The Monster Within

I was about to enter the woods when I saw a sign I'd never seen, though I'd been there many times before . It looked pretty official, had a heading on it that stated it was from the magistrates office. It read (in a horribly lurid font): "Beware the monster within."

That was it, all it said, well, that and it was signed by someone's who surname I assumed (from its presentation) was "Mr Squiggly". I laughed. Surely this was some April fool's day prank, or something, even though that month was far away. Clearly just some kid's prank, so I hitched my heavy backpack and ventured into the darkness of the trees.

It wasn't long before I felt myself being watched. I'd only been walking half an hour at most, and the sign's warning that I had so easily dismissed was now praying heavily on my mind. Every little noise from things moving about unseen caused me to jump a little. I tried to take my mind off of things. I thought about my childhood, my friends and that assuaged the fear a little. But then...a different fear awoke.

I began to think about all the little evils, the peccadilloes, the times I'd say I'd do something or another and then not done them. Or the occasions where I'd taken the last bit of food without first offering it to someone else. Gradually these thoughts were replaced with the bigger sins. The time I'd got that person fired not because they were bad at their job, but simply because I didn't like them. The time me and my friends were rotten drunk and kicked a homeless man half to death just because we thought it would be funny and because we could. The time I did that thing that even now, even all these years later, even in my own mind, I can only ever refer to as "that thing"...was the sign that I had seen at the entrance of the woods an illusion preying upon my subconscious guilt? The mysterious sign that I had never seen before though I'd been through here many times and even quite recently, was it just a fevered figment of my own overwrought and sinful mind that was trying to tell me that I was, that I had always been the monster?

And then The Beast bit off my head...I was kind of relieved, in a way, I mean I hate metaphysical soul searching.