Bonum and Turpificatus

I.

I am a hunter. I scour the lands for Nature’s most horrible creations and I destroy them for the sake of humanity. I am Bonum, I have lived this way for a year to the day, my sword my only companion, the forests ferns my only home.
This day I follow another prey. Beneath the shade of these great oaks I hunt a man, a madman really. I’ve heard tales of his brutality, constantly attacking, killing, or horribly mangling everyone in the area. I’ve heard stories of vicious attacks, whitnessed wounds from tooth and nail, seen firsthand the awesome horror this abomination inspires. I hunt him for he terrorizes a city, the one of my birth. My people are the ones he harms. My friends the ones who must flee in terror.
I hear a sound, a ruffling of the leaves. Normally this could be the wind, or an animal, but this is different, It’s persistent…It’s nearing. I smell the rancid scent of death, of madness, of complete savagery. Suddenly a cry echoes throughout the entire valley. I turned, but even as the primal roar reached my ears a body slammed into mine.
II.

There’s someone here, yes someone is chasing me…
He can’t understand, he can’t understand all that is within me, He’ll think me mad, yes mad like all the others did. They thought me mad so I killed them, yes killed them and ate them. I was once called Amator, yes once I was like anyone else, yes I was. Now I am Turpifacatus, the name that was chosen for me by the flesh, the blood, the bones of my victims. Now to deal with this nuisance…
III.

Amator and Parricida lay upon the plain, hands entwined tightly. They gazed out, surveying the beauty of the valley that lay outstretched before them. Behind them lay the village of Heim, the place they both called home. They came here often, to this vista overlooking the valley near their home. The view was surreal, the forest below looked as though taken from an artists’ fanciful dreams, Blotches of trees here, curves of clear streams there, and everywhere were blotches of open land, the glades where the children played in the day. The place was peaceful, had always been peaceful. The land lay on no great road, nor was it on any border of great nations.
These two had been lovers for some time. They had been friends their whole lives, this being simple as there were few children born in the small village and they had been each others only companions since childhood.
“Amator. I need to tell you something.” Parracida turned toward him, took his other hand and locked gazes. Her beautiful hazel eyes intoxicated him, reminding him of his love for her.
“I...I can't do this. I can't love you, I can't lie to you anymore. I thought I did. I truly thought I did, but I don't, and I'm not willing to lie to your face any longer.”
The effect was swift and devastating. Amator's whole world fell apart. At first the words didn't so much as register a repsonse, but then the weight hit him. He wrenched his hands from hers, confused and betrayed. He stood up and staggered like a drunk man.
"Why?" He whispered, tears now flowing freely.
“I still care, I don't want-” She started softly, trying to calm him.
“Shut up!"Still confused and upset he staggered back toward town, tears streaming down his ashy cheeks

You're just like everyone else, you just were better at pretending! You don't care about me! You hate me too. I loved you, I thought that you loved me and I'm rewarded with what? With what?!

He threw open the door to the small house that he lived in alone after his mother abandoned him. He collapsed onto the small straw mattress rocked himself silently for half the night before finally being taken up by sleep.
IV.

The madman's fingers close around my throat, but I manage to wrangle myself out of his grasp. His nails dig into my neck leaving red stripes of blood behind. I kick him off me, feeling his emaciated weight as I do so, wishing that was all I had felt as the pungent smell of rotten flesh overwhelmed me. He backs up, much like a crab and for the first time I see him fully. He is wasted, shrunken in both height and width. His sparse frame was highlighted by his threadbare clothes, barely hanging on to his frame. But worse yet were his eyes, those noble, bloodshot eyes. In them I saw the depths of his madness.
“Why do you do this? These people deserve nothing of this sort!”
“Easy of you to speak of nobility, yes yes it is. You have a life with purpose, you have a meaning. I have none of that, yes none of that have I. Will you be the one to tell me? Can YOU TELL ME?”
The Tiny figure rushed at me again, this time I was ready with knife drawn and ready. He lept at me and I sidestepped, digging my knife into his exposed side as I did. He howled and came across with his arm, breaking my grip on the knife.
He careened away, wounded but still able to continue the fight. He pulled the knife from his torn side.
V.

Who does this man think he is, this hunter, this hunter of beasts, treating me like I have no mind. No, no he is wrong, He'll try to catch me. He'll cage me and put me back in that home. I'll have to go back...I'll have to go back to that BITCH, to that WHORE who follows me, NO NO NO. I not go back I WON'T GO BACK THERE!
I cans't go back there, no I cans't. I'd die I'D DIE. She never cared, she just lie like the rest I show him. I KILL HIM!
VI.

