When the vilins tell the tale;

  Love told to Sibyl Farling

  Table of contents

  Prologue

  Chapter one: The Shiver Project

  Chapter two: When the swamp beast’s rose-mallow blooms

  Chapter three: The Wrighthouse Estate

  Chapter four: The bck and white bouquet

  Chapter five: Political ideology and the ruminations of love

  Chapter six: Non-humanly realm

  Chapter Seven: Miscelneous netherworld of frost and shadows

  Prologue

  In current year, global warming and light pollution braised nature’s shining homeostasis.

  It was Southern October, those strange middling months. Much was to be reminisced upon during this mid-year in the te dusk. Perhaps within just a few tomorrows, all well-founded and rosily-clouded would be memorial as a forsook reef. Its coral consigned to some remembered artefact. Only lovely if you believed photographic reels and that which ancient scribers penned.

  “Upon this night, came a child. She heralded some cloudy wraith warnings and a scythe to the sinful on an earth rife with sea-life spectres. Polluted bromide.

  She was a weapon against a humanity falsely-flowered over carparks and stilted hedges and artificial greens. Neath starless, midnight’s veil. As one looked outside, the bck was beneath a silver, street-ntern feign of light; its sunless and moonless substance a rather fireless fair.

  "Moon’s absence burned us slyly, highly, its matter-sharded throne pitted to Sheol.” Someone in a castle faraway murmured.

  According to scientists, Mist, Aryan and anyone else possessing spat of common sense, the dim and dank colouration and bizarre weather was a mere function of a corrosive atmosphere but to Emanuel describing this night’s scene and Alice, (child about to be born) and anyone else na?ve, superstitious or glorious enough to see a different cosmic reality that seemingly everything darkens or reddens romantically, it was an omen dreary.

  Humanity nature bested with the nuclear shell as she in retaliation swept them away with a windfell. As Aryan despaired, his fellows lit still more unnatural fusions in gamma-ray gold. Spirting unnatural ste storms. Bodies washed away in floods or simply rendered humid.

  That night, Aryan gnced woefully outside. Impatient for his weapons arrival. Looking out at the azures brightening his manor in blue. Many of the azures y forgone. He could not pnt them or anything else verdant as quickly as it was torn asunder. After winter's closure, welcome springs were still with frost fraught. A short-lived weld to unseasonal frozen air: this mountainous cold was like a wind-shear upon cheek and limb.

  Purple abounded: the pnt of fogged pansies appeared seemingly in the clouds. Prettily they spoke of gaiety but were more a death from within the vender. Perhaps because the men and women upon which they gleamed, had been id rife with the bloodied coughing of the strong, sexually-liberated, aids-riddled warriors, these very skies neared.

  For those already dead, their ghosts glimmered. Like phantoms of the shorn. The attending medic who delivered the child longed for the once sweet, nasal-sting of eucalyptus trees unbridled outside the obstetrics wing. Its womanly window. They tore them all down years ago. While the man across the hall had dying lungs that gratefully basked in the richness of both his st smokes and breathing and other poor beings also faced simir, silent farewells.

  Emanuel the beast, missed taintless blue, a trillion isles, a lighter tailing. A dawning pale-gowned; anointed verily in the cobbled heavens. Voluminous heights. Nights raised in deepness and where, starrily, fellow feeling welled.

  "Paleness was raked away till all was dusky. Earth was once soldered to summering exalt of the stars now elusive. Now deceased; when afore they were like golden leaves scattered across their universal den of a home.

  Bioweapon Alice's role in shaping the future would someday (at least in her eyes) be a grand achievement that rose her past the mundane into the realms of the extraordinary. She who would one day bear the immense honour of being described (albeit by a political opponent of Aryan's) "as the evillest person in the world besides Adolf Hitler". She was born according to the hospital clock at precisely three past midnight at Saint Maters.

  The mother was prettyish, dark-haired, intense dy in her thirties. She had a hasty temper and quick wit but in her heart felt herself to be an individual of upstanding morals; the child she bore, Alice, was consequentially not. Ellen Cradle was on her way home from a party unenjoyed (she was not much into social frivolities) when the contractions started in two months early.

  With fears slowly bailing there was a quick drive to maternity in mped evening’s still golden aftermath.

  “Passing by every city building, hidden by steel casts with uppermost electrical-energy shafts convulsing. Passing tired men and women who did apply a brazen rouge to a beauty-fallen. Yet they dressed in golden fashion. Passed garishly-lit streets with their yellowing flock.”

  “Is the Nevermore Lane bck, lie the godly weepers”, Aryan’s partner in bioweaponry manufacturing, Emanuel, despaired.

