Gleaming Madness

It had been another shitty day. Mom had read me the riot act for not doing the dishes properly - I’d left a damn spoon in the sink because it was starting to rust, and she went crazy because I’m being ungrateful to her for letting me live in her house. Then dad came home and started hitting me because he had a bad day at work and somehow that was my fault, and I’d had it. I left the house before I killed either of them, and my wandering had taken me to a little occult store downtown.

“Arcane, Occult and Obscure. Sounds like an interesting place.” I checked my wallet and saw that my parents hadn’t decided to search it yet this week, as I still had almost a hundred bucks from doing yard work for the neighbors. I went inside and saw the proprietor busy with another customer, a young lady in her mid-twenties, and he looked up and said “I’ll be with you in just a moment, young man.”

“Take your time, sir.” I may have been furious with my parents but I wasn’t going to be like them and take my anger out on innocent people. While he finished with his other customer I wandered the store, looking at the items with mild interest until something caught my eye. It was extremely dusty, apparently not having been touched in some time, and as I picked it up to inspect it I felt my anger at my parents turn into full-fledged fury. I pushed it down, now not being the time for that, and dusted the object off with a handkerchief I kept in my pocket.

It was oddly shaped, about the size of my hand and it shimmered in the light, a rainbow of color dancing across a golden background. It was light too, feeling almost half the weight it should. As I was admiring it, the proprietor came over and saw what I was holding. “I see you found that thing.”

I could tell he had mixed feelings about whatever this was, and I decided to press my luck and ask about them. “That scale has been a thorn in my side ever since it fell into my hands. I’ve never been able to sell it; the only people that want it enjoyed the anger it filled them with. I couldn’t justify selling it to someone with that kind of personality, so I’ve left it on the shelf. I suppose you’ll want to keep looking, young man?”

I looked at the scale in my hand, and I thought that this fury it filled me with could be useful for dealing with my parents. A plan started to form, and the scale was going to be crucial. “Depends. How much is this?”

“If you really want it, I could sell it for seventy. Is that acceptable?”

It was a lot less money my parents could steal from me, so it certainly was. “Absolutely. To the counter, sir?”

He nodded, and I paid him once we were standing on opposite sides of the counter. He offered me a bag, but I politely declined and said I’d keep it in my pocket. He seemed almost sad when I told him I had to get home or my parents would be angry, but he simply told me to take care and travel quickly. I nodded and left, going home quickly and finding my parents waiting for me. “Wallet. Now.”

I put my hand in my pocket, but when I brushed against the scale I stopped and felt that fury rising again. “Fuck you. I earned this money, I’m keeping it.”

Mom stomped towards me and grabbed me by the throat, saying “As long as you live in this house you will do as we tell you! Now give me that wallet you little brat!”

My other hand quickly found my knife, and after I flipped it open I stabbed her in the arm that was holding my throat. She screamed and let me go, and dad tried to reach for his pistol but stopped when he looked at my arm. “What the hell?”

I looked and saw scales of the same shimmering gold as the one I’d bought flowing up my arm. I hadn’t realized it until I saw them, but it hurt as they grew, the pain only adding to my rage and driving me further and further to the edge of losing control. He reached for his gun again, calling me a ‘demonic piece of shit’ and I stabbed him in the gut before he could draw it. He looked at me with confusion and perhaps betrayal, like he didn’t understand why I’d hurt him, and when I saw the pain in his features it drove me wild with bloodlust, and I kept stabbing him, over and over as the scales spread across more of my body, my left arm and hand now a draconic limb and the scales spreading over my chest, causing me even more pleasurable pain.

What? No, it was pleasurable, the pain felt good. it made me thirst for more chaos, more bloodshed and violence, and after I’d all but gutted my father’s corpse the scales had covered most of my front and both my arms, leaving me with no need for a knife. I dropped it into my father’s corpse, a little token of ‘appreciation’ for a good time, and climbed the stairs to look for my mother. As I climbed the scales crawled down my legs, the pain of the scales and the agony of my bones cracking magnifying my bloodlust at least tenfold, and when I broke down her door I heard her sobbing in terror under her bed. I laughed, a dark, malevolent sound that even gave me chills, and dragged her out into the open, holding her in the air by her throat, much like she’d done to me so many times before.

