Jilly

by Molly Mitchell

As the man turned the corner, he caught a whiff of a specific smell, one he hadn’t expected to smell in a case like this. He trudged forward, the prominent smell of lotion weaving through the cracks in the walls. As he walked, he spotted yet another clue lying motionless on the ground: a lone fingernail, painted a dark purple, clearly ripped off as if someone was trying to get away in a hurry. Now even more cautious than before, he rounded another corner, and there she was.

At first glance, she looked like a normal person, a simple girl with nothing special about her. However, if you knew the myths that circled the town, you knew she was everything but human. Sure, she was born to a human family; she walked, talked, and acted like she was perfectly normal, but she wasn’t. She was a monster, almost something completely otherworldly. There wasn’t a story for this creature, but there was a name.

They called her “Jilly,” and she was widely known around the town and surrounding villages.

Jilly was known to be able to grow and shrink limbs at will. Sure, according to the myths, she was born normal, except for the extra thumb, but that’s not necessarily unusual. The problem is, the surgery to get it removed was never scheduled because the extra appendage just disappeared, and then there were more! When the word spread, Jilly was outcast, so she vanished to the woods, the exact woods where the hunter finds himself now.

No, Jilly wasn’t known to be harmful; it was said she would never dream of hurting anyone, but the people of the town were beginning to grow tired of the constant story, of how she just appeared, and of her hiding in the woods. The townspeople needed something new, some fresh stories to share with each other at teatime. So, the hunter was here to finally put Jilly out of her misery and do everyone a favor and make a new story, “The Fall Of Jilly,” he was thinking.

As he stood frozen in the hallway, staring blankly at the hunched over figure in front of him, he pondered why killing her was the only answer. The myths that began at her birth were only just that, myths. Why couldn’t more just be started? After all, morals were a thing, and Jilly was just a kid who never got a normal life. She should be given that opportunity. Shouldn’t she? His question was answered when Jilly turned to face him.

He was expecting to see fear in her eyes; she was someone who had never really had true human interaction, and here he was all of a sudden, a large man who just barged into where she lived wielding a shotgun. But instead, her eyes were hopeful, and it threw him off guard. He lowered the weapon he hadn’t realized he’d raised and began to walk backward toward the exit, going over his morals again and again, wondering if killing her was the only answer, if it was right, when her face contorted into that of a wicked grin. He froze, stuck in fear, and then began to flee in the opposite direction.

She followed. He could hear her nails scraping the walls, the new limbs she had grown to help her gain on him thudding against the walls. When he turned once, and only once, to look at her, he froze once more, stumbling and tripping over himself. She had turned into a creature of nightmares; her very head seemed to have grown with the rest of her. She smiled that crazed smile once more and lunged at him…

When people call Jilly a monster, some would disagree, throwing back that she’s just simply misunderstood and should be given a second chance. Others scream over them, yelling about the ones they have lost to her, the hunters that went out more than prepared to bring her head back with them, and then never returned at all; though, most don’t know this part of the story. And some just sit in silence, knowing that there’s no hope for her, that she’s too far gone.

When people call Jilly a monster. They are more than correct, and there’s no stopping her now.