  “All travellers are poorly-mped and gone is a forever-lost Father’s pails that pour life upon starlight. For modern despiser of poetical musings, they see no emotional obstacle to ending all vile verdure and be to shadow beholden only.”

  “Don't see reason to spare this universal greenery. Willingly cease every spark that to earth come in ivy creepers. Industrial completion and annihition is righteous; nobility’s torched mane, absent.”

  The weapon’s modern mother sought that pce wherein pain relievers and sterile bedding and bnkets abounded and were pale-wrought. Whilst humble voices of the servant machines all listlessly hummed. In time carolled irritatingly…

  A lone spindle of lightening white as an angel’s wing coddled the new-born infant and lit all outside things without percussion; no instruments of thunder to accompany. The oldest choir now sang the obsolete. All was comatose without the thunderous drumming and the maternity ward heard only weeping violins of lost wile and wood then a soft-turned-to pelting rain.”

  Inside silences weary permeated. Hers was an eerily silent birth too; though not painless, her mother actually passed out during it, more from exhaustion than agony.

  Had Alice's mother known, had the faintest inkling of anticipation that the cute little girl she'd carried for seven months was a monster she might have been more concerned. For the moment however she was just exhausted, ready for pain’s alying and to meet her female infant.

  When Alice Nell Cradle finally arrived, she didn’t cry as new-borns are wont to do but instead stared blinkingly at the doctor with rge, foetal-dark eyes. Eyes that even moments after her birth were oddly old-souled and to grow in a manner most beauteous and expressive as she matured. “She's cute,” her father said approvingly in rather an understatement turning to the mother. “Lovely” the mother agreed, “And by the way you’re giving birth to the next one.”

  There never was a next one though, over the years that followed Alice was raised an only child and more than contented with that fact.

  In ter years, when people were trying to write up on the events surrounding this strange young woman and her part in the overthrowing of the plutocratic-capitalist system, they unearthed many people who recalled the childhood of Shiver formally known as Alice. Delving into her adulthood was near useless as she and Mist had been recluses living in Gray Manor alone with Master Aryan and often only appearing outside to campaign in the streets, do volunteer work and make highly-dubious, political speeches. They did not go out partying, drinking or clubbing. They attended neither the ter years of school nor university though Aryan himself graduated from both with honours.

  On the job, the pair never revealed personal information only quoted Aryan’s propaganda and performed the tasks he'd set for them mechanically, as if they were robots. Simon Raphael Bloom, the famed man who helped expose Aryan's nefarious pns and one of the few people to actually get to know Shiver had written a book on the subject matter called Shiver Gray: finding the little girl that had lived within the sociopath.

  He also had written Delving into the Mist: The Evils of Evan James Wiley His most famous book was however Aryan Alexander Gray and the Political Third World War not least because it contained a chapter on the love affair between Shiver and Aryan called "Obsession: the girl who would do anything for love". His favourite line of the book, a stroke of genius on his part or so he thought was this one “Alice may or may not have been capable of love, but she was certainly capable of obsession.” Aryan was Alice’s obsession from sixteen to the grave which was either romantic or creepy depending how you thought about it.

  Four years ter, a little older and a little bit saggy round the middle but still handsome, he lost himself in remembrance of his many frustrations as he had attempted to gather information to write the books on Shiver and Mist. Aryan had been a little easier to research; his only surviving former guardian had been a goldmine for information as had been some former friends, girlfriends, teachers and business partners.  Shiver and Mist had had next to no friends, did not date (besides Aryan and possibly each other) and had generally been considered votile or odd by their teachers and acquaintances.

  Their families were both dead years ago of the Shiver virus epidemic so no help there. "She never smiled," one person had told Simon uselessly back when he was first researching the book. When pressed further the girl retracted her statement somewhat, saying "well more accurately she did smile but only like briefly sometimes, then she'd go right back to looking sad or bored or sulky".

  “She always wore her hair over her face”; a young man who had went to school with her informed him. “It was almost as if she was hiding behind it, but it couldn’t have been for that reason because she was so vain. Looked rather like Bambi, I kind of thought, what with those really big brown eyes poking out from all the thick, red hair.’

  “Her hair was a really unusual red actually, a sort of red-blonde, honey-brown, golden colour. A ginger I guess only without the freckles or light eyebrows and eyes,” he commented irrelevantly. “Wonder if she had (I hope shaved) red drapes to match or if were darker.” Simon had clicked his tongue impatiently to steer the insipidly-irritating youth back on track. “She was right vain you know. I was only kidding about the ginger stuff but she was all aloof and up herself. Always looking at herself in mirrors and reflective surfaces and stuff admiringly. I mean she was really cute and all but still...odd” he continued.

