The Beast Inside

    Diego is a small, scrawny child. The rest of his year five class are intent on making his tough life even more of a struggle than it needs to be. Lunchtimes never involve lunch because, most days, his dad can’t afford to give him money. On the days where they scrape together enough, some of the less scrawny children would decide to have two lunches. Over the years of constant bullying, Diego had decided on two things. The first is that children are only who they are because of their parents (big, mean kids have big, mean parents); the second was that he hates people. His Dad says, “hate is a strong word, son.” Good. Because Diego needs a strong word to describe how he feels towards the species of selfish creatures he was born into, by a mother who was killed when he was five, four-and-a-half years ago, and a waste-of-space father.

      One thing that he doesn’t hate is lizards. Living in a caravan full of holes, cracks and gaps in Spain means that there is a constant supply of the reptiles. Lizards go about their lives obliviously crawling along walls and eating horrible, annoying insects, a relaxed and easy life that Diego is almost jealous of. He craves a life without emotion or hurt. When he finally finishes year six, Diego thinks he will be big enough to run away. Away from his lousy Dad who has no permanent job, and spends his time and money drinking with his friends rather than with him. Away from his evil class of selfish, stupid kids with parents who are just as bad. If he could only escape this seemingly cursed town and move to Australia. He has no idea how he’ll get there, but he does know that there are huge reptiles in Australia.

    As he idly dreams of what could be, a sharp voice slices through his thoughts with a short, loud, “DIEGO! I asked you a question, and you need to answer it. How long till you get an actual house and a mum?” Millicent. A nasty piece of work who seemed to hypnotise teachers and students alike into loving her. She spoke with the authority of the headteacher, but was only a ten-year-old girl with a worrying narcissistic personality. She decided to bully Diego because he is clearly smarter than her. He is smarter than everyone in the school, and everybody knows it. She finds a reason to bully everyone, but they still like her.  So, he isn’t only a small scrawny child, Diego is a small, scrawny child who’s an absolute geek in every subject, especially science, and annoys even the teachers by correcting them on topics they should understand but hadn’t really a clue about. After two terms of sitting next to Millicent for Mathematics and English, he had found the best way to deal with her. Ignore her. As he goes back to his insultingly simple Math's equation - without even glancing at the idiot next to him - the monster removes the slimy globule of gum from her mouth and slaps it onto the back of his head. Diego’s hatred is building.

    When the school bell finally goes, Diego rushes from the room and marches out of the playground (picking gum from his hair) into central Madrid, not stopping until he reached the car park where his run-down caravan is because he knows how rough the area is. Usually, his dad watches TV until Diego comes home before going out with his mates until stupid o’clock in the morning, leaving his nine-year-old son to fend for himself. It’s a good job Diego is so mature. Despite his dad’s poor attempt at parenthood, Diego still loves him. He isn’t violent or mean, which is more than many kids get. He is just nonchalant to life itself. A miserable man, crushed by the brutal murder of the woman he fell in love with, and loves beyond the grave. As he approaches the miniscule mobile home at the back of the concreted area, the silence becomes thick and unwanted with no blaring television. The caravan is invariably filled with Diego’s chemistry experiments, with Phials and bottles of numerous chemicals and compounds. The door swings open as

Diego pokes it nervously. “Dad?”

If he lived in a house, Diego would go looking for him, but as the caravan was about five metres by three metres, within about a second of looking in, Diego knows exactly where his dad is. Collapsed in a drunken heap on the floor, in a pool of his own blood and Diego’s chemicals. His experiments.

     A wave of nausea sweeps over him. Drowning him in anger and hate and frustration at the cards that life dealt him. He changed his mind.

‘I don’t love my dad,’ he thought. He hates him like he hates everyone else.

 He is a drunken slob who somehow managed to ruin every single one of his experiments in what was probably a drunken rage. Passively, Diego checks his father’s pulse. Nothing. The guy had probably drowned in the puddle of chemicals. He felt no remorse. No sorrow or grief. In fact, he feels more upset about his experiments that were potentially going to turn his life around. That’s all that Diego has been working towards.

    A cold, bitter fury begins to rise from the very soul of Diego in that moment, as he considers his life for what it is. He is the son of a dead drunk and a mother who he can’t really remember, living in a dilapidated caravan in the centre of a city, with lizards for friends and no will to live. ‘Maybe I should just curl up next to this useless boozer and accept what comes after death?’  Diego is better than that. He turns around and is about to open the door to the caravan (which had swung shut in the breeze) when he hears a sizzling from behind him. A small phial of nitric acid is slowly dripping onto the pool of chemicals on the floor. A greenish-grey mist drifts upwards, filling the caravan’s small interior. Then filling Diego’s lungs. An Ocellated Lizard emerges from a gap in the wall, runs halfway across the acidic mess of chemicals, before coming to an abrupt stop. Dead? Diego can’t tell, his head feels light and distant, a deep and hot aching throbs through his small, wiry frame. Then, with a shallow gasp of helplessness, Diego falls forwards, his head crunching against the corner of the table. Then there he is. Laying in a pool of acid, next to his useless father. Both sprawled at awkward angles like the dead flies on Diego’s windowsill, put there to attract reptiles.

*

    Reptilite opens all three pairs of eyelids as he coughs and splutters through a thick cloud of toxicity. He manoeuvres his large, grey, scaled tail from underneath him and silently gets to his feet. As his tongue flicks out around him, he senses a presence next to him. A very much dead presence.

‘Hate.’ Reptilite thinks, ‘Reptilite hate people!’  

A burning fury courses through his veins at the thought of the pale, loud, ugly creatures that have dominion over the planet. He carelessly kicks the small corpse of Diego’s father out of his way, long claws piercing it in the process. Reptilite squeezes his colossal frame through the small opening in the side of the cramped caravan, two black voids in his monstrous face dart randomly around the car park that Diego’s family had lived in.

‘Reptilite is Diego?’ Reptilite questions himself, slightly confused at the concept. He is not smart by any stretch, but he is a living, breathing monster who has an unquenchable and definite hate for the human race. He creeps across the concrete, sometimes on all fours, sometimes on two legs. He prefers four. Using two reminds him only of people.

‘Reptilite hate people’ the creature mentally tells himself. Now used to his new form, Reptilite begins to crawl at a deceptively fast pace towards the central business district of Madrid, people shrieking and tearing away in the opposite direction.

‘People scared. Good’ All he needs to do now is kill the people. Stop the noisy, ugly, soft apes from hurting him anymore.

As he paces towards his first victim, baring his razor-sharp teeth and hissing at the little girl who shakes in fear, the monster happily comes to a smart conclusion for the size of its evil brain,

‘Reptilite is Diego. Diego is Reptilite. Diego and Reptilite hate people. We kill all people’ They lunge at Millicent with frightening speed.

‘Diego not small and weak anymore. Diego is new bully.’