Dear reader, I am sorry this entry is a little later than usual. But I think I may have overreacted a tad yesterday.

Being inside that prison was tough. All of the meals were during the daytime. I had nothing good to read, and when I did find something I liked, my roommate ‘Stabby Pete,’ would insist on talking to me about his last string of burglaries and murders. He explained to me that he had been a successful gambler, until one day his friend cheated him out of his winnings, so Stabby Pete earned his nickname and stabbed him thirty-seven times with a corkscrew. I listened amazed as he recounted the savage details of the blood, the breaking of bones, and how he had fought with the police officers from the moment he had been arrested to the moment he had been thrown into prison. After so long though, there was only so much you could hear about the different ways someone had ended another’s life. Stabby Pete wore it as a badge of honour.

“I’m a monster,” he said passingly. I would have torn his throat out there and then, but I was trying to turn over a new leaf and I knew that the justice system would find me innocent and would not burn me at the stake. Or so I hoped.

I was in there for a few days before I was assigned a court date. Unfortunately for me, it was during the day, so I spent the time hiding behind the docks hissing under a duvet which began to smoulder before someone poured water over me.

The next court date was said to be done via Skype? I didn’t know who Skype was, but he sounded Scandinavian.

I was dragged to a dark room and was asked to sit on a chair and face a large black rectangle with a small box with a black eye pointing towards me. Perplexed, I did as requested.

“Where is Skype?” I asked the guard, who ignored my question. I thought it to be very rude indeed.

The black box came alive and there I eyed a grey-haired man with a gown donned and a wig of tight white curls flowing past his chin. This must be Skype. He spoke broadly and quickly, reading from a parchment. His English was impeccable! Very well spoken for a Scandinavian! I must compliment him when I meet him. Was he inside the black box? How did they fit him in?

“To be charged with crimes of burglary and aggravated vehicle taking,” he continued to read. He looked up to me. I was immediately a fan and I waved eagerly at him. A look of confusion wrapped his face. “Mr. Wythenshawe? Where are you?” I smiled brighter, waving wildly at him.

“I am here Mister Skype!” I shouted. “I am here!” He could hear me, but he couldn’t see me.

Skype became vexed, animated. He thought I was making a fool out of him.

“Come in front of me immediately Mr. Wythenshawe less I pass judgement on you framed by this act of ridiculousness!” I moved closer to him, trying to touch his face. The closer I got, the more his face grew into tiny squares and flecks of green and purple. I pushed my nose against his.

“I am here! Can’t you see me?” Then it dawned on me, like an icy hand on my chest. The black box in the corner. It was a camera. I didn’t have a reflection. I tried to reason, but Skype became very upset.

“Twelve months on remand!” He shouted, pointing to the empty chair, believing I was making a fool out of him and hiding somewhere throwing my voice. I decided I must take extreme action and rescue Skype from inside his box prison and speak to him face to face.

“I’ll help you!” I screamed as I drove my fist through the box, glass and metal cutting into my arm. I could find no tiny man with a wig sitting inside a tiny courtroom. I figured I must have made a calculation error somewhere. I felt the guards take hold of my back and they escorted me back to my cell.

So, things got from bad to worse. My days were spent locked up in my cell. Feeling down, I hung from the ceiling by my feet and ate rodents that I would find scuttling behind the walls.

“You’re weird you man,” Stabby Pete said, looking over his magazine of ‘Playboy.’ He offered me a look once, and the debauchery was uncanny. It reminded me of my sweet Raven. I decided I needed to escape from this prison immediately. I released myself from the ceiling and landed on the ground, Herbert on my shoulder. I donned my gown and stood by the window.

“It’s been a pleasure Stabby Pete, but I must leave you. Take care of yourself. Please, don’t kill anyone else if you get out.”

“I don’t know,” he said, flicking through his picture book of women, his inked face turning to me. “I’m a monster after all.” The comment stabbed through me like a silver cross, burning along my veins like holy water.

“A monster?” I said, my fingers wrapping around the window bars.

“Yup,” he said. “A big bad wolf ready to come and eat all those little piggies.”

I turned, matching his gaze. His sneering grin slackened and I watched those eyes fill with horror as mine turned a hellish red. I saw him piss himself, the aroma of ammonia slicing through the air. A terrifying man filled with terror. There was something poetic about that.

A faint wisp of deathly black air slipped out of my mouth and floated onto the ceiling. Above us, the dark smoke clung and morphed into shapes. The room fell dark. I pushed my hands together and let the darkness flow through me. An ember of flame sprouted from my fingertips and formed a sphere of hot inferno between my palms. I pushed them to the four corners of the prison cell where they hovered, smouldering the sheet white walls and peeling away the dull chipped paint. Stabby Pete lay dumbfounded.

“A monster you say?” My words slithered to his ears, coiling like a black cobra in his mind. “No Stabby Pete. You are not a monster, you are a fiend. There is a difference. A monster holds back its true nature to blend in, to reveal itself only when it must for its own survival.” I set upon him within a blink of an eye, my hissing jaws an inch from his face. His eyes that of sheer horror, his lips whimpering. “But a fiend kills for fun. It can’t control itself. It takes pleasure in gorging on its own desires even if it is destructive to itself, like a snake devouring its own tail, you are nothing but a cruel soul that will burn in the Phlegethon for all eternity.” I erected myself once more. “And I will happily deliver you to it.” Pete screamed as I descended on him, as I showed him what a real monster is.

The black shapes above us merged into a man that stalked along the ceiling. More shapes appeared, vast armies and war machines. We could hear them, the swords, the screaming, the sounds of bodies ripping and bloodletting as the shadow moved through them, carving up legions of soldiers with his spears, his swords, and with his bare hands. The sky grew darker outside as the clouds began to weep. Heavy rain cascaded from the heavens. I drank him slowly, the fire catching and spreading through the cell. He watched above as the montage of death spiralled in his eyes, until he saw his own shape above him, reflected atop of us, and then as with all finales, the curtain dropped over his miserable life, and I released him from my grasp, wiping his putrid blood from my mouth.

I burped, a slight taste of moonshine lingering on my lips. I moved to the window and pulled the bars from the concrete, tossing them into the air where they cascaded down to the floor. The lightning cracked and flashed as hell befell the earth once more. Herbert nestled his tiny nose into my chin. I called on the darkness to take me, and take me it did.

I was airborne, flying over Cove town in a flock of maddened bats. I watched the prison set ablaze behind me. All of those hellish sinners set alight. There was only space for one monster in this world, and it was me.