  “Oh, and her skin was like really nice and by that, I mean so perfect was inhumane. Glowed like that really-polished porcein that was on mantles centuries ago and even when the room or outside was pretty dark.”

  “Oh, I remember the mirror and reflective surfaces thing. I thought she was just insecure I mean she did seem shy, and standards are so unrealistic nowadays even for cute girls like her, for those of us that people consider good looking.”

  “That guy Evan, he used to do that too, he was just like her”, a girl in her twenties with dark brown hair and a pretty but pinched, little face had agreed verifying his statement. “Only he was less quiet and sullen and more just kind of haughty and up himself and personally I couldn't stand the guy, thought himself so hot. Bit too pretty and obsessed with his physique you know, seriously I don’t even think he liked women” she’d said enthusiastically.

  Simon listening to them as he had jotted down his research on the murky past of Shiver and Mist Gray once known as Alice Cradle and Evan Wiley had actually been rather irritated with their vague, inept descriptions of the two. Well, except perhaps for the one about their immense vanity which was more than a trifle amusing. He had been trying to find out if this girl (Mist too) was truly pure, unadulterated evil and deserved to be executed, not if she'd been pensive, shy or even imperious about her looks.

  “Dig deeper,” Monovalent had whispered to him “and you will know if Shiver and Mist were inherently cruel of disposition or not.” Simon sighed, even then he had known deep down that two people who, in cold blood, murdered thousands were not going to be spared the moral judgement at hand by a few trinkets and wisps of past memories by former acquaintances.

  What he had discovered back then however, was how little other people had actually liked Evan or Alice though this had been mutual; since Shiver and Mist had routinely despised everyone they met.

  Well certainly that was true in Evan’s case. Though many admired him, certainly. Alice on the other hand many people had found themselves strangely-fond of. They had never really understood her, Simon doubted anyone did, but they had liked her some of them. Recalled how “sweet” (many calling her this and pretty, adorable, lovely, beautiful) she was or at least seemed and that would have liked to get to know her (especially the male ones) but that “she never talked.”

  People had talked to her, smiled at her; strangers had even felt compelled to ask if they could help her when she looked forlorn. She did have a way of touching people, but there had been many who, as with Evan, had found her strange and unapproachable including those two former cssmates he had interviewed for the books.

  This only applied however, to people who knew either of them with any personal intimacy for Shiver and Mist had been true celebrities for the masses back when they were in Aryan’s Party. They were beloved for their eloquent manner of speaking, slender grace and delicate elfin beauty. Dwelling on it, Simon conceded that strangers approached Mist admiringly too, he just in no uncertain terms told them through his expression and tone how scathingly he felt about them. Mist’s charm was saved for speeches and televised events.

  Bancing one of his books "Shiver: the girl within the sociopath" on his bloated abdomen he flipped through to the st chapter, Evil as a different set of moral and social values, Shiver's core beliefs. The st sentence concluded that Shiver's drive came from an unwavering belief that any kind of love or affection from a great man like Aryan( great applied in the sense of capable of extraordinary things other people weren't due to heightened intelligence, drive, perceptiveness and intensity) was far superior to the lukewarm love of a feeble-minded man who loves you with all his heart but who due to mediocre disposition cannot attain one iota of the intense highs and lows and passions of a man like Aryan.

  She had been mistreated by Aryan, a populist who had many trysts and dalliances with women; he threatened her and Mist with death if they did not obey his every command, he forgot their birthdays routinely and was rarely home, but he did care for Shiver in his own twisted way and for her that had been enough.

  If that had been true however, why had she tried to kill herself? Why did she starve herself and get into dangerous situations with men to gain his attentions? It was not enough it was never enough whatever she had cimed and that was what would have killed her if Aryan had not died first of course. Simon closed the book with a sigh not sure why even these years ter it was little Shiver he could not get of his head.

  “You love her” Monovalent whispered mockingly and Simon supposed this was true. Though not in the way Monovalent seemed to be suggesting, he was never in love with her he told himself again. Perhaps that had been Shiver's greatest problem, no man had loved her, not Mist, not Aryan not Monovalent who was a machine and therefore incapable of romantic/sexual love. Only Emanuel had really cared for her, that mad and terrifying reptile- beast, barely human and who sent icy trembles shooting down Simon’s spine.

  He looked at the photograph of “the delicate, Dickens-waif thing. Weepy eyes. Between rounded and almond, in great bance. Emanuel’s untouched maiden looking with sweet, fey sorrow into some great distance. Irises rge, animated and lonely. Loveliness’s flied to their windowing that slid below snowy lids. Gazed huge as that of a child,” as Emanuel would say.

