Cathy And The Beast

Cathy And The Beast

last updateLast Updated : 2024-08-30
By:  Megan Rae Completed
Language: English
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Cathy Wilkins' life has never been simple. Heartbroken and lost after her boyfriend of three years leaves her without a word of explanation, Cathy is left to pick up the pieces of her shattered world. Overwhelmed and desperate for a change, she decides to climb the town’s mysterious mountain, determined to debunk the rumors of monstrous men lurking at its peak. What she finds at the top is beyond her wildest dreams and darkest fears. In a secluded world far from her own, Cathy encounters a creature both terrifying and alluring, challenging everything she thought she knew about love and life. Will Cathy find the strength to face the unknown and embrace a love that defies all logic, or will her journey end in heartbreak once more? Join Cathy on a breathtaking adventure of self-discovery, passion, and the timeless search for a love that can conquer all.

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Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

“I cannot believe that you are doing this,” my best friend, Charlotte says as I fold a clean napkin and put it in my backpack. A half-assed smile that barely reaches my eyes is all I can give her in response then I turn away from her to pick up my water bottle. We are on opposite sides of the island in my kitchen, and the room is, unfortunately, not big enough to keep me far from all the judgment and worry radiating off Charlotte.

“Cathy, honey, you cannot climb up that mountain,” she says with a dry chuckle. “It’s extremely dangerous.”

For a few weeks now, I have been preparing to achieve a personal goal of climbing the semi-tall mountain in our town and reaching its peak, and my best friend could not be more livid about it. She tried to scold me into backing out, then she threatened to call my mom and I still did not budge. When I told her I’d taken the week off work to do this and to recuperate after, she must have sensed that I meant business and would not be talked out of it, especially not in that tone. Since then, she has shown up at my house unannounced multiple times trying to convince me to back out in this super-friendly tone that only makes me roll my eyes at her. 

I place my water bottle in the small compartment at the side of my bag and begin to zip all of its openings, making sure that the zapping sound echoes the finality of my decision to my disapproving best friend.

“Okay, this is crazy.” I hear her get up from her seat but I do not lift my eyes off of my backpack. “You know why you’re doing this, right?”

“What do you mean?” I ask as I slowly lift my head. She is in front of my fridge with a glass of wine in her hand being raised to pursed lips.

She takes a sip of the wine with her eyes fixed on me, makes a dramatic show of swallowing, squeezes her face in disgust and places the wine glass gently on the countertop. I try not to laugh. “This is about Brad,” she says finally.

“Here we go again,” I say as I grab my fully packed backpack and walk away from her towards my living room. I don’t look back but I hear her hurry after me.

“It’s true, Cathy,” she says. “You are trying to fill up the space that jerk left with this weird fantasy and I…”

“Stop it!” I do not mean to snap at her but the mere mention of my ex-boyfriend’s name and every word that comes after that raises my blood to an unbearable temperature. “This is not about Brad. This is about me. I want to feel something and just cross something off my bucket list, okay? I want to achieve this as a personal feat, and as my best friend, I am disappointed that you are not being more supportive.”

Charlotte’s face is a salad of emotions. She is very clearly shocked but underneath that, I can see a tinge of guilt and possible internal debate on whether she should maintain her position or be the supportive friend I need. 

“You’re right,” she says after a short period of silence that feels like a decade. “I should be more supportive and understanding. I’m just really worried.”

I step closer to her and stretch my right hand forth to hold her left in mine. Charlotte is slightly shorter than me so I slightly angle my head to stare directly at her face, its oval shape accentuated further by her short fringe hairstyle. We are standing right in front of my grey couch and I notice a tiny stain on the cushion so I make a mental note to get that cleaned immediately after I return. 

“Thank you for caring so much but I have to do this,” I say and then I quickly add: “For me.”

Charlotte takes in a deep breath and looks away from me as though what she is about to say stands against every fibre of her being. “You couldn’t get a cat or learn to knit or something,” she says, to which we both laugh and I pull her into a hug.

“I’ll call you when I’m back,” I say into the nape of her neck.

“You better.”

*

I stop beside a rock to retie my left shoelace. It must have come undone at some point during the climb because I made sure it was tight when I was at the foot of the mountain. I grab my water bottle from the compartment I put it in and take a much-needed swig of water. The cold liquid drizzles down my throat and some of it drips down my chin unto my chest and makes its path over my breasts and into my tank top. 

