Neowulf

The beast lowered a bloody brow, bladder drenched in soggy sweat leaking onto the feast the beast now gorged itself in.

Bare and hairy and reeking of salty-iron encrusted by water straight from the gall of Abel,

The beast twitched in the cold bristling along the hair of its back.

Grimy appendages tore open sutured wounds, wrestling through the defiled ribcage till the beast could altogether rip out the corpse’s twain lungs and heart,

Then swiftly gutting the victim from the inside out, cracking ribs, spilling urine, mixing dirt with blood and drool with a distinctly hydrogenated appendix.

The beast individually shredded each morsel of food afterwards into manageable portions, stomach growling from the last time too much had entered that quivering, cavernous trap in one bite; observing previously that brains should receive efficient slicing and dicing and beating preceding any oral consummation; however, lacking sufficiently sharp claws the beast resorted to tearing the organs apart betwixt two hands.

While hunched over the food, the beast left unnoticed a visibly shaken foe quivering above amidst the sieves of a weeping willow, who—perhaps unbeknownst herself at this moment—possessed a weapon lost in essence to time, drifting slowly between madness and grief and the unrelenting squelching carnival amassed below her.

The wind gently coaxed the willow a tad bit moonwards, rustling the woman’s wear ever so slightly to alert the beast of her precarious presence.

She froze, naturally, finding herself armed with every weapon donned by the beast—though admittedly donning more clothing—the branch snapped, she fell on the beast, stared into the eyes of the haggard sea-blue-eyed wretch: and screamed. Sharp. Shrill.

Glass-breaking, overturning the remaining clasp of horror from the beast-man’s mind; trembling, bloody, turning to the victims of his split-minded rage, he wept. 

He held his daughter in his arms afterwards, gazing out into the moon with the murdered’s shirt loosely covering him, strolling out till he could hail an ambulance and submit his err. 

Knowing—for this once, gazing up at the Laie temple—that through this dark and dreary night, the sun would shine again.