  “Dark and soft with a hint-of-water. Midnight’s rain underneath shes amassed thicket. Tresses who did the earth’s hidden shelves of grain and gold, fallow, ash and copper fleece. Comprised of the relentlessly curled and furled; hayfield and rye spun unto sweetness of face pale as the north, arrowed to a point and that hid and housed underside thornier.”

  In rapture coquettish. He saw her smiling up at him; all small, delicate features, straight, elegant, little nose, curved red, rosebud mouth. Elf-like, angelically sweet even.

  “Lovely skin simply just like my Sibyl’s: the most beautiful ever beaconed. Indelibly clear. Our porcein-doll went from idea, mere image to being boriously carved by her creators into an immortal white.”

  More than mere translucent, was delicate flesh with ivory sheer. Slightly-blue of body and around the eye, greenish-rose of cheeks and lips; a by-me added luminosity only visible in night un-mped. Though she were ever pale-glowed. Emanuel wrote once, idly.

  Well, if evil is simply a drastically different set of moral values from the norm one may well be beautiful and evil. It may not show on the face this malice and nastiness of nature if they are not tormented or corrupted by their pyschopathy he pondered. Pure evil was like pure good it did not have to wander or worry about doing the right thing. Except in the case of good it was because they were self-assured in their moral righteousness whereas pure evil simply did not care. The words ‘good’ and ‘bad’ meant nothing to them.

  “I do not live in constant denial,” Shiver had told him once, “I lie and murder and steal and am jealous and petty and am absolutely okay with it. I’ve done all manner of vicious things but do not have to constantly lie to myself and downpy and hide my misdeeds as those who wish to be or at least appear to be moral do. I am honest with myself as only the malevolent natured can be.”

  “For people are so cruel and there is so much pain in the world, they must live in constant denial to avoid crushing guilt and that leaves a person in a state of vacuous sentimentality. They must act sad when death or war or tragedy occur even if they do not feel anything to keep up appearances. I personally am blissfully absolved of any need to pretend to care about others.”

  Such honesty had endeared Simon to Shiver despite himself. “The angel of honesty” Emanuel had nicknamed her and smiling Simon closed the book wondering if his st thoughts would be of that final conversation with Shiver before she disappeared. Once thought dead but rumours suggested otherwise.

  Simon closed his eyes and waited for death’s hand and his heart to be at long st stilled, a heart weakened and on its st legs from depression and severe alcoholism. A few nights ago, he had penned a farewell letter in a drunken haze and then forgotten about it. It was written for someone Simon loved but desperately didn’t want to love because she was a creature of evil and it was to be opened by her upon his death. If she was ever found.

  Over the past two years his drinking had irreversibly damaged his heart and liver.  Since finding out he failed... and that he had not stopped anything, he had taken to drink. He had also taken to drink for another reason… one he was in denial about. This lovely woman he could never have yet would die nobly, valiantly and romantically. Of her, he thought, finally and honestly as he drank enough to kill.

  He did not have long to wait where death was concerned. Death came within the hour, and he indeed dreamed of Shiver in that st moment “I love you, Aryan, you complete me,” she was saying. “I don't need to complete you child, you’re a whole person on your own” responded the other and Simon's st image was of a stricken Shiver's crestfallen little face and the tears that welled in rge, sorrowful yet light-filled eyes.

  Decades prior, atop a little country town, one with beautiful hillside scenery and frosts in colder seasons, the local children believed a monster lived amidst them. His house was a stately manor like some kind of golden castle but with a creepy graveyard out the back. Seven-year-old Leah had mentioned to her father seeing a monster tending his garden.

  “You should have seen him daddy this huge and ugly giant with shiny green scales like a lizard or snake and a beast’s face but with one half eaten away and it’s thin as a skull. Why its barely there at all.”

  Her father sighed. “Monsters aren’t real honey,” he said trying to temper his exasperation at the inner workings of a child’s undeveloped yet overimaginative mind. Leah was convinced, however. She’d seen him out in the great garden of his golden, sandstone castle which was private property but held much appeal for her with its acres of nd to explore, rge trees to climb. Not to mention its abundance of pretty flowers, cherry orchard and pale, fairy-tale appearance.

  Some of the other children in her css had on occasion seen the tall, formless beast walking the streets with strong yet elegant gait, his business suit perfectly-tailored. Seen him as he sped by in an aviation flyer doubling as ground-dweller. A motor vehicle in wind sailing. The nd proudly faring: it harboured such grace if reached right beholder.

  Of an uttermost craftsmanship; built himself and run on energy sources from recycled goods and artificial bacterium and controlled by Monovalent whom communicated its trajectory from a distance. Soon, the beast often pondered, all his extraordinary, computing machines would remote control all the world’s pnes and rails and vehicles.

