Dear Marionette

I first off want to apologize to you my love for taking so long in getting back to you. I'm frankly aware that the duration between now and my last letter has been several months. I deeply regret this span of time but you must realize that my "work" keeps me very busy. Some days I am so occupied with my tasks that I scarcely have time to  sit down and eat, let alone commit my thoughts to pen and paper. Nevertheless, my feelings for you can never change, nor can any testament of time serve to diminish their intensity. My darling...there are times when I've cried like a child realizing that you no longer share this warm bed beside me. I still can smell the sweetness of your hair and taste the soft nectar of your wet cherry lips. If it were at all possible  I would reach up and snatch a handful of the very stars themselves, only to see the smile on your face as I hand them to you as a gift.

Alas my love! Would that we could be reunited over a warm fire sharing the same bed in a cold winter's night. In my dreams, I smell your hair and the touch of your skin against mine feels like soft cotton.

My love this feeling inside of me never ceases...it never stops troubling me not for one day. I thought by escaping the crude auspices of the raw city for the quiet tranquility of the country side, I could somehow release my tortured soul from this captivity. Sadly my love...I was mistaken. Greatly mistaken...for this quaint little fishing town nestled between a harbor and the port of Canterberg, has done little more to dissuade the darkness inside of me than any gruesome back alleyway or cruel rat infested crevice of that wretched city. In fact, I would have to say, in some ways my love....being out here has...actually increased this...sickness.

The sweet country air, the gentle aroma of morning flowers, the exhilarating aroma of fresh sea water...for all of these things..these beautiful things...my love..this sickness....this madness swells....it grows like a cancer inside of me. It seems as if beauty only serves to feed its hellish appetite even more. It has grown to such an overwhelming intensity.... the likes of which I...Ive never experienced before....

Oh God...my love... I pray on my hands and knees...night and day...for salvation. I pray that God release me from the confines of this hideous engagement. If there is still a chance of my soul being saved...in some way there is still hope for my redemption...

I fear though my love..at this point, I have evolved in freakish monstrosity. I have sunken to such a level of vile beastial perversion, that I have lost my very soul without any hope of it not being damned for all eternity. No priest dare hear my confession...no church dare grant me refuge. I am a black demon...conjured from the bowels of oblivion. Sinister and ravenous in its raw craving for the delicacy of human flesh.

Many nights ago my love. I found myself naked and stalking the shadows of the great wilderness that surrounds this village. Oh how the trees and shrubs gave way to my strange precense, for even mother nature herself hisses and spits at the abominable thing I've become.

The rage inside of me was unrelenting...unwavering.

It roared within me with bombastic tenacity. My body was awashed in a manic sweat, the result of the inferno blazing within my abdomen. Lord God....I tried and tried to quench the fire. To somehow out its fury with precarious thoughts of lighter happier moments. My love, I even imagined your beautiful face over and over.

Alas! Even the image of your delicacy could not dissuade the evil thing which haunts my soul. It had by this time totally eclipsed the sum totality of my being and enshackled the realms of my consciousness into slavery. Vitriolic thoughts of murder and madness encompassed every waking moment. By the grace of God, I somehow mustered enough will to commision the last soldier of humanity within me. Stalwartly he fought desperately to hold at bay the black torrents of evil threatening to overrun my brain. It was a valiant effort but eventually he too fell and I succumbed to this black demonic entrapment. A thirst for human blood swelled up inside me like some hideous pregnant volcano. Anxious to free itself from the pains of labor, by violently spilling its fiery contents down onto the worlds below. This thirst grew and grew until my mouth salivated with vacuous droppings from the merest thought of killing another person. In my nakedness,  I pranced around feverishly, even rolling head first into the moist black dirt and covering myself with rocks and twigs like a bothered sow. I barked and spat, growled, and bared my teeth. I bit into my own arm, ripping out pieces of pale white skin. Savoring the taste of my own blood, I gorged myself on the exposed wound...completely ignoring all pain and discomfort. For a moment, this act of self  mutilation actually satiated my thirst. I sat there in the dirt on my hands and knees covered in a mixture of my own blood and filth. My eyes were no longer the eyes of a man but that of some foul baelor-fiend conjured from the depths of abominable unspeakable dimensions. 

Just when I began to entertain the idea that that which had come over me would soon pass. To my horror, I felt the thirst suddenly return upon me like a thundering storm. Only this time to a much greater degree and intensity. Such that it absolutely dwarfed the very first occurence. I could not even rationalize my own thoughts. Instead, I moved instinctively...primevally...like an animal. No...to say that my state at that moment was akin to any beast that stalked the land, soared high in the clouds, or perused the murky depths of the oceans, would have been a terrible affront to all of Gods living creatures. For they in all their beastial fury were only acting out their savage nature as a means of survival. I on the other hand ravaged and wrought not out of sustenance but out of sheer carnality. I killed for my own sick perverted enjoyment. For no other reason than to satisfy the unholy bloodlust which now corrupted my soul.