As I drink, I look down the path that I’ve made my way through and let out a deep sigh. The view from up this mountain is much different from the view at its foot. Down there, you look up and you see a brownish mound covered by extensive green vegetation, taking up a considerable portion of the horizon. From up here, that mound feels much less intimidating, especially when climbing it takes nothing more than a healthy lung, enduring muscles and a crazy determination, but also because you see most of my town; its narrow streets, scattered houses and sprawling vegetation.

I have been climbing the mountain for only thirty minutes but my legs already feel so heavy that it feels like I have been at it for at least five hours. I adjust my leggings in the area over my knee, place my water bottle back into its place and continue my climb. 

Perhaps what strikes me the most about this mountain is its ordinariness. Climbing is like walking through really sloping and rocky woods. There are parts of it thick with tall trees and other parts with barely any grass; it is all so natural that I cannot help but think about all that I have heard about it. Stories and folklore that have partly inspired my decision to climb it. 

Ever since I was a child, I have heard stories of the different monsters that exist at the very top of this mountain. My belief in these stories has gone through multiple stages. I spent most of my childhood thinking them to be the gospel and often wondered what it would be like to see these monsters and go on an adventure. Then, I became a teenager and disbelief took its place in my mind. I scoffed at those monster stories I once believed and made fun of anyone who brought them up. “Monsters don’t exist anywhere,” I often said. “They’re just stories that your parents tell you to keep you from going up that mountain.”

My thoughts of the mountain and its monsters stayed like this for most of my teenage years and into adulthood, and for the most part, I did not even remember or think about them. Until four months ago when Charlotte visited and she had that twinkle in her eye that’s only there when she has juicy gossip. 

“You’re going to want to be seated for this,” she said when I opened the door to my apartment to see her standing outside with a bottle of wine in her hand.

“Hello to you too,” I said.

“Oh, this is too good to waste time on hellos,” she said as she walked past me and flopped herself on the couch.

“What is it? Are you okay?” I asked, taking the seat next to her.

“You know Sue?”

“Yeah.” Sue is the perky redhead with the big boobs who works at our favourite coffee shop down the street. She is always trying to start a conversation with Charlotte and me but we never pay her any attention. It’s not that we do not like her but she just seems too friendly and too outgoing for our taste. With Sue, one conversation could translate into getting invited for game nights and trivia Sundays that were never fun.

“Well, she just took a very interesting trip to the top of the mountain,” Charlotte said, and then she proceeded to tell me a very interesting story that sounded epic but read as extremely fabricated. In this story, Sue went hiking up the mountain and found herself in a strange settlement where she met a bizarre man-like creature who put her in his house, treated her like a princess, and then made love to her senseless. 

I listened to the story with rapt attention. When she started to speak, I could not help but roll my eyes in doubt. Did Charlotte expect me to believe that the same Sue we know experienced all this? Sue, who cannot make two consecutive trips to the coffee shop’s kitchen without leaning on a chair and panting like a dog. No way she could have climbed that mountain to the top without passing out halfway. Besides, everyone knows that Sue is not the most truthful person around. She has a well-established history of exaggerating every silly and mundane thing that happens to her. But Charlotte is such a good storyteller that I listened to everything she said.

Then, the story changed and my interest peaked for a reason entirely different from Charlotte’s storytelling abilities.

According to her, when Sue reached a certain height on the mountain, she encountered a mysterious man-like creature, a monster, describable only by Sue as “very huge and so fucking sexy”, who took her into his home. She said that he lived up there in a place that seemed to her like a whole new world. Charlotte went into such detail about the way he touched Sue and held Sue, about his body and especially his member which she said was bigger than twice the biggest one she’d ever seen. By the time she was done talking, I could only manage a stutter. 

“W-what?” My mouth was drier than desert sand, a warm sensation had engulfed my body and there was a tingling in my nether regions that I did not want to pay attention to, lest it spread around my body.

“It’s crazy,” Charlotte said. “Anyway, I’m sure it’s all fabricated and she’s lying. But wouldn’t it be wild if it was true?”

“Yes, yes, it would,” I said, and neither of us said anything else because, at that point, that was the end of it.

I did not pay any mind to Sue’s story or the mountain for a long time after that for several reasons. First of all, the ad agency where I worked was going through a bit of a rough patch and had laid off a few of the people in my department, which meant I had to do more than twice the work I used to. Also, my boyfriend, Brad, was in the throes of switching up on me which meant I was also doing twice the work of trying to keep our relationship alive; cooking and bringing him dinner, setting up dates he constantly cancelled and spending hours shopping for things to gift him in the hopes that videogames and expensive devices would draw him back to me.

