Beauty is a Beast

Beauty is a beast, it haunts me nightly, stalking me in the shadows of my boudoir, from beyond the far reaches of the midnight hour. In the garden far below, I see its lurking shadow. By day ‘tis but a twisted tree, a once mighty oak murdered by lightning, but by night, its visage is frightening. It crouches there, ready to leap, a wily cat hiding in the shadows deep.

Would that I could sleep! I fret here in the dark, dreaming to life that long dead tree, seeing a wild beast ready to ravage the life from me. Stalking in the dark, beautiful, powerful, tendons flexing beneath brittle bark skin, eyes glowing, its maw set in an evil grin.

Beauty haunts me in the dark, I will not admit defeat, I will face it here, my cunning creature is far too fleet. I hear that seductive purr and I know, I am caught in the snare, a willing victim to splay against night's cold sheen, here in my cold boudoir, my breath is hot upon its skin.

Ripped from me, all my modestly, all the reserve that I have toiled to master. I shiver here in the gloom, afraid, alive, teetering at the precipice of my unknown doom. My creature, it reveals itself to me, such beauty, I can scarce look upon, yet I am morbidly drawn.

Lightning swift it pounces, claws upon my skin, yet there in the dark, I see a changeling. Sweet breath upon my face, I feel not the gnash of teeth upon my skin, but a kiss, soft and fleeting. Beauty I have so long feared, my iron will, so carefully veneered, worn away at last and now I surrender in unencumbered splendour.

Dawn's light reveals to me that lightning blasted tree. I think back upon its haunting years and look to my silken sheets and see there my compounded fears. No night spawned being of wood and earth, but a mortal man I once fought to keep at bay, a slave to the fears that have now been washed clean away. I smile as I recall the storm that brought to me his graven form. Haunted by him all along, a persistent whisper audible as birdsong, 'til even I, at last, must succumb.