Kamil Ali
Artists paint. Authors weave.
Every creation is a peeve that never learned to leave
Lunacaulius - The Moonstalker
Demonic DiscoveryIt appeared to be an open-and-shut case. Every piece of evidence and recorded proof pointed to Margaret, the murder accused.
The long white-haired petite adolescent sat slumped like a tired, wounded animal, dwarfed by the extra-large chandelier hanging above her from the ceiling by hooks and chains.
Overwhelmed by the evidence and recorded act of cannibalism the prosecution presented, Margaret’s legal aid lawyers pleaded insanity on behalf of their non-responsive, motionless, pale-faced client with deep pockmarks on her round cheeks. Margaret stared at the floor without blinking. Her white, shoulderless gown with no sleeves matched her bloodless shoulders and arms.
The judge ordered an evaluation to determine Margaret’s mental state at the time of the crime. She also ordered a report on Margaret’s background.
Records revealed that Margaret was born around midnight behind a clump of bushes in a city park. The plaintive cries of the newborn awoke nearby park sleepers who called for an ambulance. The light of the full moon illuminated a horrific blood-soaked scene that shocked the senses of onlookers, paramedics, and investigators. The ghastly scene and the smell of blood and flesh mingled with vegetation and earth churned the stomachs of first responders, who scampered away to wretch and vomit into nearby bushes.
A half-eaten man with his neck twisted at an unnatural angle and his pants and underwear pulled to his knees lay beside the squirming baby with her umbilical cord and placenta still attached.
While attending to the scene, reports came in to the coroner that a dead woman was found a block away, in a location frequented by prostitutes. It appeared that the dead woman was the birth mother, but authorities could not make sense of the two crime scenes. The birth mother had slashed her wrist and bled to death.
The infant was rushed to the hospital, and after processing the scenes, the two dead bodies were taken to the morgue.
Autopsies confirmed the connection between the baby and the dead woman, but the male corpse bore no DNA connection to either mother or child. The postmortem examinations also revealed disturbing evidence of cannibalism by the birth mother. The dead man’s flesh and blood were found in her digestive system. The woman’s identity remained unknown. No one had reported her missing or could remember seeing her, and her fingerprints offered no clues. Authorities assumed that she was a transient prostitute with no criminal history, working the street in search of clients. The dead man was identified as a local businessman who frequented the area. His family quietly claimed his remains.
Once the baby’s health was stabilized, the government adoption agency named her Margaret and placed her in the home of a young childless couple.
Margaret was a quiet child who hardly spoke and smiled even less. She followed rules but exhibited learning disabilities that forced her into a special needs school.
The child never developed social skills. Instead of playing with other kids during school breaks, she preferred to sit by herself at the edge of the playing field and stare up into space. Her lips sometimes moved during these moments of self-isolation as if communicating with an invisible person in the sky.
The school counselor noticed that Margaret’s emotions controlled the faint hue her body radiated. Frustration made her glow pink, while anger turned her red. Blue meant that she had become cold and calculating, while her pale demeanor suggested a disconnect with her environment; an absence of her mind.
Margaret became more withdrawn with each passing year. Her adopted parents tried their best to shower her with love, but she remained indifferent to every effort that they made to bond with her. The peculiar child refused to let anyone touch her hair and nails, both of which she gnawed to her preferred length with her teeth. She used her extra-long fingernails to comb her waist-length thin strands of hair.
Margaret teethed every three years. Each set of new teeth grew a shade darker and a little more chiseled. She developed the strange behavior of opening her bedroom window and whimpering mournfully at the full moon.
Margaret was forced into juvenile homes after her strange behavior quickly ended her relationships with foster parents who accepted her into their homes. The reports indicated that the usually calm and dispirited Margaret, who spoke only in response to questions, seemed to become inexplicably agitated and aggressive on full moon nights.
Sex education in school taught the preteen what to expect physically during sexual maturity, but it did not prepare her for the mental conflicts that sent her on a roller coaster of confusing emotions. Like the other girls her age, she became more lethargic as her body morphed from lanky preteen to shapely teenager.
Unlike classmates, her periods only lasted one day, during which she writhed in agony from menstrual cramps and migraines that made school attendance impossible because painkillers offered no relief.
Ovulation for Margaret occurred only on the night of the full moon. The height of carnal desire when the full moon reached its climax in the night sky fueled sexually frustrated rage and a hunger for raw meat.
Lack of intimacy forced her to bottle up her natural urge to reproduce, but she found a way to satisfy the craving for fresh meat. She used her agility on full moon nights to escape through her bedroom window and clamber down the wall to lurk in the shadows on the prowl for prey.
Neighborhood pets patrolling their enclosed backyards at night during the full moon did not stand a chance against their silent stalker. With lightning speed and accuracy, Margaret pounced on her unwary victims by leaping like a frog from hiding and snapping their necks in an instant before feasting on their carcasses.
The community reeled from shock at the savage attacks. Bite marks, which were not human, did not match any known animal. Rumors of a supernatural being sent a chill into the hearts of the residents. Their cleverly laid traps were useless against the prowler in their midst. The full moon attacks continued despite the formation of vigilante groups patrolling the neighborhood. Margaret’s savagery intensified with each assault, but her cunning raids and untraceable retreats left the community in chaos and distrust. Terror reigned over the once quiet neighborhood.