I weep now my love.

The memory of that terrible night is too much to bare. I wish to God that I could not remember it. My actions on that night were so reprehensible...so hideous, that I even hesitate to commit them to paper for fear of giving you nightmares my darling. Nevertheless, I will tell you exactly what happened. I feel it best that you know full well the dark depths of my depravity. The true level of debauchery that I've sunken to. The thing that has kept me away from you all this time. I pray that you not judge me too harshly. As I've said it is not me doing these terrible things my love. No, it is a hideous demon that I've been powerless to stop from inhabiting every crevice of my countenance.

That night as I wallowed and wrestled with my own loathsome savagery in that dark and sullen wilderness. I heard a strange noise. Something that awakened the feeble fading semblance of human consciousness still vaguely apparent in my head. At first it was very faint, as if it had come from some distance, but then as I pricked my ears to listen more intently. It grew louder and louder, until I could no longer deny its existence in entirety.

The bloodlust took full control of me in that moment and I shed all mortal transgressions. I was a monster now...a filthy, naked, festering monster. Wild eyed, and mad with enmity. I came upon the progenitor of the strange noise. Presenting myself like a ghastly vengeful phantom before it.

It was a girl...barely older than a child. A vapid frill little thing, with deep purple blue eyes and dirty black hair rolled up into a bun. She wore a black cotton dress with tiny lilly white frills. Her skin was pale and sharp, almost a brilliant white under the gentle gleam of the pale moonlight. She was slender but her legs were thick and ruddy. Looking oddly out of proportion with the shrewish quality maintained by the rest of her body. She carried a little wicker basket full of freshly picked herbs. The scent of them upset my nostrils, only adding to my rage. To protect her cargo, a leather sling rung over her shoulder. Which in itself was attached to the handle of her basket. The fact that she was out during this hour, by herself, picking vegetables. Meant that she had the kind of confidence built up inside her which could only have come from performing such a mundane activity many times before.

The poor child....I write this with somber tears running down both sides of my face. The thought of her innocence and the way she just stood there. Her terror was so great that it rendered her incapable of moving. She became transfixed, rooted to  the very spot where she stood. She went half mad after glimpsing me emerging from the shadows. The sanguine expression of horror on her face still haunts me to this day my love. I weep at the thought of that poor girls last moments. She had to be no more than fourteen...a babe...and I snatched her little life away from her all the same.

I reared up over my prey as if she were a delicate little flower. She dropped her basket and it fell to the ground with a loud thud. The herbs fell out all over the ground and she knelt in haste to try and recover them. Looking up at me she raised her  outstreched hands to her face as if attempting to deny the very existence of such a horrendous thing like me.

Oh my darling....if only I could.....just for a moment....

She died so easily in my hands, when I clasped her neck in between them. The loud snap of it breaking was disgustingly satisfying. Even still, she managed to get out one long croak before passing from this existence into the next. I had no idea what type of girl she was. I had no idea why she had been doing what she was doing or what she had hoped to accomplish with her nocturnal gatherings.

What I did know, was that I felt the most exquisite paroxysm of ecstasy as I bit into her soft flesh. It was so sweet, a feeling almost indescribable. I gorged myself on her corpse...laughed as I defiled her body again and again. This poor tiny child had no more significance to me than a cold slab of beef at the butchers shop. Tearing her dress apart from the seams, I ripped open her belly with my bare hands, then plunged them deep into her bowels. Enjoying the warm fuzziness of her intestinal gases. Wicked and steaming, I perused the many sacred bits of her little body with lascivious frenzy. Removing all of her organs one by one and then stacking them crudely in a wet sloppy mass right beside me.

When it came time to remove her heart. I found that it was heavier than normal. Or at least  more than what it should've been for a girl of that age. A slippery, veiny, thing that was full of surprises. I held it in my hands, turning it over and over while marveling at its peculiar heft. Without warning the demon spoke to me in a chilly whispering voice like a rustling wind.

"Doesn't it look rather juicy? Why don't you have a bite?"

I cursed and spat at the notion. Yet no matter how I tried to admonish such a disgusting proposition. I found that the devilish suggestion took such a root in my mind that it was near inescapable. The more I tried to resist the urge the more it overwhelmed my senses. Until finally i bit into the damned thing...the still warm blood squirting everywhere and saturating my already gore caked face anew. The heart was chewy and tough...like an old steak that had simmered too long. The flavor was as any raw organ should be...quite dispicable. However that did not dissuade me in the least, as I proceeded to consume the entire thing.