  He was currently working on a serious of calcutions that would lead to an altered material that made bridges and housing safer, sturdier and less fmmable and self-repairable.

  His pride always swelled for his motorcar dark and sleek. Little warmth; yet fast-as-if-from-firespun wheels. Its role as something cold and inanimate was belied by the living, lumbering beast dwelling inside it. The vehicle’s outside was near-bck though more so dark-blue painted with a hint of the purplish pike. Its material was malleable in colour: to the wonder of the children it did before their very eyes, turn burnt-red or richest nd-green.

  Some of the men and women got a sparing gnce at him outside on weekends and evenings, wearing bck, vivid, pale yet never merely bright clothes: ones all crisp and creaseless. He was all smooth and sungsses and soft gloves. With a flowing that tails a held-with-perfect-straightness back, of a long overcoat. Large hood hiding its beastly appearance somewhat.

  Occasionally upon winds you could hear it howling and moaning and shrieking in its pale castle byrinth all pointy towers, numerous rooms’ underground and vast twisting staircases, its hideous, repugnant head visible as greenish and glimmering from within the ir in a bedroom in one of the two turrets.

  Burdened. Two images he hailed hauntingly. Visualised and detailed in his great head. “First of a gddened girl; diminutive, slightly small of stature and with a child’s delicate, slumpy, little shoulders. White, slender, rose-railed. Fair hair to herald some Northern European ancestry.

  Another of her saddened face; sweet, resolute despite blood-bolted hypovolemia. She was a meagre, little matchstick hollowed. A pale and perishable femur of the extinct; mammoth or sabretooth.

  Yet always rose eminently within him, that heartening resolve; remaining even as sorrow all rings. Dwelt on her readiness and a bde in sliding rain as about them, were the light shipped within the ferries-of-gold, gliding.”

  “He refused to see on an earth being depleted, y the bountiful still; leafy roam of perennial; hearty well somewhere neath the mournful flowerings. Rightful, red clover blossom. “I am the madman born as the st ray perished.” He thought so despairingly.

  During its reminiscing fits it called pitifully “Sibyl Farling, my Sibyl Farling. No more building up indefinitely, brimstone stes of night to bind the sunlight-fair; I now use its tailless brightness to blister and blind. With a blighting, even uttermost abundance wane and wither. Please come back, past the bring foghorn softly hither on a midnight heartening.” Jabbered other nonsensical things seemingly meaninglessly. That unbeknownst to others, he himself ughed at ter, mocking his own melodrama. He was one who quickly changes from obsessive and heartfelt, to in another task buried.

  Once, Leah had heard, the fourth grader Jasper known for having drunk one of his father’s beers for a bet and puked then fainted, had gone to the beast’s house on dare to ring the doorbell and fled whereupon the creature emerged silently and with sinister, predatory grace slithered out snakelike but not before he spoke to him as he stood frozen.

  “So, you truly believe me too be a monster, child how…Quaint and fttering. Want to hear the Swamp- Beast’s Fable, the Tale of the Hazel Mire, son? It features a misunderstood vilin, is repelling yet embodies some beautiful, mystical quality and even has princess of sorts in it yet involves tragically, no hero. I would wager it is drastically different from most other spirit-based stories you have perchance heard?”

  Perhaps with the dismal sufferings of age, the young shalt exhibit far more empathetic kindness toward my and humanity’s, constant dreary misfortunate (losing our very grace; from each illuminating thought to every bright tress). Farewelled is beauty, vitality; gradually. Valiantly into repose fainting. Till hell flied in to cim the felled ashes; an elder beast flung carelessly by winds to the ground. Bolted to a brittle light in sorrow starred. Or so he thought, before, hence, with face and form haughty, preceded to have strode back within his castle walls.

  “It’s the creature from the goon, some reptilian thing … faceless and dressed like death in bck or maybe li- lizard man from Lee County swamp,” the youngster shouted in response racing down the street in sheer terror. The adults of the town knew, of course, that the beast was no more than a hideous, horribly deformed man who never did speak with anyone or entertain hardly mystifying all things considered.

  None of them did ever know his first or st name but they all realised he must be quite wealthy having bought the manor (alongside the abandoned, gray church with towering steeple, symbolic cross and the gravesite upon its doorstep) once belonged to and commissioned to be built by eccentric, young heir of one of the Australian dynasties.

  Then this odd hideous man moved in and further added spectacur Greco and Roman esque architectures and statues to it and a medieval tower at the top above existent already turrets.

  “Hard to believe someone disfigured particurly in so repulsive and ugly a manner could be such a success” one of the local farmers, Jack, had murmured ominously to his wife. The disfigured man made them especially uneasy.