When owners started keeping their children indoors and their pets locked up in their homes at night, dead and mutilated wildlife proved that the threat still plagued the community unabated until shelters were forced to increase capacity when the bloodthirsty strikes switched to homeless people. Human flesh seemed to become the favorite meat for the beast.
The unsuspecting authorities did not connect the unassuming teenager to the mayhem unleashed on the public. Margaret was kept in a room on the twentieth floor of a high-rise apartment, which made it impossible for any human to scale the wall and wreak havoc on the surrounding area with such superhuman agility and precision. They suspected that a rabid, wolf-like creature, influenced by the full moon, was terrorizing their community.
A psychologist assigned to Margaret described the teenager as a sexually deprived young adult who lacked the social graces and emotions to connect romantically. Upon discovering her psychopathic tendencies, he worked with the troubled teen, teaching her how to modify her behavior to emulate and display emotions acceptable to society.
As an experiment, the doctor set up an appointment with Margaret on a full moon night to test the effectiveness of his efforts. He asked a videographer to record the session for record-keeping.
When Margaret started to fidget after hopping onto her chair and squatting across from him, he tried to wrestle control by assuming a dominant posture over his client. The gradual increase in his voice evoked an equal amount of animosity from Margaret. The Psychologist’s attempts at overpowering his patient had aroused the monster in her.
She sprang on him and snapped his neck in a blinding flash of movements, before biting into his flesh in a feeding frenzy. The videographer abandoned his camera and scampered behind a chair. The video continued to roll. It recorded Margaret’s attack and her leap out of the second-story window.
During a search for Margaret the next morning, staff found her rolled into a fetal position behind a hedge on the grounds below the doctor’s office. Her soft moans and cuts from the broken window panes brought a medical team to cart her off to the emergency ward, where they fixed a broken ankle and removed shards of glass from her flesh.
After reviewing the video footage and reports, the judge agreed that Margaret belonged in a mental institution. The prosecutor shook his head, and Margaret’s lawyers smiled at their client, who stared into space with disinterest in the trial.
During her incarceration, Margaret had to be placed in a padded cell for twenty-four hours during every phase of the full moon for her well-being and the safety of others. A camera recorded Margaret’s violent outbursts during her periods of isolation.
While recuperating from her injuries, Margaret practiced the doctor’s instructions. She observed and mimicked the emotional behaviors of the hospital staff and soon became adept at displaying acts of sadness, empathy, and various mindsets of other people even though she was devoid of such sentiments. The good doctor had inadvertently given his psychotic patient a dangerous tool that allowed her to blend into society and exist as a normal human being without detection. She developed the skill to manipulate and deceive her way into people’s hearts.
Margaret had another formidable talent in her arsenal. Like her mother, she had the inherent ability to escape without a trace by abandoning her current physical form and commandeering the bodies of others for a complete and undetectable transition into a new identity.
Her first victim was a nurse named Catherine, whom she had befriended and from whom she had craftily pried details of her single life in the big city. When Catherine told Margaret of her plan to take a month off work to visit her sick mom in the country, she planted a seed into the evil mind of her patient, who was now fully healed.
Margaret put her plan into action at the end of Catherine’s final shift. She left her own corpse on the bed and entered Catherine’s body after suffocating her to displace her soul.
Medical staff found Margaret’s dead body on the bed. Their autopsy report showed the cause of death as suicide. Margaret had slashed her wrists seconds after she abandoned her body for the blood to drain while it was still warm. She took care to close her eyes and made her body presentable in death.
Now that Margaret had found ways to release her pent-up pressure with visions of solutions only hours away, her moods became lighter. She chuckled inwardly at the ease of stealing an identity. She did not have to change her appearance or clothing to match her identity provider. Even the fingerprints and pupils were real. Her uniqueness as the individual she hijacked was ready-made for her. The suffering or death of others was a small price to pay for her own spark of contentment, however fleeting.
Catherine was a friendly girl with outer beauty that matched her inner qualities, but she had no friends. She never mingled outside of work. Margaret had used this fact as one of the main reasons for selecting her. Once in Catherine’s body, she pretended to use the bathroom and return to discover that Margaret had committed suicide. Knowing the history of depression that Margaret had endured, no one seemed surprised or suspected anything out of the ordinary had occurred.
Society had branded Margaret as learning-impaired. They judged her by their own ordinary standards. Margaret had manoeuvred around their thinking and had engineered a flawless deceptive coup right in front of everyone's eyes without so much as a blink of suspicion. The strategist had won another battle against common thinkers who attached flawed theories to unexplainable facts for their own convenience.
At the end of the shift, Margaret used Catherine’s personality to graciously accept the staff’s wishes for a safe four-hour flight to her rural hometown and their regards for good health to her mom.
Margaret’s heart thumped in her chest when she approached the perimeter gate of the hospital, but she did not have to worry. The guard on duty recognized Catherine. He gave her a warm smile and a farewell wave after opening the lock on the gate to let her out.
Margaret took her first step out of the system that had held her hostage from the day she was born. Her eyes lit up at the playground called Earth that promised to fulfill her every desire. She inhaled the fresh air of freedom. The reason for her existence gave her purposeful strides toward her lofty ambitions. She could taste victory for the survival of her people!
Next: Divergent Disclosure