When all of these failed, and on that humid Tuesday morning two weeks ago in the corner booth of the coffee shop, he told me that ‘he just was not feeling this anymore’, I began a slow descent into insanity that only led me to wonder if perhaps, Sue’s story might be true.  

Every time I went to the coffee shop after that, I watched Sue intently, as if trying to decipher if she had lied. At some point, I could hear her telling one other person the same story Charlotte had told me with more details and a palpable excitement in her voice. She even had a glow about her that I had never seen before. Part of me wanted to talk to her and question the truthfulness of the story she was peddling but I restrained myself, afraid that I would have to admit the reason why her story interested and fascinated me so much. I would have to admit the deepest darkest fantasies my mind has entertained on those nights alone in my apartment. Fantasies involving a big monster or two up on this mountain. 

I take another swig from my water bottle and push my dark hair from over my shoulder to the back of my neck, then I tighten my ponytail. Looking down, I can see that I have covered more ground than is left to reach the top of the mountain. I pause for a moment wondering how it would feel and how I would react if I reached the top of the mountain and it all turned out to be untrue. I would probably return home and give Sue a much-needed tongue-lashing.

It better not be false because my body wants it to be true. But if it turns out to be just a plain old mountaintop, I suppose that won’t be so bad either. At least I will have that achievement and I can wave my victory in Charlotte’s face.

As I climb higher, I can feel myself getting more fatigued and struggling to take the next steps. Once again, I scoff at the thought of Sue climbing these mountains if I, a pretty athletic woman, am struggling like this. I consider stopping for a while but I can see the mountain top inching closer with every step I take and the promise of having my fantasy come true fuels my body and keeps me going.

Suddenly, a gentle, almost inaudible purring grabs my attention and stops me in my tracks. I turn away from the straight path that I’ve been taking and face the direction that the sound is coming from, just to confirm what I’m hearing. When I look though, I see nothing but a big rock around which grass with tall sharp blades has grown. I am about to turn away and keep going my way when I hear the purring again. This time, it is louder and it sounds like a cat in distress. 

I walk to the rock and hold my water bottle in my hand, ready to use it to defend myself but realizing it probably won’t be of much help. If a coyote has gotten a cat down, what exactly would my plastic water bottle do to a wild animal?

“Hello,” I say, hoping the cat can hear my voice and just come out of its hiding.

I kick the tall grass out of my way and climb on top of the rock so that I can see what is on its other side. And there, behind the rock, is a cat as white as snow and as cute as a button. The moment it feels my presence on the rock, the cat looks up at me and my heart immediately melts so that I let go of my defensive stance and place my water bottle back in its compartment. I am not going to hit this cat under any circumstance. 

Suddenly, the cat turns away from me and begins to run down a pathway to the left of the one I was headed. This other pathway is narrower and has a thick patch of forest around it so that light is limited and I cannot see down it. Without thinking or perhaps because something I cannot explain has come over me and is propelling me forward, I begin to chase the cat.

“Hey!” I scream out at the running cat, willing it to stop.

The cat turns left towards an even darker and narrower path. As I run, low-hanging branches hit my face and one or two leaves make their way into my mouth but I just spit them out and I keep running. After about fifteen seconds of running, I come to a clearing. At this point, I stop in my tracks and begin to look around at this strange place where I have found myself. First of all, the cat I was chasing is nowhere to be found and I am suddenly aware of just how alone I am. The clearing itself seems out of place here on this side of the mountain as it is a circular piece of land no bigger than a person’s bedroom with absolutely no trees or vegetation. This is especially strange because every small inch of land around this special clearing is overgrown with tall trees. These tall trees have such huge canopies that have connected overhead so that they completely block any ray of sunlight from making its way to this clearing. It is quite obvious that somebody has done the difficult job of making this clearing look this clean, isolated, and dark. 

“Woah,” I say to myself when I realise just how creepy this place I am standing is. For the first time since I embarked on this climb, I find myself panicking. 

I bring out my cell phone from my backpack, fumbling with it and cussing under my breath before picking it up again from the dirt. I hurriedly use my shaking hands to put on the phone’s flashlight and start swinging it around as if trying to make something appear. 

What exactly was I thinking coming all this way? If any harm comes to me, I will be so mad at Charlotte for being right. I begin to gather myself to return in the direction I came from. This ends now. I cannot believe that I decided to come up here through these creepy paths just to make myself feel better and fulfil some fantasy. While getting to the top would have been amazing, this place is so strange that I am now worried for my safety. I decide that I need to make a run for and leave this instant but when I turn around to go back the way I came, I am faced with a surprise.