  Several local, adolescents who had been throwing rocks at the creature’s window then fleeing in cowardly manner and a man who’d been taunting him, shouting obscenities and insults as travelled to work in his vehicle (few would approach from anything but a distance as despite a still, superficial-calm there swelled an underlying violence that hung about his oversized presence). Not to mention everyone was wary now: so many become ill or died of the mysterious virus that kept resurfacing then disappearing only to mutate and return. Almost like a curse.

  Of a certain youth taken by death, it was said the creature had merely thrown a strange bag back at him and the other stone-flingers. Inside was a note.

  Kindness is a virtue that must be repaid: here boy, there’s a deadly pathogen or virus if you will, here, warmest regards, only for the d to within days perish. The bag was tested of course, after the boy’s mother took it to a local boratory, but nothing was found. It seemed to be a mere, sick coincidental jest. A fair few others in the community had gotten ill as well, but only two died and none were reted to the deformed man in the castle.

  The News soon reported on the viral death of a local man rumoured to be a notorious backstabber and to have bckmailed a rival into quitting to get his promotion in his younger years. Once risen to high standing he fired his deemed lessers for anything. “A head full of blistering, blustering spite,” Emanuel,( the terrifying town beast) remarked about him. “Good riddance.”

  His firings included people reporting in te due to illness, pregnancy or family obligations and once for no reason save overly-exuberant chortling at lunchtime. This fate was doled out especially to women who turned down his affections and to any younger, happier, handsomer man (or one simply with more charisma) offending his eye.

  A possibly terminally ill patient he expunged “as social welfare and disability insurance can be purchased by anyone: unpnned-for illness is no excuse. It’s not a company concern. Profit and growth and investor returns, is.”

  "Medicare burden after privatisation will lower its expenditure and hopefully create more jobs so people can afford it and simultaneously bring in cash to improve economy" new, young spokesmen for this policy, procimed matter-of-factly, as the beast gazed from his window.

  Suddenly, standing there and slipping a town-meeting notice under his door, was the beast's other favourite neighbouring resident, forty-something manager Arleen. She too, dismissed those she personally disliked or feared nature gifted faces and fortunes fairer and fresher than her own (never admitted this was the reason, she at least on the surface, the local swamp-beast believed, sincerely cimed this happened as they were zy, with a poor work ethic or bigoted attitude. Excuses to ease any thorn of conscious.

  Some were sinful in that their social values and political views diverged from her own. Ones in opinion of the man-beast, limited to modern idioms. Since the no-tolerance policy of hostile work environments was introduced, once symbolic ws on hate speech and so-called, workpce hostility become tightened.

  According to Arleen (thoroughly disgusted at such long-standing, former tolerance to abuse of the long marginalised, including females like her.) Thank good Governance, they had such harmful, hateful undereducated voices taken away.

  Still existent, sadly, all the anti-sematic, homophobic misogynists whose heartless jokes were actual covert threats and that feared progress (and to old ways clung).

  Such serious transgressions worthy of firing without added warning since education on the matter was well- provided for in tolerance seminars.

  “There’s enough education,” a corporate spokesman working with politicians on the legistion was saying, as Arleen nodded (walking away from the beast’s wild garden) and gncing down at her little gold mobile delivering the news. Her face surrounded by spidery things and sunlight and web, suffused with utter relief. Finally, this issue was addressed “this is the twenty-first century. People are clearly shown equal and right way to treat others.”

  All discrimination was now banned. From “verbal assault” to dismissive attitudes such as “shaming nguage” toward women or differently abled or oriented or transgendered people.

  Was imperative to social harmony and already strengthened on foreign shores. Brought to nd “girth by sea” by politicians, alongside the ability for mentally-disabled individuals to be granted their "sexual-rights “to such retions, if give consent.

  "How can you give consent whence cannot even comprehend why hitting your arm causes that stinging sensation, or that banging your head can invoke haemorrhage. Let alone what sexual diseases you might incur and die from in bloodied agony," the beast muttered.

  He found the local government’s new policy barbaric ( maniputive and modest crumb for those in poverty’s nguish). It involved incentives to either not breed or give children to infertile couples to curb overpopution and expand room for immigrants. There numbers increasing exponentially.

  Yet the already low birth rate decreased only minimally, and immigrants’ offspring were higher than those of born citizens anyhow. A policy cruel and pointless in achieving its intent.

  Decreasing migrant levels was, of course, anti-liberty and anti-multicultural or so all left-leaning parties said. Populist right-wingers were certainly making their mark protesting it.

  The government had been slowly increased right of employers to dismiss part-time or freence workers with near impunity. For social good and the peace.

  Prejudice was another proof union organisation didn’t’ work. The beast’s neighbour, Arleen, powerfully and proudly believed. Comes from pce of ignorance. The white and uneducated don’t understand minority concerns or how corporations need to bance wages to incentivise high-productivity and competition without compcency.

