I wrote this for a school imaginative essay assignment for the book Beowulf. For those who don't know, Beowulf is a classic Old English epic poem about a man who becomes a hero after saving the Danes from a vicious monster who raids and murders every night--that monster's name is Grendel. Beowulf (the hero's name, as it would figure) actually goes on to kill Grendel's mother and a dragon, but that's not what this is about. This piece is about the battle between Grendel and Beowulf (and the preliminaries, which I focused more on, actually), but it takes place from Grendel's point of view. I actually liked this, and it's the first thing I've written in a while and liked, so I thought I'd post it.
As a side note, I'd have written more, but the paper was supposed to be 500-600 words in length and as it is it's more like 700. ^^;;
The darkness enveloped me, cloaking my form as I slipped through the night, traversing the shadows in search of blood. Like any wild beast, I am hell-bent on destruction, devastation, and massacre, only satisfied when my claws tear the life from the defenseless, the chosen who suffer in my vise-grip of torment. I walk the world alone, and to the same end, I kill alone, unaided, terrorizing for terror’s sake. The sweetness of the flesh of man tempts me into devouring more and more every day, drives me, compels me, and assigns me a purpose. Purpose? What a silly concept for a raving monster. I need no purpose defined for me. My calling in life is always clear-cut, sharply outlined by the blood spattered mail coats and blunted blades that try to cleave flesh from bone in a vain attempt to cease my horrors. Such a pitiful waste of mortal effort. They are nothing more than sheep to me, and I am a shepherd wielding not a staff but a scythe—much like Death himself, I flay them apart and drink deeply the futility of their lives as everything they fight for drains from their bodies, leaving nothing but sanguine husks of former imagined glory.
Tonight is different. Tonight, man’s everlasting fight against death has a new champion, a new hero to rally the meaningless forces of hope in a last-ditch effort to expunge the greatest threat to their livelihood. He is a beacon for them to assemble themselves around, relighting the flames of possibility in the hearth of the human heart. He has come, determined, with one purpose—to destroy me. I could not have known what I would face when I ripped the blackness of the night asunder, when I went about my routine of ravaging everything the unworthy, pathetic bipedal cattle create.
The barrier to the stronghold where all good men came to carouse and boast before I tasted their blood crumpled before my unholy might as always before, a sign of the futility of man’s struggle. No matter how long he strives to prolong himself and his legacy, his works will always fall into ruin sooner or later. It would be only moments before I stole away with the flesh I craved, snuffing out the lives of as many of the frail humans as I desired in the process. The soul-shattered survivors would be left to pray to their oblivious gods for a solution to my unending scourge…or so it had always been before.
I swept down upon a defenseless wretch lost deep within the recesses of his own mind, a man imprisoned in a drunken sleep—and now freed from the same, torn loose from the confines of his mortal body. His life ran all over my body, staining my matted fur and only heightening my lust for murder. Lost in the red haze of violent passion, I struck at my next victim—but no! It was not to be the way I had planned! My target was not only alert—he was waiting, lying in wait for my arrival, more devious and cunning than any foe I had faced before!
I found my arm wrenched behind my body, straining at the joint. Fire coursed through my body, a searing pain I was unfamiliar with. This man was my equal—no, my better! Tooth and nail were ineffective, and though I fought and struggled, he held me in a death grip I could not have hoped to escape with might twice my own. My eyes screwed up as the torturous feelings surged within me, and suddenly, I heard a hissing whisper in my ear, my foe conveying his distaste for my ilk:
“Die, fiend and enemy of all who fear god.â€
It was then that I knew my fight was over—I would prowl Heorot no more. With a sudden jerk, I felt the unbearable agony of having my arm torn from its socket, blood erupting from the wound and staining the architecture of the mead hall. As I limped away from the battle, certain of my fate, crawling away from that man who dared to deal me justice, one thought echoed in my mind continually:
“At last, the damned can rest.â€
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