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Megan Rae
love how this book is different ...
2024-05-01 22:49:02
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93 Chapters
CHAPTER ONE
“I cannot believe that you are doing this,” my best friend, Charlotte says as I fold a clean napkin and put it in my backpack. A half-assed smile that barely reaches my eyes is all I can give her in response then I turn away from her to pick up my water bottle. We are on opposite sides of the island in my kitchen, and the room is, unfortunately, not big enough to keep me far from all the judgment and worry radiating off Charlotte.“Cathy, honey, you cannot climb up that mountain,” she says with a dry chuckle. “It’s extremely dangerous.”For a few weeks now, I have been preparing to achieve a personal goal of climbing the semi-tall mountain in our town and reaching its peak, and my best friend could not be more livid about it. She tried to scold me into backing out, then she threatened to call my mom and I still did not budge. When I told her I’d taken the week off work to do this and to recuperate after, she must have sensed that I meant business and would not be talked out of it, esp
last updateLast Updated : 2024-04-19
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CHAPTER TWO
My eyes flutter open, one after the other, and they are immediately assaulted by the light coming from burning lamps in all corners of the room. Just then, I realize that I am on a very big square bed in a strange dark room so I jerk myself upward, dazed and confused. I look down at my naked body with apprehension. Fear over what might have happened to get me here grips me instantly so I pull the white bed sheet around myself.The room I am in is reminiscent of royal Victorian rooms in both size and aesthetic. It is large and its walls are designed like the set of a movie in which classical music plays constantly in the background. Directly in front of me is a painting of a large dining hall with food spread over the table but no human elements. To my left, there’s a shelf made of glass and wood that’s been painted a shade of brown so dark, it’s almost black. On top of that shelf is a strange variety of empty flower vases arranged in an equidistant manner from one another, and inside
last updateLast Updated : 2024-04-19
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CHAPTER THREE
A cool breeze blows into the room from the door behind the monster which he has left open since he walked in. The cold, soothing feel and the clean smell of the breeze tell me that it must be nighttime outside this hellscape. The breeze causes the flame on the lamp I’m holding to flicker and for a moment, I fear it might go off, but whatever oil is fueling the fire is strong enough to keep it burning and therefore powerful enough to allow me to maintain my stance.Several feet away from me, the monster’s eyebrows are furrowed to an extent I did not even know was possible. They form mirrored arches of horror over his eyes. His eyes are so red, they pop out of his head like laser beams and his flaring nostrils remind me of my evil boss, Mr. Park, whenever he is about to berate an employee. Beside him, his big hands are still and his fists are tightly clenched as though he is gathering momentum for a very impactful swing. From his reaction, I can see that the painting does mean a lot to
last updateLast Updated : 2024-04-19
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CHAPTER FOUR
I watch all three servants cautiously before I step off the bed. Even when my feet touch the floor, I still pause for several seconds before making any effort to move forward. None of the servants ask me to hurry but they also do not rush me. They just stare at me in silence as if to say I can take as long as I want because they know I have no choice but to still follow them wherever they are taking me.“Why can’t I just go to this feast as I am?” I ask.All three servants examine the makeshift attire I fabricated out of the bedsheet and I feel them judging me with their eyes. “This will not do for Master Alden,” Herb says.“Okay,” I say with a sigh as I finally begin to walk towards the door. So, this is my life now. Just a few hours ago I was safe in my own home. I was the one who called all the shots. I chose my clothes, chose my food and could go wherever I wanted. Now, I’m in the home of some monster called Alden and have only the extent of freedom available to a prisoner. Outsi
last updateLast Updated : 2024-04-19
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CHAPTER FIVE
The dining hall is similar to the one that was in the painting I threatened to torch, only slightly less wide. It is a long room with a very high ceiling and no pillars. The lighting in the room comes from numerous lamps that burn so bright everything in the large room is visible to you no matter where you are standing in it. Its high walls are adorned by paintings of all kinds similar in style and feel to the aforementioned one but of vastly different subject matters. There’s one of a war ship and another of a garrison. There is a large portrait of a pale woman staring judgingly at me and another of a really cute baby right next to it. Then there’s the paintings of beasts, some I recognize, some far beyond my imagination. Beasts with yellow eyes, four horns, tails lined with spikes, chests covered in fur, nipples red as a blood moon and tongues longer than their hands that split into two. It is all so gory but also so beautiful.In the center of the room is a large long table. It is
