By Mark Miner
My fiance says this character reminds her of Grendel, and I can see a resemblance. If my creature is informed or inspired by the Dane-troll, it is only latently. Evening rains rolled in from the sea and began to wash the coffee plants in their warm mist. The colorful beans hung low, ripe and ready for the harvest, but they were untouched. A light shone in the farmhouse down the hill, but it had been on for days. The trucks sat idle in the twilight, and the door swung in the wind. This was how he liked it, lonely and silent. He could brood undisturbed by industry or life, and he did. Squatting on a rocky outcropping, he watched the boats ply their trade up and down the shore. The big tankers and cargo ships, far away on the horizon, sometimes eclipsed by a smaller boat closer to shore, they made him wish to be purely animal, unmolested by loneliness or self-doubt.
He crunched away on last week's farmhand, and thought about his lot in life. He could not, would not tolerate people. Their smell alone was abhorrent, and he viewed them as primarily a source of cheap food and sadistic pleasure. He never doubted his relationship to humanity, only how far he would take it. The idea of a self-destructive crusade against mankind occasionally crossed his mind, but he wasn't ready yet.
He was lonely, yes, but not for human company. Speech and touch repulsed him. He had always rippled his scaled skin in revulsion when his...mother?...touched him, cooing. Those years had been tiresome, but he was content to use the situation for a time. He was lonely for solitude. He was lonely for quiet winds laden with the light dust of barren fields. He thought often of the glory that would be found if he could be on a mountain such as this and see not a single light.
Here, in Ecuador, he finally felt at home, though it was a home trodden under by the odious bearers of half of his chromosomes. The climate suited him, the people were easily caught or cowed, as the day demanded, and there was ample fodder. It was a good place.
Well, he should really break the light in the farmhouse, the forest patrolman had driven by last night, unsuspecting, and now there was no reason to have it gleaming off into the night. His feet clicked on the rock as he stood erect, his broad shoulders and powerful legs made an impressive silhouette for the birds and lizards behind him in the jungle, and he loped off down the hill to smash the light.