Months passed. Amator rarely left his house, when he did he only went to stand mournfully outside Parracida's home.Things had devolved to the point of conflict, for now she would only she would do nothing but stare at him from her window, never an expression until one day she came out to meet him.
“What's wrong with you? Why do you take it like you lost something? It's no big deal, I just don't want you now, Don't you get it? Why can't you be mature. I hate you, you're making me angry with the way your acting, like a pouting petulant child.”
“I'd expect words like these from a serpent! Everything you ever said was a lie wasn't it? You said you loved me and then this. You only said these things to see me ripped apart didn't you?”
“Stop it, Stop it. I know what you're trying to do, stop pressuring me, it won't work! I HATE YOU, GO AWAY!”
“If you cut the tail from a serpent, do you blame it for biting you in response?”
“YOU NEVER LOST ME! YOU NEVER HAD ME! I never loved you, in your desire to escape your own cruel reality you imagined that so, but I NEVER DID!”
Dejected and alone Amator returned to his home, and there his emptiness consumed him. Outside he heard the calls of the children at their play, but their happy calls of friendship only echoed in the emptiness of his soul. They only intensified his pain as he recalled when he had been like them. Back when everything was simple.

VII.

We stood facing each other. I could only view his hands, the pain of staring into those eyes, eyes that had been wronged too many times was too intense for me. His sallowed flesh was unsightly, but anything was preferable to the haunted look he cast the world. He gripped the knife with determination, prepared to continue the fight despite his wound.
“Who are you, really?”
“You ask who I was? It does not matter who I was, that man died when her love did. This shell is all that remains, yes this is all that there is.”
“She? You speak of love? Who would love such as you?” I nearly spit from my disgust.
“No, I had love, yes I did. But she was a liar, a treacherous liar she was. She took my heart, took advantage of me. I had nothing before, then she gave me everything, then took it's back again did she. You look at me in disgust, you thinks me mad, you thinks me evil, but if everything you lost like me, you'd be the same way.”
A cold knot of dread grew in my gut, realization dawning, even as I prepared my sword to cut down this evil.
“I'll ask you once more, who are you?”
His anger was apparent in his eyes, flaring with an enmity that was terrible to behold. HE looked not at me, but beyond me, into a vision only his eyes could see. His face turned to a sneer, and he clutched the knife tightly and leapt at me even as he cried out:
“I am Turpifacatus! I am AMATOR!”
My sword fell from my hands, heedless of it's clatter and the doom that implied for me, heedless of the body falling toward me, heedless of the knife, flashing in the light, poised to cut out my throat. His body clashed into mine, his blade dug painfully, but harmlessly into my breast, and I fall back, not even attempting to break the fall. I hit the ground with a grunt and my helm flies from my hand at the impact. My long hair spills out, brown and blonde curls, matted by sweat yeet still shocking frame my face, and in the man's eyes I see horror that matches my own.

VIII.

Amator left the town at dawn, the rooster's crow sounding even as he took to the road with naught but a day's worth of food and a staff for walking. He traveled to the edge of town and continued on, passing through the sloping hills of his home and finally coming to rest few hours later before one particular hill. The small shrine marked this hill distinctly, and it was before this shrine Amator stopped and reached into his pack. He brought forth two candles and flint, which he used to light the candles. This completed he placed the glowing sticks in two holders designed for such a purpose on the small shrine. He started a low chant beneath his breath,a chant which sounded almost as song, the words beautiful but their meanings forgotten to time.
Slowly, a thin cloud began to coalesce over the alter and the face of an ancient ancestor formed atop the cloud. A full form was long in coming, but eventually the form of a small ancient woman floated before Amator, it's eyes shut.
“Honored Ancestor, you know my struggles, you know my heart. I come to seek guidance for you have never before failed me. I ask only for advice, that I might find the fate that has been set out for me.”
The ancient woman opened her eyes and almost started, seeming to of just realized she was not alone.
“I have nothing to say to you, Amator the doomed. Your fate was decreed before time began and nothing you can do will save you from it. I will not stand beside you, and neither shall any of the other ancestors. In this you are alone.”
Compared to the speed at which she appeared, the ancestor disappeared alarmingly fast. For a moment Amator simply sat, uncomprehending what had just been told to him. Suddenly, the full weight seemed to hit him and he burst into tears and did not stop for the entire night.
The next day, Turpificatus rose and went to live in the forest.
IX.

