To Catch a Beast

I spun around, cursing my imagination for being so cruel. Then my eyes fell onto the creature that was sniffing the doorframe I had altered. It was trying to figure out what had happened to its home. I cursed myself again; this time for not having realised that there was only one way in or out of the whole building and right now: the Beast stood between me and escape.

I had never seen a Beast in daylight before. It didn't lessen the fear any, that was for sure. It stood down on four legs as it sniffed the floor but it still reached well over five foot. I could only guess that when it stood up on its hind legs it was at least seven foot. With each sniff its gums pulled up a little, exposing a mouth full to the brim with razorblade teeth, each the size of my longest finger.

The way that its arms bent at a sort of elbow made them look vaguely human. Even the ends of its paws morphed into five long bony finger-like things that were each topped off by a five inch claw. The body resembled that of a boar (or a bear) with a large hunch behind the shoulders. It looked like a grizzly bear mixed with a muscular silver-back gorilla.

The Beast turned its gaze upwards to inspect the rest of the door frame, giving me a perfect view of its face. The only way I could possibly describe it to myself was that someone had taken a bald wolf’s head, grown it several sizes and stuck it onto the neck of this monster. It was the kind of thing that you would've expected to have a tail, but it didn't. It was surely the strangest creature to have ever existed.