a long time.

They expected it to be sudden — that’s what she always saw on the young, handsome faces in that minute after finding their eyes catching hers. They thought it would be over in an instant, and their naïveté never failed to make her smile. To turn flesh to stone was a tricky business. It could take many long, long years to work its way from the tips of those earthy toes to the tops of their beautiful heads.

This one was no different. His dark eyes told it all. Pain and confusion. She’d seen it before — they thought that while their flesh was still soft and warm, and they breathed the same air as they had before, that somehow they could escape from the frozen state. Only when their feet turned gray and solid did they truly appreciate the journey they were on. The songs always got clearer after that.

She loved the songs.

Somewhere out in the sunlight, the sailors would be preparing their ship to leave. Their hero had been gone too long, and none would want to come up to her palace after him. She pulled the sword free from his hand and let it drop to the floor; her cheek rubbed against the fingers in its place. She sighed. It had been so long since she’d had a man’s touch. Her own thick arms wrapped around his torso, and she carried him out of the gloom and up to the bright chamber nearest her bedroom. The snakes slid across his skin, absorbing the smell and taste of his fear. His song filled her palace and she was damp with desire. So much time alone. As she set him down in the center of the vast room, she smiled almost coquettishly from beneath the nest of serpents that hung over one eye. He had nothing to fear from her now. His song grew stronger.

It was funny how things changed. Once, way back in the beginning, when this was a new life for her, she had called this place the screaming room. She had tried to cut the snakes from her head and had rubbed her body against the rough walls, wanting her skin to be pale and smooth again. The snakes had grown back and her skin had healed by the time the first visitor came to her island. She’d been so happy — that hadn’t changed over the centuries — for some company. She’d thought they’d come to save her.

She’d smiled at him, and then the song had started. It had torn her apart, that song, the thing that was happening to him. Back then, after trying everything to make him whole again, she’d cut out his tongue to silence his noise, to shut him up, to make it stop. She’d locked him away and hoped that whatever was happening it would be quicker. Year after year, she would check on him, hoping and praying that it would just be over, until eventually that day came.

Once he was stone, however, she’d found that she missed the company. She’d liked knowing he was there, and that she wasn’t alone. By the fourth visitor to her shores, she’d come to love the songs they sang her. It wasn’t screaming at all. It was love poetry from a suitor held in her thrall.

She no longer worried whether the loneliness and the snakes were driving her mad. Now she loved the changes in the singers’ songs and bodies as the stone claimed them inch by inch. Some days she would simply sit and brush her fingers over the places where the cold hardness met with the warm, perfect skin. She would lean in and lick along the line.

All this was to come.

She left him alone for a while to settle into his new surroundings and changed into her silkiest robes, those that when the light caught them would turn sheer and allow her lover’s eyes to see right through to her shape beneath. Along her neck, she dabbed perfumes she’d made from the weeds and plants on the rocks, and she fashioned the calm snakes into perfect rings against her scalp. She waited for evening to fall. She wasn’t impatient. She was used to waiting.

Nonononoithurtstoomuchiwanttogohomeidon’tcareaboutthegirlsurelytheyllcomeformeshescomingbackthemonsterandshestouchingmeicantstopscreamingijustwantodiepleaseletmedieicanttakethis….

She knew he was watching her as she lit the candles around the room until they were both bathed in a soft yellow glow. It was flattering lighting, but he didn’t need it. She wondered if she’d ever had such a suitor. He was more than handsome. He was charismatic. Women would have fallen at his feet, and when he had grown older he could have led an army into certain death and they would have gone willingly. Not now, though. Not anymore. There was no growing old for him — just years and years of her love and the changing to come. Years of his song.

She danced as he screamed, using his voice as her lute. She swayed and sashayed before him and then, when the flirtation was complete, she wound herself around his still body. She ran her hands over him, gently at first, but as the wine and the lust took her, she groped him roughly, the snakes running over his face, nipping and biting, wanting to taste what they could of him. She dipped her dank tongue into his sweet mouth and was sure she could see her own lust reflected in his glassy eyes. He wanted her — it was just like the old days, the ones she tried so hard to forget and remember, when she was young and lithe and beautiful.

She poured wine into his open mouth and licked the overspill away.

The night was long and full of love, and when dawn broke she left him to the cool morning air. They had so much time ahead of them, and the brief separation would only make their hunger for each other greater. He sang to her as she slept, and as she slept she was smiling. Her dreams were of love and parties and beauty and of days so long gone by. His song was her lullaby and she let it wrap around her and keep her safe. The loneliness was gone and she was loved again. There would be no more silence, not for years and years and years.