Information

Marjory
Legacy Name: Marjory

The

Common Experiment #84
Owner:

Molly

Age: 17 years, 2 months, 2 weeks

Born: February 3rd, 2007

Adopted: 13 years, 6 months, 3 weeks ago

Adopted: September 27th, 2010

Nominate Pet for Spotlight

Statistics

Level: 15
Strength: 40
Defense: 37
Speed: 36
Health: 39
HP: 39/39
Intelligence: 0
Books Read: 0
Food Eaten: 0
Job: Unemployed

Katheryn was my apprentice for five years before she died. Back then, I had never imagined that a simple experiment could go so completely and terribly wrong. We, Katheryn and I, spent three years researching the optimal methods of breathing life into the dead. Oh, don't look so horrified. You would have tried it, too, had you been in my position.

You see, I lost my son twenty years ago. He was only three years old, and the most beautiful child I had ever seen. I suppose that's what everyone says about their own, isn't it? Fever took him, and for five years I toiled alone, trying to find a way to bring him back. You might say that I was obsessed. I was on the verge of giving up, succumbing to complete despair at my loss and my failures, when Katheryn came to me. She was twenty-five, full of life and a vigor that I had not seen in myself in years, an enthusiasm that I knew I could use. She aspired to be a scientist, and promised to do whatever I asked and to help me in whatever way I required.

Together we finished what I had so futilely began. With our final trial, we reached a height of success that we had never before achieved with any other specimen. It made us - me - bold. I wanted to try it on the corpse of my son, the corpse that for nineteen years I had kept frozen for this very purpose. Katheryn did not at first object to this, for the years of research she herself had devoted to the enterprise and her curiosity overcame her wariness. It was the climax of the task over which we had labored for so long.

It worked. My son was alive. I was elated, and for a year I abandoned my work as a scientist, to raise this child who was so familiar, and yet so foreign. I was deluded by the nostalgic longing that for so long plagued my every waking moment. I had found in this child a new vessel for the unconditional love that I had long harbored, even after my son's passing. But my happiness was short-lived. Katheryn saw in the child what I, in my blind affection, could not...

I awoke one morning to find Katheryn had vanished and left only her diary behind. The first page explained her sudden - or at least, it had seemed sudden to me - departure.

"I never intended to hurt you, but this has gone on long enough. Six months ago, I witnessed the first of what became a string of incidents that alerted me to the true nature of the creature - yes, creature, not child - that we created together. I had hoped to spare you the gruesome details of these many incidents, but I now know that the truth must be forced upon you, lest you allow this to go on any longer. I began the day as any other. After my customary cup of tea, I went outside to see to our rabbit's breakfast.

As I lowered a handful of hay into the pen, I saw a trail of blood leading from the shed and feared the worst. Thinking the rabbit to have been
picked off by a coyote, I followed the blood, meaning to dispose of the carcass before the gruesome sight could ruin your morning, as well.
I was in the midst of concocting a child-friendly tale to explain away the rabbit's absence when I came upon a sight that paled in
comparison to what I had believed to be the worst.

The entry went on to describe what I suppose I had known all along, but had refused to acknowledge. This was not my son, but a cruel
facsimile that craved life so voraciously that it - yes, it - resorted to devouring live creatures, anything that it saw, anything with a spark
of life. I suppose that this creature, while not my child, was still a child - that is, it knew only that it did not belong among the living, nor
among the dead, and so it tried to appease me, the only semblance of a mother it ever knew, in the only way of which it knew. It tried
to be alive, by taking in that which was alive. It tried to be my son, but it was not. Katheryn had realized this, but I had been deluded and
blinded by my hope.

It was only upon reading each episode of ever-increasing horror that I recognized the true magnitude of my error. What I had previously and willfully overlooked seemed then so obvious. The perpetually haunted look in Katheryn's eyes; the lack of sincerity in every smile she plastered upon her face; her apparent lack of desire to continue on, especially in the days leading up to her departure. The entry ended with an urgent plea for me to act, to set right that which we had so utterly and devastatingly wronged. She knew that I had to be the one to end it, and as I lowered the diary and the child entered the room, evidently searching for what it knew to be its mother, I also knew.

You find Marjory immensely creepy and decide to leave before she decides to experiment on you. You could really use a drink...

{Head to the Last Coin Tavern}

Owner:

Molly
Headshot by

Sayamilana