From a very young age, I knew I was different. While other little girls played with their corn dollies and dresses, my boots - worn with years of use and slightly too small - trekked through the mud of the forest until I found my prize. My green eyes beamed at the lump of fur or feathers tucked away between rocks and sometimes fallen logs. It was a gift just for me to find as if the jolly saint delivered it personally.
I’d spend hours preening the beetles off of its fetid flesh. Young hands swatted away the festering amalgam of maggots, dirt, and leaves before shoving this new toy into my raggedy satchel. Mother always complained about the smell never really knowing its source.
When the last flame of Father’s candle faded into smoke and nearly the whole of our impoverished village fell into their nightly slumber, I’d sneak away from the safety of our home to play with my prize. I dressed them in old rags. I treated them to mud cakes and puddle water as if it were the finest meal fit for a king. Like a child does with their stuffed toys, so too did I play with my dead friends.
Naturally, their bodies would become too addled to play and from their bones, a keepsake was made. It was my fondest possession, this macabre collection, tucked safely beneath a loose floorboard. I was heartbroken when our dog dug it out for mother to find.
“Have you seen Arguere, Lyscilla?” She asked one morning.
I tried my hardest to hide a smile like children often do when lying. “No, mère."
***
She didn’t look at me the same after that. Behind her soft eyes that used to be filled with maternal love, there was always that flicker of fear. I hadn’t noticed it at the time and it would take me some years before I realized that my mother was afraid of me. Afraid of what I’d be capable of. Terrified by my abnormal behaviour. It came as no surprise that she was jumping at the bit to wed me off to any ol’ suitor seeking my hand. My father, however, was not so eager to ship me away to a broodmare’s fate.
I recall the shrill sound of my mother’s voice as she argued with him one night. I was forbidden from helping him hunt - it was unbecoming of a young woman. As with all of their arguments, however, the resounding echo of a calloused palm against flesh made her quiet and submissive. The perfect wife.
The next morning, I took my first life. She was a lovely doe with the largest… most beautiful eyes.
***
I was nearing twenty-five when my first serious suitor begged for my father’s blessing to marry. He was significantly older. If I had to guess, I would assume he was closer to my father’s age than mine. Still, he doted on me by offering gifts and lavish goods in return for my affection.
We were a poor family like many in my village so we had little to offer through a dowry. A cow perhaps and some small acreage of land unfit to sustain even a small couple. Even worse, I was still so very different from girls my age. Where they flourished into beautiful, willowy bodies, voluptuous curves and enticing lashes reminiscent of an artist’s flattering painting, I was very… plain.
Unlike those girls, however, I was easy to sway with the slightest amount of attention. Deep in my heart, I knew he loved me despite all of my strange flaws. He was the second to do so - none could adore me more than my father.
Perhaps that’s why he’d become so infatuated with the attention-starved girl I was. I’d never told him no, even when I didn’t want to surrender my modesty before our vows were made. I never told him no, even when he humiliated me over and over again. He loved me so wholly… until he didn’t.
It was the first time I felt raw, savage vehemence tearing through my heart like a rabid badger. Its claws raked at my skin, its growl climbed from my throat mirroring a bestial snarl. How could he… how could he! HOW COULD HE!
He pinned my wrists against the wall so I couldn’t strike her again. Her, the whore he brought into my bed. Our bed. The place where he first defiled me. The place where he promised me forever as he encumbered my lips with countless kisses. I thrashed like a mad beast, a caged dog. At that moment I realized my mother was right. I was capable of many terrible, inhumane things.
It was as if the whore had read my mind. “Kill her, Seymore. Before she ruins everything.” She spat out while adjusting her hair and pulling on her dress.
I recall her eyes through the lock, gleaming with malicious joy while the flames licked at my skin and I screamed a muffled wail of searing agony.
***
By some unfortunate miracle, I survived. Disfigured, of course, but alive. What little beauty I may have possessed was robbed from me, taken with the flames and smoke that killed both mother and father. I was alone.
It took some time before I was back to my old self and I took what my father taught me about hunting and swore it to vengeance.
Fervidly I stalked my prey. I tracked their every move and when the time was right, I loosed the string on his favourite bow. Seymore's death was quicker than I would have liked; I cannot say the same for her. I took her body into the woods where I used to find my toys as a girl. I peeled the skin away from her flesh akin to skinning my first doe. That’s when I learned how frail humans were compared to animals.
Something bid me to look at her eyes. I recalled how they laughed outside the door as I lay helplessly bound and gagged. How the villagers looked at me with disgust while I grieved. How my mother looked at me with fear after discovering my bone collection. Some may say this was the moment where I truly snapped.
Lunacy possessed me as I gouged those pretty little eyes out of her head with my fingers and kept them in my pocket until they were rotted little marbles.
I couldn’t return to the village after that. I was reduced to wandering along the river banks surviving off the forest. That’s when I first encountered the kelpie’s bridal abandoned by its host. Some thought possessed me to dangle it around my neck, to carry it this way back to camp. As soon as it touched my flesh, it fused to my skin and transformed my ugly body into a grotesque monstrosity.
This newly found body thoroughly enjoyed the hunt. The kill. The fear kindling in my victims' gazes. I found myself becoming morbidly obsessed with death. For years I lived like this, luring my victims to the water before snatching their lives and making collections of their eyes.
All but one, that is. Cyprian Bartholomew. We shared this sickness, this murderous joy and enabled it in one another. In some respects, he became a brother. It was he who gifted the mask to hide my burns and my shame, and allowed me to mingle better with the humans. The same that I still hunt with sickening glee.