The Beast

Time had not been kind to her recently. She needed to sleep. To rest. She was scared. If she closed her eyes she might join her mother and father or she would wake tomorrow and have to endure another day of pain.

She had seen the beast take her mother. It gripped her body, refusing to let go. It won. The passing of her mother affected her father in ways only those who had lost a soulmate could know about. He became a shadow of his former self. He had tried for her sake, but she knew it was not his fault when he decided to join her mother. It had become too much. The beast had destroyed him as well.

She was at the age to take care of herself and she had done well considering the quickness of both her parents passing. It was not her father’s fault, no one was to have known the beast would begin its destruction on her as well. She often wished the beast would take her quickly so she could join them both. Of course, though she knew she should try to beat the beast with all she had, that’s what her parents would have told her to do.

She had been given a head start, they had spotted it early. By the time they had found the beast in her mother all anybody could do was watch it destroy her.

She had known that the beast might come for her at some point but so soon after her mother’s death shocked her. It shocked everyone. She often thought about how inconsiderate it was. The beast showed no remorse. First, it took her mother, then her father, now it wanted her as well.

Catching the beast early had thrown her a lifeline. There were options available. Options that were not available to her mother. One failed before it had even started. For the beast was too large for extraction. The best hope was to try and flush the beast out. This was however a very evasive procedure.

The beast had taken her energy. Her body grew tired quickly, not as fast as her mothers had, but fast enough that she found it too tiring to stand for long. She became skin and bone, the curves she shared with her mother disappeared. Parts of her became loose. It was hard trying to fight the beast. Her mother had not seen this stage. The beast took her far too quickly. Like it had her mother it was sucking the life out of her.

After months of flushing, multiple times a week, it began to have the desired effect. The beast slowly began to give her back.

She wondered if her mother and father were fighting the beast from the other side. The image made her smile. Her mother and father together once again fighting cancerous cells in a battle. For the beast would not take their little girl.