Allie Nelson

Beast Charming

 

Old wives' tales go thus: Behind every man, a monster. Behind every husband, beast. And roses become thorns in time.

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But the curse of my egregious veins only ever comes at midnight: turning me to a monster.

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Assuredly, Nurse fixes me potions and poultices to mask the stench of my devilish, rotting flesh come supper. The court whispers that the Crown Prince wears a mask after I was scarred in war, and completely covers my limbs in the finest of Parisian fabrics out of a sense of Apollonian vanity, so as not to let the inelegant sun spoil my lily white flesh.

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Nurse was the only one who knew - who had been there when mother bargained with the Devil to give her stillborn son life: a drop of Satan's blood flowed through me, and I had the Devil's gold hair to prove it.

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I had been raised by the Council of Lords, and was now the de facto ruler after my coming of age, with Marchioness Peters the head of state before I reached eighteen. Marchioness Peters had been my father the King's right hand man before the King and Queen had been killed on a hunting trip - only five red claws left on each of their bare breasts, with their torn shrouds like a bier mound around my fainted form.

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I was twelve the eve of the hunting accident, the only survivor, and the maids always whispered that my teeth grew sharper by the day after my parents perished.

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Tonight - tonight, I would choose a Queen. Nurse said it was the way of Kings to take a bride before assuming the throne, and Marchioness Peters agreed. Prince Charming, who had won the Crusades and battle against the Dragon of Claremont, who never revealed his face beyond merry, bright blue eyes peeping through my Harlequin mask, would choose a noblewoman to wed by the stroke of midnight. Then, a King. My father's birthright.

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Pulchritude, I thought. When my flesh turns to maggots and mold each night, and I grow horns, claws, venom, and wings - aren't I worth only dog meat?

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And so a bride. Every man's dream. But for a monster that hungered for flesh, I was wary of women. Their elegant throats, their breasts that could cut - the Beast in me unleashed each midnight would have even had his way with old Nurse if I - the aberrant Prince - was not restrained and enchained with seven lashings and bindings to my quarters each strike of the twelfth hour.

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But this bride of mine would have to know my secret... to share my bed, the bed of a monster. And to bear us little beastlings. It would be a treacherous arrangement, and I was half-given to a life of virginity and tax ledgers.

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"Char, it's time, the ball," Nurse said, grinning widely. She was the only attendant I let serve me, the handmaiden of my mother and my wet nurse, who had taken the King and Queen's deathbed secrets close to her breast.

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I buttoned my blue suit and fanned out the starched coattails. Hunger rose in me - and not the dynastic kind - as I thought of the feast of ladies' white necks that would be available to partake of in eye alone tonight. Gleaming, ivory throats - cheeks ablush. Women always scared me. But now, I had to find a wife.

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"I think I'm ready," I said, my voice clear as a burbling brook. I stood 6'5, towering like my blood father - Lucifer. I arranged my mask so it obscured all but my hair and eyes. It was part of my facade by now, a way to distance myself from commoners and noblefolk alike. Only Nan ever saw my handsome, angular face, with lips like cherries, when it was off. "Let's get this over with."

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Nan wished me luck, and I made my way to the ball.

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Marchioness Peters was dressed in a Tyrian purple suit and waistcoat. He avidly introduced me to the up and coming maidenfolk of the provinces and London alike. But Buckingham was dull for a beast like me - I craved Herne's woods.

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The women - their scents, the flush of their cheeks. It was too much. I lasted two hours without wanting to devour one blood and bone. I excused myself, then hastened to the King's Wood, where only I was allowed to roam, much less hunt.

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"Damn it, Peter, you couldn't even last until midnight," I wept, the Change overtaking me. I, this hideous, rotting demon, came out. I prowled the riverbank, half-expecting Nimue to drag me to the watery depths out of shame for Uther Pendragon's line. I was much more Merlin, a cambion, than any Prince Charming the English made me out to be.