  “To give everyone equal opportunity including foreigners from disadvantaged nations and use immigration and diverse hiring practices to bring much needed new cultural fvours and ideas. To manage finances carefully to run efficiently. Even inaction can be evil: it supports repression and misinformation.

  She cheered particurly righteous and hard when a local, unionist college president needed to step-down after protesters pointed out that despite being active in political communities “he did nothing to prevent migrant and racial intolerances.”

  “He procimed discrimination wrong but didn’t dismiss students for reportedly using filthy, profane hate speech nguage that keeps people from participating due to fear. Poor little gay migrant Timothy nearly died protesting his injustices in hunger strike.”

  “Unions are hotbeds of white, intolerant men undermining capitalist freedom, holding back progress and ciming right to be offensive. Hostile to females, minorities, their rights infringing, making others feel threatened."

  "Being unopen to new and innovative. With outdated ideas of capitalist overthrow, highly racist pro-nationalism and foolish notions of "male-centric, working-css pride" that discriminates against marginalised without care for intersectionality."

  "Apt restrict needed change and diversity and differently-experienced whom help it occur. While cking regutions lead to reinforcement of patriarchy and supposed poor and downtrodden excluding rest of society's most unfortunate.”

  Their local parliament member who liked to visit the town and strut around a bit, couldn’t have agreed more.

  “In such unchecked disdain, violence flourishes. However, through government and our progressive corporate partners working together for a better, more tolerant future, we can boom the economy and end discriminatory activity that does not reflect modern values,” one leftwing, prime minster remarked whilst televised.

  As, watching, beast groaned contemptuously into a daily-drink, this time champagne, held in his favourite wine-gss.

  "Yes, dear sir and many live in fmmable death-traps of apartments and are exposed to toxic chemicals in their food and pce of employment."

  "One in three require food stamps and housing assistance despite having three jobs and a degree, one in four reliant on parents for financial support due to welfare sshes and joblessness but no this is the most pressing issue."

  "Rich corporates who hire and leave with hands crippled the poorest of seven-year old's and pay third-world and even developed country inhabitants sve wages, progressive?"

  “Besides their patents, sex quotas, bank-bailouts, military, police and the judicial court, business subsidies and corporate welfare. Anti-discrimination acts, hate crime ws. Anti-piracy and creative property theft both requiring complex government enforced, they’re otherwise quite libertarian and autonomous.”

  “The corporates and elites buy elections, ask for powerful state enforcing of their right “be treated equal” and have every sexual recreation state-sanctioned and celebrated, .”

  “They ask it commit violence toward every mere lifestyle criticiser, or company defamer or refuser of service then suddenly require governments stay out of all else?"

  “Allowing in every refugee, migrant against the will of the people for that "will" is human rights viotion. Sanctify use of every dangerous substance and sexual expression and then ask us all pay for the consequences?”

  "Call for “unquestionable intellectual property” even if built on scientific work of those before as decry collectivism. Today may another competitive soul be soothed in its moral superiority and higher standing with its wealth in its crooked, cwed paws and ears ringing with appuse.”

  However, and despite their differing stances, a popur independent the monster was oddly fond of(refreshing his boldness) begin to speak to murmurs of some agreements on the televised parliament hearing.

  “The race-baiting and not allowing groups with different views to form is evil and easily same poison albeit cut from the cloth of political correctness of corrupt unionists trying to control businesses or communist attempt to destroy capitalist free markets.”

  “Allowing it and the new Gender, Non-Conforming Protection Act in schools to deal with “bullying” is the loss of freedom to one’s mind speak; the right to exchange ideas and products free from Stalinist government persecution. Free from social engineering to explicitly encourage youth to certain lifestyles.”

  “One of many “social-awareness” programs lining bureaucrat pockets and wasting hard-earned taxpayer income while everyone else is jobless, homeless, trying to get affordable, worthwhile education."

  One of the woman politicians in the senate accused people of manspining and micro aggressions which caused beast to snort. Then one of the rgest men there, in simply the lightest, floweriest dress imaginable, began weeping about bathroom access, causing him to sneer harder.

  Arleen, despite beast’s every cold-lipped, fervent little snide, was most sincere and honest-eyed in her beliefs of a soon-to-rise, widespread moral understanding and utopia. Those who might with her views and values disagree to such moralised eyes, were subhuman.

  She often shed tears accompanied by a joyed prickle at the punishing of others and her comparative better ways, but were that not righteous? A deterrent and teaching tool? Reward for the just who made life better and more equal for everyone?

