1

It was the first time I learned what the curse truly meant.

I had just turned thirteen. It was a solemn occasion. There was nothing to celebrate. At that special age, the males in my family get the gift they will regret forever. Now the bequest and all that comes with it is to be mine until I pass it on to my own son. Yet there I was, dreading the day he will turn thirteen, knowing this too would be his to bear, when what I should have been thinking about was the night and what was to come.

            The day had been too short. The sun soon swept the sky clean of all light and all happiness. My father would soon be snoring in the other room, sleeping a deep sleep he had not had during a waning moon for the twenty years since his thirteenth birthday. Although he would never describe what those nights were like, I knew of my father’s pain from the warn look in his face on the following morning and the sounds I did hear in the night. And that night I was to truly know what it meant to be a male in the Tortureen family. I would know the gift. And forever I would remember the words of my father as he locked me into my room that evening.

“Forgive me for not having the strength to do otherwise,” he had said.

And now I understand.

2

            My bedroom door was bolted on both sides. Putty and linens filled every crack and crevice, and brown paper grocery bags, cut to size, covered every window.

“Best not to see what you must hear,” my parents had explained. “The sight can only make the nights worse.”

The candles that had been placed around the room to detect and show any movement, any successful filtration, had all been lit. Bows of pine hung atop every window. One wreath of cedar was fastened on the inside of my bedroom door, and another tacked to my closet door. Branches from different evergreens -- the symbol of continuity, life, and prosperity -- formed a circle around my bed, which had been pulled away from its previous home under the window that looked out towards the deepening woods, to a newer, safer location in the center of my room. All was prepared. All was ready, even me, for I had been trained. That night I was to heed my father’s warning -- the one I’d been given for more than two years now.

“Why start so young?” my mother had asked one night when she thought I was sleeping.

“It takes time to train a child. In their innocence they often choose not to believe, and then they become careless and dangerous,” my father had replied. “He must learn to bear it, so I must start his lessons now.”

The next day my training began. At first, I was taught only how to seal every crevice. It wasn’t until months later I was told why the ritual sealing part of the night must be done, and then taught how to follow the steps exactly as they had been passed down through many generations of Tortureens. Then there were lessons about the candles -- how and where to place them, and what they were for. My father explained the evergreens and how they would help to protect me and keep me confined where I could not share the gift. It was only if I got out or the right one got in that I would then pass on the curse. Only when my father felt it was time, and even then, against my mother’s wishes, was I told of the curse and why it had been placed on my family to begin with.

3

The year was 1842. A young Tortureen male, barely thirteen, was hunting in the woods. The moon was waning. It was dark, and not a right time for this hunt. But the young man was determined, and though not experienced enough to be hunting by himself, something his father had warned against, the boy snuck out while his family slept.

As he stocked through the dark woods, he came upon a doe nursing her young. A buck of great size stood in the brush on the side, distracted by the scene. Although not visible to the doe, it was unhidden from the Tortureen’s bow, and thus unaware of its own doom.

Men of the Tortureen family were prideful, and boastful. The boy who only recently had become a man in body, decided to prove his own boast. The arrow flew, unsure. It struck, but hit only part of the buck’s heart, giving it some time before its death. The boy was forced to watch it bleed and fade with slowness and pain. But that was not all he observed.

The young man stepped close to the wounded creature. He bent down and touched it, and as he did so, the buck transformed into a man of great stature. His body replaced that of the buck’s. Only the arrow remained the same. The bleeding man lay naked, looking up at the boy who had shot it. The words it spoke were the curse I today still carry – a curse my son too will soon bear, but which after tonight, he will not pass on.

“You knew better,” the dieing man said. “But you would not listen, and so my death is not a swift one. I will not be freed of my mortal body before I can pass my gift to you.” The words gurgled out as the buck lay bleeding.

“What gift?” the young boy asked.

“The one of great ecstasy and pain that you and each following generation of males will forever live with and live for.”

As it spoke these last words, it took its final breath. And with it came forth a foggy mist that engulfed the boy. The moisture stimulated his every sense. He could feel the beast’s last breath in his chest, and the final pump of its heart. His skin tingled with sensation the young man had never known. Every blood vessel in his body filled to bursting. His temples pounded. His body ached with a desire, a need he’d never felt before.

And then it was gone.