The man reeled backwards, stunned by the revelation before him, even as I lay shocked. The noble eyes widened and darted round, then locked with mine, pleading. Only then did I recognize them, only then did I understand fully this tortured soul's heart.
“Parricida...Why are you here? Why? Why? Why did this happen? We had a love that the gods themselves would be jealous of. And you betrayed me. For what? For nothing. You gained yourself but at the expense of my soul. WAS IT WORTH IT? Can you tell me? Was your time alone, living as yourself worth my corruption? SHOW ME YOUR ANSWER! You caused this, everything I have done was from you. The knife may have been in my hands, but it was your mind that drove it home again and again.”
“I...I was wrong, I thought you were dead. That night, when you disappeared, I thought my world had collapsed. I understood what I had done, but what could I do. I would not lie to myself, would not lie to you. I left too, to seek a life away from that haunted town. Every time I looked out my window I saw your home, abandoned. What would you have me do?”
The noble eyes, once so loving and caring showed only emptiness and pain and in them I finally received my answer. His nod confirmed my suspicion. I slowly walked towards him, eyes locked with the sad eyes. Even as I stooped to pick up my sword I kept locked with his eyes. Finally tears began to flow from my eyes, and they were mirrored in his. I came close to him, staring into those eyes, and I kissed those lips I had once known so well. A year of horrible conditions showed, his breath was disgusting, his lips quite ruined, yet I drank it in like the sweetest nectar. I pulled back, my vision blurred by tears, and in his eyes I saw the same.
“Release me.” He whispered, still meeting my eyes.
Despite my blurred vision, one stroke ended it. His headless body fell straight down, like a bag of flesh discarded after being broken. Once again the smell of decay washed over me, but this time I drank it in like an elixir, knowing it the last thing I'd ever known of the man who'd given up everything to have loved me.

X.

I sauntered up to the desk, staring intently at the small fat man sitting behind it. Behind him sat a chest of gold, around his neck the only key. The whole room was filled with mercenaries, hired swords much like myself. I stood before the counter and stared down at the small man.
“You've come to collect the bounty on that madman I presume.” He chuckled beneath his breath. “Efficient as always Bonum. You're certainly one of the finest.”
With disgust, I pulled from my pack a head. The noble eyes stared me one last time, the mouth arranged in it's first smile in a full year. I threw the head down on the desk, even as the small man turned to the chest and began to count coins. After a full five minutes he turned back toward me and handed me a bag of golden coins.
“Two hundred golden coins, as per the bounty posted. Good work.”
I took the bag of gold swiftly, feeling as though I had betrayed someone. I turned quickly and headed toward the door at almost a run, desperate to get out of that place. I had almost exited when the voice of the man came to me again.
“Good luck destroying more of these monsters. Bastard got what was coming to him. Surprised you let him go so well. Beasts like him deserve worse.”
Eyes suddenly blurred with tears I reached for my weapons. With a deft motion I threw both dagger and Sword at him, dropping the gold coins on the ground as I did. The knife pinned his hand to the desk, the sword passed within a hairs breadth of his neck and stuck harmlessly into the wall behind him. No one spoke. More then one hand reached towards their belt, but as I glanced around the room, many people released their weapons and nodded assent, realizing that I meant no real harm.
“ Not everyone deserves to die for what they did. He was no different than you or I. In many ways he was better than us both. I killed him, and it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Do not speak of him like a beast. I have killed him, now I will kill no more.”


Coda
After her outburst, Parracida dashed out the exit and ran to the edge of the clearing that the meeting hall rested in. Safe beneath the trees' shadows she broke down and cried, crying for herself, crying for Amator, crying for the poor corrupted Turpificatus. She would never know how long she cried for, but suddenly she felt arms holding her from behind. She turned, uncaring of any danger, and sobbed into those warm arms. The arms never left her, and she cried for another half an hour before she finally looked up.
She looked up into the glowing face of Amator, an inner radiance shining from him and around him. His strong arms were familiar to her and she buried her head in his breast, crying now in joy.
“I'll never leave you again. I'll always be yours...”
With a final kiss, Bonum and Amator rose, and walked down the road to a new future, hands entwined.

Authors notes:
For the Latin impaired:
Turpificatus: Corrupted, soulless
Parracida: One who betrays, an agent sent to kill
Amator: Lover
Bonum: Moral enlightenment

names chosen for depth of meaning, not for the ease of mouth. I'm still not quite sure how to Say Turpificatus myself, and I admit it is an eyesore. I considered changing it to Turpi for a time, but I left it in the hopes that someday someone will understand an think me all the more clever for it.