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I fell asleep in a saint grotto to Mary. It was my refuge - I could always feel the Madonna praying for me fervently in the cool, cavernous spring - it had been a refuge of old doddering mother, once she had birthed a dead babe, and given me life through a pact with Satan. She was of the blood of Melusine, and those women knew how to summon the Devil in a pinch - our line of webbed toes proved it.

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I awoke to someone petting my rotten hind legs, the fur matted, then arranging the bloody mess of razor-thin meat slabs and black hair around my head.

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I growled, awakening, thinking it a fey. But it was just a girl - a girl in a blue dress that was tattered and old, and glass slippers.

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"Are you cursed too, dear Beast?" the strange girl asked. She was hair of gold - as lost as I. Beautiful, with violet eyes and scars all over her body. "Do you know how torn my flesh gets, to be cursed to walk the world in glass heels? How it digs into my bone, just like your pennants of rot? My father, Marchioness Peters, has hidden me away in an attic all my life, replaced me with stepmother and my stepsisters. I escaped. My fairy godmother said I would find answers at this ball, but the guards saw the tatters on me, and would not let me in."

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"Are you not scared of me, girl of glass?" I growled, her touch soothing. I had never been touched by a woman like this before - much less in my form of the damned. A hellhound of rotting flesh and black ragged wings.

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"Hell goes with me, don't you know that, fair beast? Glass has no worth. At night, I dream of Hell. Of my bones turning to glass, my flesh to ice. I freeze, these damn things on my feet. They are shut in."

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"What is your name, glass girl?"

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"Cinderella. Yours?"

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"Charm- I mean, uh, Peter."

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"That is an odd name for a hell beast. Peter. I like it! Say, Peter, would you like to leave this grotto with me? I have had it with all of London, telling my secret dreams to mice and cheese. I am a seamstress of some talent, and you could be my guard dog."

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"I am afraid this form will not last the night. Come morning, I will no longer be beast. I am supposed - supposed to find a wife. I hunt when I must eat flesh. Are you not scared I will eat you? Every thief and thief's wife I have eaten have called me cursed cur, foul mongrel, dog beast of Hell. I devour them anyways."

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"I have splinters of glass for skin - they will sprout to pierce your snout. My mother saw her reflection one day in glass and boasted she was more beautiful than Lilith, the ever-pregnant demoness. So Lilith made me a child of glass, born and sawing open mother's womb like a broken windowpane. She died of blood loss. No one will touch me, they use cloth and gloves. But you, beast..." Cinderella ran her glassy, sharp nails down my ridges. "You can withstand me."

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We talked all night, into the morning. Of our dreams. Our family. Our despair. I finally admitted, over a bottle of stolen scotch this vagabond Cinderella had in her skirts pocket, that I was the Prince now missing from the ball, and Lucifer's curse on me.

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Cinderella was kind, gentle, she combed my bloody hair with her glass comb. And by morning, we kissed. And then, we knew each other as beast and woman. A carnal delight, her glass spinnerets piercing my bloody, knotted breast.

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We fell asleep under Mary's gaze, in the King's Grotto, by the spring, then bid Nurse adieu in the quiet hours as we stole into the palace.

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"Give the throne to Marchioness Peters. I am off to travel the world with my wife, dear Nurse," I said. Cinderella had broken my curse.

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I was still beast. I would never be disgusting man again.

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"Oh dear Charming Peter, I wish you well. You broke the curse chaining you to frail humanity. You have found a girl of the stained glass of Notre Dame," Nurse cried, hugging me and my bride one last time.

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Cinderella smiled, a glass spear in her hand made of adamant. She mounted my back, and off into the autumnal morning we speared, on thief roads and hanging grounds, to haunt Herne's wood, all of Europe, Africa, and Asia, taking in sewing when we needed to, killing when we were hungry - and we had five glass wolf babes, a wild rambling brood.

 

Allie Nelson is a science communicator by day and romance novelist by night. Her work has appeared in Apex Magazine, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, FunDead Publications' Exquisite Aberrations Gothic Anthology, Eternal Haunted Summer, Frontiers in Health Communication, Renewable Energy World, POWER Magazine, and various other venues.

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