In its place the young man now knew only dishonor and hunger unfulfilled. He returned to his home and spoke not of the shame. But as the next first night of the waning moon showed, his secret did not free him from the buck’s curse. It only left him unprepared for the promised ecstasy and pain. It was then he knew that he must prepare his own son for what was to be. It is a ritual that has been passed from generation of Tortureen to generation. And tonight was my son’s first waning moon.

4

             Yes. I know it seems unbelievable and horrible, but it had to be done. He would have weakened, just as I did. Sooner or later, he would have done it. And then it would start anew with the next generation. I could not save my child from its ever presence. And he would not have been able to save his either. But it was within my power to prevent any other generation from suffering the torment. That’s why it had to be done. That’s the reason I did it.

           The man just stared at him.

           Does he still breathe? Will he live?

            When his captor nodded, Tortureen let go of a sigh of relief that could only come from the depth of a tortured man’s soul. He stood and wiped the moisture from the back of his neck, then placed his arms behind his back and allowed the officer to hand cuff him.

            “The night is only begun,” he warned as he was led from his son’s room. “You must watch him closely. See that he does not get out of his hospital room. Guard him. No one must get in as well. No one. Do you understand? I pray that you do, for I cannot be sure that what I have done will end the curse.”

5

            Tortureen, the father, paced his cell. Again the moon was gone and already it grew black. The other cells were empty. He was alone, but tonight it would not matter for him. Tonight was his son’s first waning moon after this thirteenth birthday. The curse had passed, so the father would sleep.

            When all was quiet, Tortureen pulled his bed to the center of the room and lay down on the scratchy, wool blanket that covered his cot. As ritual and habit had taught him, he’d first removed his clothes, dropping them to the floor, as there had been no other place to lay them. He stretched. There was comfort in the knowledge that he’d suffer no more. The curse had passed. He hadn’t been able to prevent that, but he had made sure it would end with his son’s generation.

            Tortureen drifted into a restless sleep, so like the other nights of the waning moon. He soon realized his rest was too like those other nights, and that there was nothing he could do about it. With that realization came the first symptoms, and the memory of his neck, freshly damp after the surgical removal he’d performed. But now they were not memories. They were real. He realized he’d been wrong. There was no way to stop it. The curse had passed again. It would not be stopped. It had returned to him. And this cell held no protection for the man or for the many male ancestors he would spawn tonight, because there was nothing at all in here to protect him from them. There were no candles to warn of their pending arrival. There were no rags to stuff between the cell door and window bars. There were no locks save the one that trapped him here. It would not keep out those who were coming for him, but it prevented him from escaping.

           He fought to rise, to seek a hiding place, perhaps beneath the cot. But it was too late. Pain seared his body, starting at the top of his head and writhing its way to the sole of his feet. Then came the first one. He could not touch her for she was not natural, not real in the human sense. But she would accept his spawn, and she was determined to have it.

           His body rose slowly from the cot until it floated in the air. He shut his eyes against the sensation that turned his stomach. A scream of words caught in his throat, trapped in the same way his body was trapped in this cell, and in this ecstasy and pain he’d come to know. He fought. He fought hard. He’d only given in once before. He knew that. It gave him strength to believe he could fight again, fight through the whole night, fight them all. But it was no use.

           The first opaque body engulfed him. It soothed away the pain that wracked his rigid body until it was no more. Then the ecstasy began. His skin tingled with familiar sensation. Every blood vessel in his body filled to bursting. His temples pounded. His body ached with desire. Though he still fought, it did no good. The relief came.

           When he opened his eyes, the figure seemed to be smiling at him. It smoothed his hair and wiped the sweat from his brow. Then it pulled back, leaving Tortureen, arms and legs dangling, hanging in mid-air.

           Pain wracked his body again. A second entity approached him. It had begun, and he knew they wouldn’t stop coming until the sun ripped away the darkness. They’d always come and tempted him. But until tonight, he’d been protected in his prepared room. Now, his own actions had doomed him to this fate. And worst of all was not that the cycle came twice a month, once during the waning crescent moon, and again during the waning gibbous moon, or that he would endure, unprotected for the full duration of his jail stay. It wasn’t even that his son would suffer the same fate. Worst of all was knowing that he’d done in one quick swipe of a sharpened hatchet what the curse had not succeeded in doing all of these years. He’d made it possible for every female creature of the darkened moon realm to conceive and multiply the curse. And as pain again wracked his whole body and the third entity wrapped itself around him, soothing and exciting him, Tortureen knew there was nothing he could ever do about it.