The Nature of Me

So, I'm not going to be able to tell you exactly what I am (again, safety), but I'm not entirely human. I am reminded of this frequently in my life. It used to be that I was told my humanity was my weakness, and only in abandoning it would I be strong. These days I like to think of it the other way around.

People, as in human beings not that other shit out there, are good. They are capable of tremendous acts of love and kindness. They fuck it up a lot, but nine times out of ten they mean good even when they do evil. It's their nature. Monsters, don't have that nature. It's a sad fact, but basically everything out there in the world that isn't human is mean, nasty and brutish. I literally cannot name a single supernatural entity that is not in someway predatory towards humans. Sure, gods tend to mean well, but humans are tools at best and cannon fodder at worst. If monsters ever do good, it's when they mean evil. Everything that humans aren't.

Which is why the worst thing in the world is when a human tries to be a monster.

Which brings me to Dave Morris. Dave is a real piece of work. Thick as hardened cement and dumb as a sack of dead mice.

I was indulging in some human kindness with my friends, Hank Cupid and Mark Burns, when Dave entered in. We were in a diner, a nice out of the way hole in the wall place. Its built into a basement, warm and cozy on these crisp fall days. The conversation was pleasant enough, and the company superb. The only festering niggle was the fact that each and every meal I have is something of an ordeal. Everything so neat, pleasant and human, and then the gnawing hunger.

But, like I said, that was a niggle. I was managing.

Then Dave walks in and sits across from us. He smiles at us, showing teeth. Without even thinking, I showed my own teeth, my brain insisting that teeth were a sign of aggression. I could practically feel my human nature being beaten back down. I tried to lift it back up, but it was an effort.

"Hello," I said through clenched teeth. I knew Dave, recognized him as another member of the Abyssals, a local gang with more motorcycles than sense. Clearly he recognized us, too. Hank and Mark seemed more in the dark about what was going on. They blinked in an effort to dislodge the confusion, but ignorance is harder to shake than that.

"Hey," Dave replied, his smile still there, but the teeth no longer displayed. The air of smugness was just as bad however. He was telling me he was in charge, that he was powerful. This human was telling me he was powerful.

I kept my teeth on display, ground firm together so I could not speak.

Hank did instead.

I'll be honest, I don't even remember the words in all clarity. Not over the tattoo of my own steadily pulsing ragebeat. Dave established himself as an Abyssal, and traded some barbs. Said he had been tasked with killing us, but had another arrangement in mind.

Maybe I should have kept listening. After all, he was letting his human greatness get the better of him, his desire not to kill override his instructions. That's an admirable trait, not a weakness.

Yeah, I should have listened. At least heard what arrangement he had in mind.
Obviously, I didn't.

Maybe I would have, if he hadn't chosen that moment to reach out and try and take food from my plate. His head slammed into the counter with a more than satisfying CRACK before I even acknowledged what I was doing. There are some things you just don't allow, and the stealing of food is one of them. There is no powerplay more open and pure than stealing food, and I couldn't take that, not from a human.

It's a monstrous way of thinking, but sometimes I can't escape it. Same way I can't escape my human nature at times. I become nasty and brutal when it most hurts me, and kind and gentle when that most hurts me. Or when they help, if I'm really lucky.

As he reeled back up from the blow, Dave drew a gun, but there were three of us and one of him. There was scrambling, sure, and Mark did something really, really stupid.

He tried to use magick to help.

Fucking wizards.

He tried to do something to the man's gun, I think. Mark has a penchant for making things go awful. It didn't help much. I got a couple of solid blows in, and Mark  beat him upside the head with that stupid stick of his, and Hank grabbed him by the neck and sent him running. He didn't call on his patron, and I didn't even transform out of my human flesh.

Then Mark and I hung around trying to calm the normals down and waiting for the police to explain things. After all, gunshots get noticed.

The cops aren't the one's who showed up.

I am not going to write about who did, though. That would be suicide.

I guess the point of this is:
Be human. It's what's great about you. Don't waste time trying to be a monster, because you're not good at it. You are good at being good, so do that. It'll serve you much further than trying to match brutality with bruteness.