last updateLast Updated : 2024-04-30
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CHAPTER SIX
I drop my cutlery for a moment so that I can look directly at him when I speak my mind. His eyes are the lightest orange I have seen them be so far. It is as though a layer of glass or coating of clear acrylic has been put over them to make them appear more welcoming and more hopeful. “I did not come to you. I was hiking up the mountain and you tricked me with a cat. I came to a clearing and when I saw you, I lost consciousness.”The right corner of his lips tilts up slightly in a partial smile. “That clearing is my door. You knocked.”“If I knocked then I should be allowed to leave without hassle, should I not?” I ask. With the way the corner of his lips rises a little higher, I see that he is truly amused by what I just said. Clearly, my words are getting to him and I must be making an impression. That thought makes me a little happy.“You are my prisoner,” he says finally. “I will tell you when I want you to leave.”I don’t respond to that. Perhaps because of the manner in which he
last updateLast Updated : 2024-04-30
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CHAPTER SEVEN
I don’t know exactly when I fell asleep, most likely sometime in the middle of all my crying, but when a loud clanging stirs me awake, I feel slightly well-rested. However, when I raise my body off the hard floor and sit up, I am sore at every single joint and on every single muscle. In that moment, the events that led me to where I am now come rushing back to me and my heart sinks once again. I did not gain my freedom after Alden’s feast like he had promised me. I am still a prisoner and unfortunately, I have been put in worse conditions. While I had been placed in a room before, now, I am in a dungeon which looks like something out of a horror movie. And just hours ago, I had woken up on a soft bed with sheets and fluffy pillows, I now have to place my head on stone and bruise my body against these floors. A lone tear falls from my eyes.Knox, Herb and Teon appear in front of the bars of the cell where I am being kept. I can barely make out their expressions in the darkness but I ho
last updateLast Updated : 2024-05-01
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CHAPTER EIGHT
“Come over here and sit,” he says. I cannot say that his voice does not do something to me still.I clear my throat. “I would rather stand here, thank you very much,” I say.“I will not speak to you from across the room, Cathy,” he says.Maybe it is because he says my name which is in itself a rare feat or the unusually milder tone with which his words come out of his mouth but I immediately lift my head and look in his direction properly. There is something about him today that is not as menacing as the monster who threw me in the dungeon violently. He is like the one I met in the dining hall before I asked him about Celia. He seems a little more relaxed and less prone to anger. Still, it was the same him who switched up on me suddenly and did all that he did; rescind on his promise to give me my freedom and threw me in a prison from the dark ages, so, I know to tread carefully around him. I walk slowly towards the seat on the opposite side of his desk with my eyes darting across the
last updateLast Updated : 2024-05-01
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CHAPTER NINE
To say that I am shocked to my core would be the understatement of the year. In fact, I do not think that there is a word in the English Language that captures how I feel exactly. Perhaps if I spoke French or Chinese or any one of the more expressive languages, I would find a word that perfectly explains this feeling. It is a deadly combination of excitement and dread. It feels as though I desperately want this to go on while but also desperately want it to end.If I’m being honest with myself, the ‘dread’ part of my feeling makes absolute sense. After all, Alden is a monster who is actively keeping me here against my will. It makes perfect sense that I am afraid. Add that to the words he is saying, telling me explicitly that he intends to breed me to produce his young, and that there isn’t much that I can do about it. I would be a fool not to be afraid. What does not make sense, therefore, is the simultaneous excitement that I feel. How is it that these same words and actions that ca
last updateLast Updated : 2024-05-02
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CHAPTER TEN
Although I now have an answer as to why exactly he is keeping me here; he has chosen me as some kind of mate, I am grossly unsatisfied with the situation. The manner in which he makes it clear that it is beyond my control makes me uncomfortable. I want to be able to make my own choices. I want to stay only because I want to. And knowing that that will be impossible on Alden’s terms means that there is only one thing I have to do. I have to find a way to escape this place. I don’t bother myself with undressing or sitting anywhere. Not when a million and one thoughts about how to break out of this prison rush through my mind. Most of the scenarios I come up with are scenes from horror and thriller movies flashing through my mind in quick succession. This does not surprise me much as I have never been in a situation like this where I had to plot my own escape from prison. Besides, they don’t exactly teach ‘How to Break Out of Prison 101’ where I went to college.Usually, in moments like
last updateLast Updated : 2024-05-02
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