Peri

1

And suddenly one night, when the waves of lust were kissing the clouds of her imagination she realised that she was glowing like a moon in the woods on her way to home - between the Pine and the rare wild mangrove. Her hair as golden as the sky is, leaving behind droplets of an sparke that burnt and penetrated the desperate leaves lying sad and still on the ground. Her skin akin an eternal platinum surface that froze the winds trying to explore her. 

Her name was Zia. Zia had witnessed a car parked before her apartment a week ago. Day upon day passed, but the car was still - without changing its parking even by an inch. within a month, it was layered by some inches of dust and dried leaves of all colors falling from the nearby Pine and Cherry trees. To her curiosity, she decided to check. But as she went nearby, she was stormed by a rotten smell and she was afraid and was without any dare to look further into it. The car didn't have a transparent glasses so she couldn't have any view of the inside. 

She held herself strong and looked around for any passersby to ask for help. But, it was a freezing winter morning and a living creature was rare to find on the hill where her house lay aloof. Out of a sudden, she noticed a stream of raw blood coming out down the gate of the car and as soon as she held the handle of the gate to open, she was terrorized by a sharp, loud bellowing in the nearest woods. She never had heard anything like that before. An animal could never produce a sound like that, nor can a single human throat. 

Instantly, she became a victim like thing. Her mouth was filled with a salty liquid crawling down her lips. It was crimsoned. Before long, her eyes were filled with blood and she felt a hunger that her stomach had been empty for a month. Suddenly, she felt a supernatural strength in her arms and pulled the gate of the car so as to exterminate it away. Inside, lay the corpse of an animal with complicated lengthy dense brown hair- half eaten but filled with enough flesh to feed her hunger. This hunger had nothing to do with her personal appetite. 

But, the evil had a theory of its own - it never ate a corpse. So, it refilled the corpse of the animal with life and when it was alive wrinkling with pain, she jumped over it and swung and cleaved it's warm tender flesh with her teeth and quenched herself with the blood on the floor. 

When she regained her consciousness, she found herself in the middle of the forest. This was a puzzle for her and as usual she could not understand how she reached the forest. The farthest memory she had of herself was standing before the car and the blood streaming through the gate of the car.

There was blood in her mouth and her hands were drenched in blood and her jacket was stained with blood.

She walked through the dense jungle lonely, exhausted. At home, she took a bath in cold water thinking how all this had been happening since the last few months. Post bath, she resumed her daily task and at evening, on her way back to home she felt anxious and broken everywhere with fatigue and when she had vomitted, it was blood of different colours- that finally reassembled itself to form a huge giant Vulture. 

The Giant Vulture was a part of her own body and she realised that she had the power to control the Vulture and even a touch of the bird healed all her ache and the wounds. She learnt that the Vulture too, treated her as it's mother. To her eagerness, she learnt that the bird was connected to her pain and her happiness and her feelings.

The Vulture took her above the highest hills of the village and above the clouds at the speed of her thought. This heavenly height and an evil speed frightened her for a few days but before long she became a master and now the Vulture could fly her with the speed of thought. 

Breakfast lay in car and the dinner in jungle. At night, the animals were asleep and it was easier to hunt them then. Slowly, she cured her forgetfulness and she would remember everything - her breakfast laying in the car that was usually the leftover of her dinner and how she dragged it above the clouds and ate it in the midst of the jungle. The Vulture would generally eat the remains but occasionally, it would like to hunt it's own prey which was usually a wild pig or a bison. 

During those few months, she was compelled by the evil to hunt down the animals and eat their flesh. But, she learnt that the more animals she ate, the prettier she became and while, at the same time the more supernatural powers she attained. And now, that she herself was a predator and that within a few more months, there were no animals left in the nearby Jungle, she decided to shift to some other place that would likely be stuffed with some new varities of animals, for the wild boar was no longer delicious to her. 

Continued ~

© 2022 Diwakar kumar Thakur/ Story with Diwakar