Night's Brother

Prompt: Create and describe a monster in 400 words.

Source: WEbook's Monster Creation Challenge - http://www.webook.com/project/The-Monster-Creation-Challenge

Response: Night's Brother

His skin was light, pale blue, perfectly smooth like the surface of a frozen lake. A long indigo robe lay across his shoulders and flowed down his body in soft folds. It rippled, at once revealing and concealing his muscled torso. He came and stood above Hyacinth.

She could just make out his eyes in his chiseled face – they were dark violet, filled almost to the edges with the deep, inky color. Long blue lashes framed his eyes but they had no softening effect on the piercing glare of his unnaturally dark eyes. He bent and his long, silky hair pulled into a ponytail at the back of his head slipped over his shoulder, shifting gently as though stirred by a breeze.

Hyacinth shuddered. His abnormal, near-black eyes stared at her, unmoving. Her skin crawled. He was too beautiful, too strangely beautiful.

When he spoke, his voice enveloped her like sinking beneath the waters of a black lake. “You have sunlight in your hair.”

He touched a lock of her hair, brushing it across her neck. Hyacinth shivered. She could not meet his purple gaze, she looked away. His skin was soft and cool against her, like soil hidden deep beneath the earth.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asked. He stroked her cheek. “You ought not to be afraid of me – there are far worse things here below ground.”

He grasped her chin. His touch was soft, but beneath his gentleness was a sinister underlying strength that made Hyacinth’s skin prickle. He turned her to face him.

Her eyes had adjusted to the dim room, but what she saw was anything but comforting. The corridor was closed on both ends. The walls were set with towering mosaics depicting men just like the one before her – sunless skin and shadowy eyes. But depicted with the men were human women, girls like her. Their eyes were sad and jeweled restraints glittered at their wrists.

“You will learn to love this place beneath the earth,” he told her. His deep voice rattled her bones, suffocating. “The ones before you came to love it. And so will you.”

He knelt before her and took her hands. Hyacinth could not pull away, mesmerized by his bottomless violet eyes. She heard a click; she did not have to look to know that he had restrained her, cuffed her with intricate, sparkling manacles.

Notes: These characters are from my ongoing project entitled Underground (http://www.webook.com/project/Life-Unlit).