As I relaxed into the fear, accepting the fear without panicking, I heard the voice more clearly. It sounded young, though I knew that the sound itself was only an illusion.

What I was hearing was simply my mind’s way of understanding the message. Even though I could hear words, I knew it was just my interpretation of the feelings of accusation that the voice was really projecting.

“Bad, bad, bad, bad,” it chanted.

I allowed my thoughts to stretch out, reaching towards the voice. I didn’t put words into the thought. I spoke to myself in symbols, feelings, and only sometimes words, and I was dealing with deep, hidden parts of my mind. So I didn’t ask a question when I responded, I just sent out the feeling of a question.

“I am bad,” the voice said. “You are bad. We are bad.”

I sent the feeling of “what” to the voice.

“Nooooooooooooo!” the voice cried, denial slapping at me.

A scaled face lunged at mine, snapping jaws just inches from my nose. The voice snarled at me. “You did this! I did this! We did this!”

I doubled over as feelings of anger and guilt mixed with flashes of memory. I felt the tears falling down my cheeks. The voice was talking about what Zaro had done. What I had let him do.

I looked up as the voice rose in a keening wail. Every sorrow I’d ever experienced was in that sound, and I wept harder, sobbing loudly.

“We allowed this! To us. To them!” the voice cried out in anguish.

I nodded. By not stopping Zaro, I had let him continue using the women in the Center. Not just me.

No. Not using. Abusing.

“You don’t know you saved her,” the voice bit out, accusingly. Remorse and understanding of my own wretchedness pulled me down, and I saw a face flash through my mind.

I gasped. Lupé. I’d never thought to ask her if my intervention had prevented Zaro from taking her, too. Even though he’d told me it wouldn’t.

“I failed! You failed! We failed!”

Despair and hopelessness filled me. The voice howled in pain, and I could hear the creature thrashing itself on the rocks beyond my light. I felt each blow in my mind, like a memory of being beaten.

“You let him!” the voice wailed. “I let him! We let him!”

I lifted my head and let my voice join the keening cry. Feeling the self-hate and shame run through me. I howled out my worthlessness and tore at my own flesh and hair with my fingers. The anguished cries ripped my voice apart, and I finally collapsed, weeping with hoarse moans. The light faded out as my will crumbled.

I heard the creature approach, slithering across the rocks. I struggled to control my breathing. I knew what I had to do, but that didn’t make it any easier to do it. Gravel scattered as I scrambled to my feet, stepping on sharp stones in the darkness. I sniffed and tried to stand up straight, but the mourning had left my muscles liquid and unstable.

I closed my eyes and focused on the sound of the creature moving, closer, closer. It felt like it took forever to come within reach, and I held myself still to be sure I wouldn’t startle it away. Finally, I could feel the mood shift in the cavern, just a subtle change in the emotional pressure. It was time.

I opened my eyes and called up the light once more. Standing before me was a horrible-looking creature, slimy and scaly, dripping with tangles of long, patchy hair. Spikes stood out along its body in asymmetrical, random places, interspersed with gaping sores that oozed bright yellow-green pus streaked with red blood.

The creature’s mouth was skewed to one side, so it looked like a clay model that had fallen on the floor and not been fixed. Teeth of all shapes and sizes jutted out of its jaw at odd angles. Its stubby tail had skin torn off in patches along its length.

One deep red eye sat on top of its head, like the eye of a frog, but with the odd rectangular pupil of a goat. The other eye was pale orange and sat low, to one side of the nose, and seemed to have no pupil at all. It wheezed every breath with a mucousy rattle, and an odor of rotting meat and diseased shit surrounded it, wafting towards me with every micro-gust in the air.

I gulped down the bile that rose at the sight of the creature. It was everything horrible and disgusting in the world. I felt repelled by it at every level of my being. I stared at the creature, willing myself to do what I had to do. There was only one way to be rid of it.

I stepped forward. The creature flinched and snarled, tensing up as if to spring. I hesitated, letting it get used to my new position. It slowly relaxed, and I stepped forward again.

This time, it didn’t flinch as much. It watched me with its mismatched eyes and relaxed from its half-crouch. The next step forward, it barely moved, though its eyes flickered from my face to my hands to my feet and back.

I held my hands out, palms forward, slightly away from my body, showing it that I had no weapons. The next step, there was no flinch at all. Instead, the creature made a low moaning noise that sounded like the first part of the sound of vomiting. I forced myself not to cringe at my visceral reaction to the creature’s whine. I held the gaze of its sickly orange eye, willing it to stay calm, and I stepped forward again.

I was now inches away from the creature. If either of us moved, we would brush against the other. I tried not to think of the pus and slime coating the matted hair, scales and open sores that covered its body, so close to my bare skin.

I spread my arms wide, and the creature tensed. Before it could react, I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around it. It struggled to get away, thrashing in my arms. It snarled and snapped at my face. Despite its greater size, I was stronger, and I held on tight. The creature whined its vomit-like sound, and I could feel the wetness of pus and slime smearing across my body, dripping down my legs and off my arms. It panted, wheezing and hacking mucus onto my face.

The battle seemed to take hours. Slowly, it weakened, its struggles becoming less intense. I laid my head against its body and began singing a soothing, wordless tune. I felt the body in my embrace shrink in on itself. My hands met behind its back and I cradled the creature, rocking it in my arms. I was covered in the pus and goo, and every breath was a struggle not to gag on the smell. But I sang to the creature, and I pushed love energy through my arms towards it. And I cuddled it as it shrank down.

I lost track of time, and it seemed sudden when the change happened. In a blink, I was no longer rocking the shrunken body of a filthy beast. Instead, my arms held a little girl of about three or four years old.