I’m still alive somehow. I don’t know how long they’ve been hunting me, but I feel I've been running for years. Beasts track me through the bushes day and night, and I can hear them always just behind me. I’m cowering behind a bush to rest for a moment as I write, but I can still hear them breathing, sniffing me out like bloodhounds. Sometimes I catch glimpses of their eyes shining through the thorns, and they are filled with blood and hate. My hand is drooling blood from being stabbed by my quill, but I have no other choice. I'm still writing in the hope that maybe someday, someone will find this journal and learn something from it. It won't be long now, anyway, so why would I need the blood for anything else? The forest itself is determined to end me. I've almost forgotten what the sun looks like, for the choke and tangle of plants that's crushing inwards on me. The more I run, the more I trip and get snared by vicious, bladed vines and roots. Clouds of insects invade my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my lungs. Their touch burns like embers flying from a campfire, and their buzzing is in tune with the constant drone of

that terrible song. I’m beginning to understand it, though it has no words. It’s announcing the glee of the hunt. It’s excited, chasing me deeper into these hellish woods, knowing what the end result will be. It wants my blood, and with every drop that hits the mossy floor it grows louder, stronger. Even the trees have joined in the song, and I can hear them whisper with every swish of the wind. It is the end. The temperature swings wildly from suffocatingly humid to frigid in a matter of minutes. One minute I'm slicked with mud and the next I'm coughing up dust. I'll be drenched with sweat, and then crackling with slimy frost in a matter of seconds. The woods themselves are a predator, hunting me.

Since that golden devil creature touched me, I’ve grown more devilish myself. My skin has been reduced to a saggy, slimy linen draped over my bones. It’s transparent, every vein and tendon visibly pulsing and sliding beneath. Any touch feels like hot iron, and my clothes tattered away long ago. Any man who saw me now would surely shoot me in fear and disgust, and I would thank him for it. I caught a glimpse of myself in a greasy puddle, and I would have thrown up if anything was in my stomach. My eyes are bulging, sickly green, and leaking with blood that dribbles down my face in rivulets. Sunken cheeks, so thin that you can see the teeth right through the skin. A mess of mashed tissues and stretched muscle, all tangled together in one disgusting, pussy, rotten heap of monstrous flesh. I think I might melt away into nothing but leftover bones. Even if I had food, I couldn't eat it. Any touch is torture, and I fear it would fall right through me. I hope I die soon. It would be for the better.

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The only thing I have to think about is my past. There won’t be a future, and the present is unthinkable. I remember being just a small boy, living at Father’s estate. I remember how he never really loved me. I was never good enough for him, and I think he would have preferred to have daughters. Someone to be there, to sit pretty and be admired. He had to put effort into me, so I could go and become a competent man out in the world. But that was never what he wanted. Maybe it was because I killed my mother. My act of entering the world took her out of it, and I don't think he ever forgave me. I've never even seen a picture of her, you know. He erased her, because he couldn't stand losing her. And he erased me too. He’ll tell everyone at home that he never had a son, and they’ll just go along with it. He never wanted one anyway, and he made

that ever so clear to me. He would always be hidden away in that big old house, in his secret rooms. I was never to ask about what he did in those rooms.

One day, I picked the lock while he was out. I can't believe I had forgotten about this until now. It was a massive room, with strange stained glass designs, and a high arched ceiling. There were gargoyles high up in each corner, and the carpet was a deep scarlet, soft and rich. In the middle of the room laid a cage. And there was a demon in the cage. It looked at me with eyes of hardened steel, deep and sharp like a blade. The room smelt of gunpowder and acid. Its glittering silver body and wicked talons crushed against the bars of the cage, and they shuddered under its weight. The room was littered with old, musty parchment with ancient sigils and writing. The demon looked at me, and I could feel it in my mind. It wanted me dead, it wanted my Father dead, and it wanted all men purged of this world. It never spoke, but it asked me to open the cage. I took a step towards it, entranced, and then the door behind me flung open. Father seized me by the collar. I can hear the way he roared at me. I can feel each bruise he left on my face, my back, my ribs. I can feel the sting of his first slap, and I can hear my own boyish cries in that hallway as he left. Father tampered with things beyond his knowledge or control, and he raised a son to pay his price. My blood is on his hands, and his soul is awaiting a fate even worse than my own.