After I had consumed all of the girls raw heart I still was not satiated. My thirst for blood and flesh was still effervescent. I turned my attention now to the pile of steaming entrails and unhesitatingly gobbled them down all the same. The small intestines provided me a slight hindrance as it was not so readily consumable. I had a rather tedious time squeezing out the gobs of human excrement contained inside of it.

Finally, with the last morsel passing down into my esophagus. I felt the pang of thirst start to give way. The heavy veil of madness lifted and the demonic shroud of evil receded into the nether regions of my psyche from whence they came. I was at ease. Naked and covered in filth and gore. I grew frightened and ashamed. This mix of emotions pervaded my consciousness and were soon followed by absolute dread.

"What if someone had seen me kill this girl?"

The thought chilled me to the core like an icy wind from the borealis. Now self preservation took root in my rational. I so far had managed to conceal my crimes from the general public but this particular killing was so gruesome, I was afraid there simply  wasnt any way to avoid culpability.

I made up my mind to bury what was left of her. Her half eaten remains and the many giblets and dainties left cast aside from my "meal". In fact, I buried every possible trace of the child so conspicuously, that I myself would have had trouble locating the exact spot if I were to go looking for her today.

I then ran with wanton abandon through the wilderness. Racing like a rabid dog to a familiar tree where I had hung a burlap satchel the night before. In it was a black hooded robe, a pair of trousers, a cotton shirt, and black sandals. Searching around in the darkness for a means to rid myself of some of the filth covering my naked body. I quickly snatched up a large swatch of black leaves. Rubbing them together produced a kind of gelatinous cream, which I worked into a lather and rubbed all over my body. I scrubbed and scrubbed until the majority of the filth had subsided, and I achieved some crude semblance of normalcy in my appearance once again. I then adorned myself in the aforementioned garments, giving me the means to rejoin society...that is at least on a cosmetic level.

My dear it has been two full weeks now since I commited that terrible crime. My dear Marionette...I cannot tell you how woefully sorry I am for the whole thing. The girls parents have organized a search party, who go out into the wilderness every night with dogs and lanterns. I just hope in my madness, I buried her deeply enough into the earth to avoid the clever noses of those incessant canines. I pray everyday that mother earth somehow seeking retribution for my actions, doesnt betray my secrets to the rest of the world.

Even more importantly, I spend every waking moment quaking in fear and derision. How long before the damnable thirst returns? How long before the demon takes a hold of me and I must kill again? Perhaps the bloodlust will propel me to commit even greater more atrocious acts of murder next time? There is only so much killing one can do before the forces of fate catch up with you. So far I've been able to conceal the evil that dwells within my soul, but as time passes, I am no longer sure I will be able to continue to do so. I fear spending the rest of my life in a prison cell or a trip to the gallows most of all my love. Fate has never smiled on me and I forever hate the black shaman who has sent this curse upon my head.

I write to you this day my beloved to bid you farewell.

My dear Marionette, I have always loved you even more than I've loved myself. Hopefully, you can one day forgive me for the things that Im telling you. Be strong my love for you must raise our children to be good and God fearing. Kiss them and tell them that daddy loves them but cannot be with them now. Things are too far gone and I am no more a man in the literal sense. I beg you to carry on in this life without sadness or reproach. I have earned my place in hell my love, so please do not weep for me. Just remember as it may give you some small measure of comfort, that I fought against this "thing" with all my heart. In the end, I just wasnt strong enough to resist it..for what can any man hope to achieve against the very essence of evil itself?

I write this with my pen in one hand and a pistol in the other. It is an old revolver, once used by the british military. I bought it from the elder gentleman who lives above the old shop just north of the road leading down to the docks. Its chambered in .45 caliber, a quite powerful round. More than enough power to kill a man. It sits on my lap now as I write this to you my love. I had one bullet specially made with a tip of silver nitrate. It was very expensive to make. I had to sell the gold pocket watch you bought me last christmas. No matter, it was well worth it. I cannot go on living with this thing festering inside me. How many more innocent people will be lost because of me? I refuse to destroy anymore lives so I've decided to take my own.

The silver tipped bullet shot straight into my heart will finally break the spell and release me from the demon's grasp. My dear, it is the only way...the only thing left for me to do. Please understand, I wish there were more time. Some other way, but I've exhausted all options. Quite frankly, I'm tired of running from my fate. Perhaps God will have mercy on me and grant me a glimpse of you and our children's faces one final time.

My Dearest Marionette, I will always love you.....