“Well now, what should I do with you, hmm? I owe you a great deal after everything you put me through, so perhaps a night alone is what we need. I doubt you’ll last all night, but it will be fun mutilating your corpse once I’ve ripped your lungs out.”

She went crazy, hitting me, smacking me, doing everything she could to break my grip. Unfortunately, that’s when my hips shifted with a resounding, agonizing crack that forced me onto all fours as my spine bulged and tore its way out of my body, muscle, sinew and scales covering the bone as I screamed in blissful torment. Then I felt my back writhing, new growth forming under the skin as talons tore through my back and grew into new arms, scales spreading over them and then across my back as a golden film spread from my new arms to my back. I found that it was much easier to walk with my new arms gripping my shoulders to keep them out of the way as I ever so slowly hunted down my dear mother.

“Mother dear... Oh mother dear... where are you...?” My voice had become a little deeper, a rich baritone that beautifully conveyed the malice I intended. It wasn’t gravelly either, like I expected. It actually had a very smooth, sharp tone, like oil flowing across a knife. I could hear very faint sounds coming from the kitchen, so I checked there first.

“Mother dear... I’m coming for you... I think I’ve almost found you... And then we can have fun...”

I heard metal sliding against metal, and saw a reflection of her rummaging through the knife drawer in the toaster. I grinned as she pulled out a steak knife, and I drooled a little as I imagined how much pain it would cause me. I snarled and sprang over the counter, pinning her down with my foreclaws on her chest as she struggled to throw me off. When I felt the knife pierce my scales, I was in ecstasy. I could feel every detail of the steel blade cutting my flesh, from the tip breaking my shimmering, blood-spattered scales to the teeth ripping bits of muscle inside me. When the knife was as deep in my body as it could possibly go I clamped my jaws around her arm and bit down, breaking her arm with the ease of a dry twig and the ripping her forearm off with a savage jerk of my head.

As I felt her blood flowing into my throat and my own purplish-black blood flowing down my chest, I felt a great pain near the end of my blunt snout. Two bumps formed under my scales and tore through the thin flesh, growing to become twin, painfully throbbing horns just behind my nostrils. As the pain of my transformation, the wounds from today and from all the torment I’d been subjected to swept through my mind I felt the last remnants of my old self sink beneath the thrashing waves and disappear into the madness of the storm. I was complete, but my work here was not yet finished. I took my time with her, using a single, razor-sharp foretalon to slice her open as I would a fish, exposing her organs and her sternum, which I gladly broke in two after I peeled the flesh off of her ribs, laying it to either side as a macabre pair of wings. I spread her ribs wide and saw her beating heart thumping faster than a snare drum, and I let my right foretalon hover over it, as if to suggest that her suffering was about to end.

After all she’d put me through though, I wasn’t going to end her life just yet, though I knew it wouldn’t be long before she lost too much blood. I took a talon and slowly dragged it across her forehead, just below her hairline, and then I peeled her scalp back to expose her skull before I broke her jaw in the middle and pulled the pieces to the sides, leaving her with a frightful grin. From there, as her breathing grew shallower I cut a hole in each of her lungs, savoring the fear and pain in her eyes as they grew dim and her heart beat its last.

My head swung around and I growled as sirens wailed and lights flashed in the distance, and I smashed down the door and ran into the night, my new wings soon lifting me into the air and carrying me to a nearby mountain, a place that, by rights, shouldn’t have existed in this world. But exist it did, and as I claimed this place as mine with a dark, mind-bending mist, I knew that my bloodlust and addiction to pain would not be sated for long. And as surely as I knew that, I knew that dark days were coming, and I would gladly make them darker.