  The deemed wicked maimed and drained for all to see? Beast meanwhile thought. Upon hearing of the new policies. Later, he heard Arleen speaking loudly and excitedly in retion to her partner about them.

  “Incidentally, she proves sincerity not always a saving grace,” he murmured.

  Her insufferable friend Joanie had suffered a car-crash after botched cosmetic surgery leaving her in a weakened state. Expelled from existence and from this town countryside three years prior. Her surgeon also succumbed but to a strange illness around this time.

  A boy too, of this oddest ailment died. He was considered by many, a nasty creature; having taunted caged animals at the zoo including the little ones. Crudely delighting in their ck of understanding and trapped terror when his css took a field trip there. Attempted to goad tiger into swiping so might be put down as happened when simir animal felt threatened by group of youths, Made the media rounds some time ago.

  “Lighten up their just animals, they do it to us if got the chance,” he said.

  Known to steal and rarely fight directly but ugh the heartiest whence others were beaten or scorned. “Hapless, money-grubbing heathen, cowardly little miscreant” the monster after the calling in of a certain favour by one “Monovalent” muttered.

  This strange and brilliant being was in fact human despite the certainties of the local children and in fact gifted scientist who was as he would denote it “ raised in loveless poverty” making him the very essence of the self-made man. A man who now smiled from ear to ear an expression most unappealing and ghastly upon his repugnant face as he muttered a rhyming little couplet to himself.

  By the heavens hinted

  Every soul to death delivered.

  st spoils of the universal wonders collide.

  Welled as the beast takes his bride.

  Dreaming of tales and artworks brought to life by the holographic films of Monovalent; “A hero of the seldom valley of otherlings, doused-holy by wine-dewed sea. The sun upon rock formations and hand-lifted sand.

  Dead Chapels of Nazareth. Northern machinery lighted the sting in his eyes, mirthless soul spys its very st string. Cowering in floods. Hiding in towering violets. A musty wicked is masked by progress and the mighty-burning, Cwdent-ihli.

  Some sought sciences to revive forgone and fossilised things, found at the false bounds of the Tramivysolfey( sunnily-tram to ivy of the fey. ) This includes the Sheoluvu illvior.( Those so ailed that unless invoking hell cannot be of spoken.) Bond only neath the falsely-flowered. Buildings set in their prim, purplish stone. I heartily miss, the valleying.

  Yet comes realm of misericordia and neared demon-dweller undoing every cwed, antlered man. Revoking God’s Image and its sufferers, the efelin-mery. Anchored to the Failvaliant and many chimeric monstrosities. Lying between shores of mencholy and cruelty’s dismal weep, only goodness can make fleet.

  Charred, stilted windows have shape and sheen of eyes saddened. Within a shadow graving, there’s an oddly joyous gleam. Starklinged.. For the paid, we stayed skies greenish-golds. In malflock of frosts hilling, shilling out for soonly rose-bded cheek. Yet underside pale- folded. Evil curled and clouded-yellow, toe.”

  He soon removed a delicate silver locket from inside his long, fpping coat where normally dwelt hanging over his chest; nearest could possibly be his still beating heart and took out a “for my chimera avolente spun from single tress of fennec fox. With poetical lilt of the phoenix tail and lightable wick of the pale ember; yet this ashy, red-gold in fairer, incandescent beauty than any summery wildfire”.

  “Hair of her upon which my thoughts were eternally dwelling”.

  “Without silencing. Rise graved invalid, from the Lavandu. For still lie underneath the burying vine. Soul by its fair feet harshly strung even as yet body succumbed” and she whom as he always stated:

  “Even to ashes felled still would return to readily-flower within sunless meadow and starless valley.”

  “Now Shiver to lie therein somewhere… Valiant everywhere otherlings shalt not tread. To all bared their cold malice. Aryan wants to save the unsavable; sleep with the malcontents. Committed to their orgies, drudgery and hangdog peasantry coloured with the psychedelic. Fleeting beauty of any subdued protest always braised by a drug addled haze. Big pharma will lighten your rage, silence your tears and gild your days. In cold passiveness. For Aryan’s little human refugees, my pets have naught and nothing but apathy. My heavenly weaponry arises, dazed, from fate of the fallen. Their true purpose, flight of the fatal.”

  “Holdless as they move flightlessly: pale-veiled. Life did fracture my Halflinger. She of midnd faeries wrongly waned; herein I yield cross of resurrection fairly.”

  “Re-backed beings. The angelical in nd of lowly misers and the grumble of inferior shysters who shaft their wares fleeting, past the follies of greed, my Shiver so dear, their kingliness lent to the day; in golden carriage riding by in the light sleeved.”

  This single tress which now kissed tenderly was the building blocks that would became in all her wonder and glory the mysterious, immortal creature Shiver Gray.