Beast Read Online Free

scalp above my left ear but the blood seemed to be slowing. I was wearing a shirt and jumper. I lifted them up to examine my torso. It was so tender that I could barely touch it. All down the left-hand side of my body were great bruises yellow and black. Across my chest running from just above my right nipple down almost to my belly button were five long scratches. The pain was intense but there was no real blood. Slowly I unbuckled my trousers and slid them down my legs. I feared what I would see but I had to look. My left leg was bruised and black and the knee bent at the wrong angle. As I sat I could feel it stiffening. There were scratches all over my legs but again there were no deep wounds.
    What had happened? Whatever it was I had been lucky I supposed. I didn’t seem to be dying. I didn’t know what I could or should do with my battered body but sleep was all I wanted now. There was a dirty red sleeping bag on the bed and I crawled into it lay on my back closed my eyes and went into the darkness. I wonder how long I slept for. I don’t know. I think it might have been several days. It was impossible to keep track after a while and in any case I was not trying to. I woke and went back woke and went back the tide was pulsing in and out in and out and in sleep the pain gave me dreams. I saw white stags and white wolves and black trees. I saw an island in a lake I saw the moon over a moor I saw fleets of ships in the sky. I saw a woman staring at me. I knew her though I had never seen her before.
    It might have been a few days before I came round properly. It was never clear. I remember the dream that carried me back. There was a great tree standing on a hill there was a light around the tree and it had deep roots. It had great tall branches reaching to the sky twining around each other and its roots went down into the centre of the world where something lived and moved around them. There was a man standing under the tree there was something bright coveringhis head and he was moving towards me. There were birds around him all around him were strange birds.
    I opened my eyes. It was light. Daylight. It was light and it was warm. The fire was out the ashes were cold but the room was hot. I lay there and I concentrated on what I could feel. I adjusted to my body and tried to re-inhabit it.
    I was lying on my back in the sleeping bag. I must have been twisting and rolling in my sleep because the bottom of the sleeping bag was wound tightly around my feet and my lower legs. I lay on my back in the heat and I went through every part of my body systematically and examined its state. I started with my feet. I wiggled my toes and twisted my ankles around. They seemed to work as they should. I moved up to my calves I flexed their muscles and they both worked too though the left leg gave me shooting pains. Then the knees. I could bend my right knee, but the left seemed rigid and it felt wrong. There was a flaming arc of pain when I moved it and it would barely bend.
    When I turned my attention to my thighs it was the same. I could tighten the muscles in my right thigh but my left thigh sent shooting pains right up into my abdomen when I moved it. Then my hips. I twisted them and they moved on both sides. On the left sideI could feel the agony of this movement but the fact that I could feel something felt like a triumph despite the pain. I was alive. I had not died in my sleep I could still move I was not paralysed. I flexed my stomach muscles and the pain in my left side was still intense. All through my abdomen was a dull throbbing ache.
    I could bend my neck left and right though I still felt the pulling in the muscles when I did so. I twisted my head to both sides and it moved too. I rolled my shoulders I bent my elbows I curled and uncurled my fingers. It all worked. I opened and closed my eyes. My head ached a throbbing ache and constant. I was so thirsty and now I was hungry as well. It must have been hours maybe days since