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CHAPTER 1

First my feet were broken.

Then my ankles.

After that it was my shins. The cudgel's next targets were my knees, shattering them as well.

I screamed, of course. I screamed with the first blow and I screamed with each additional one. How could any man being broken on the wheel not? Over my screams I heard the crowd that had been so exuberantly jeering for my blood silence themselves as if on command. For a moment it was only my screaming that filled the air. The moment did not last.

"Confess, Friedrich Hoffmann. Confess while you are still able to!"

The priest was once again demanding my confession. He had been the one to silence the crowd and momentarily stay the executioner's hand.

Using every ounce of strength I had I stopped my screaming so that I could answer him.

"Am I to confess to a crime of which I am innocent?" I asked him through my ragged breathing. "Especially a crime as wicked as the one of which I am being accused? Would that not be a greater sin?" I forced myself to meet the priest's cold eyes. Eyes that held not a drop of pity.

"You will die without absolution if you do not confess," he warned me in his thunderous voice. "Your unredeemed soul to be condemned to Hell. Confess now!"

I looked away from him and did not answer. I could hear a grunt escape from the executioner's lips and then my thigh bones were shattered. With that blow the roar of the crowd swallowed me up.

Madness would have been a welcome release, but somehow it never came. Even after the executioner had broken my hips and moved on to my upper body, the madness stubbornly refused to rescue me.

Deep within my heart I prayed.

My beloved Johanna, you must believe that I am innocent of what they claim. Death does not worry me, only the fear that these false accusations will keep me from you.

The blows from the cudgel had stopped. The priest kneeled by me so that his awful face was near mine, his lips moving in a cruel manner. I was beyond hearing. Instead I was engulfed within a cacophony of sounds. The roar of the crowd, the priest's words, my own screaming, all blending together into a deafening roar. Soon the priest disappeared and the executioner took his place. Just as all noises had blended together, so too did all my pain blend together. I wasn't even aware that the executioner had sliced open my arms so that my mangled bones could be braided to the spokes of the wheel. It wasn't until the wheel was lifted and I was suspended by my broken arms that I understood that this had happened, but the pain no longer mattered. I was beyond that. I continued to pray.

Please, Johanna, I beg of you, be there waiting for me. This death will be a blessing if only I can look once more into your soft, lovely eyes ...

The hateful faces of the crowd dissolved into a gray blur. My eyes drifted upwards and I caught the flight of several black crows circling patiently overhead.

Johanna, always, I promise, always.

First the noises enveloping me disappeared. Then the pain. I found myself at peace and watched as the crows faded into blackness.

* * *

I know I died then. Nothing else would have been possible. So where was I? Purgatory? It had to be that. How could it be anything other than that? I couldn't move. I couldn't feel. I couldn't see. Utter despair filled my being. If I were in Purgatory how would I ever see my beloved Johanna again? But then as if to calm my fears a golden haze appeared before me and within it an image took shape. A face. My vision was too blurry for me to make out its details, but I knew it was a face. Of God? Who else could it be? As quickly as the despair had earlier come, so too now the joy and rapture that lifted me.

Words were spoken. The voice, though, was too soft for me to understand, and the words blurred together as if they were a hum intoned from far away.

And then I was in darkness again. Time crept intolerably slowly after that. It was agony as I waited to know what had happened to me. Worse even than what the executioner's skillful cudgel had been able to inflict. Was that truly the face of God I'd seen before? And if it was, would I be reunited with my Johanna, or was I to spend eternity in Purgatory, or worse?

My agony was suspended when once again the golden light filled my vision, and once again I was able to make out a face within its hazy glow, this time its features more distinct. The face appeared angelic, and my heart soared. And once more a voice spoke to me. While severely muffled, as if the speaker were underwater, I could make out the words.

"How are we now, my magnificent creation? Still unable to move? Not to worry. That will pass as you grow stronger. You can see me, can you? Oh how I wish you could answer me!"

Although his words confused me, his angelic countenance soothed my fears. If I were indeed in Purgatory, I would not be there for long. Darkness came quickly again, but this time I did not despair, although the loneliness I suffered had a heaviness to it that made me feel as if I were drowning. I concentrated to break this loneliness by picturing Johanna. Her soft hazel eyes, the rosiness of her cheeks, her golden flowing hair, the way her face would light up when she smiled at me. I tried to remember the way her hand fitted so perfectly in mine as we would walk along the woods outside of town, and the warmth against my lips when I would steal a kiss from her cheek.

Something strange happened while I pictured my Johanna. I once again saw the same yellowish glow from before, but this time it was because I realized I had developed the strength to open my eyes. I let my eyes close and once again I descended into darkness. I forced my eyes open and once more saw the glow.

I had believed the angelic face that earlier had appeared and the darkness that followed were caused by heavenly forces, but I realized that instead my eyelids earlier had been forcibly opened. That was why I saw that face peering into mine. It was only a man who had pushed my eyelids open, not God giving me a vision.

As this knowledge became irrefutable within my mind, a horrible dread seized me. I had survived the executioner's wheel. I wasn't in Purgatory, but instead still of this world. My body presumably lay wherever my host had brought me. Of course my body must be completely broken. But how was that possible? The executioner had shattered my bones, and yet I felt nothing. I knew the reason for this. My spine must have been broken as well as my limbs, so I could open my eyes, but otherwise I was in a state of paralysis. But still, it made no sense. It was not possible to survive the injuries that the executioner had inflicted on me. I was a chemist, a man of science, and I understood that as well as anyone. And yet I was alive.

The glow that I had believed was the breath of God was in fact sunlight filtering in through a window. I struggled to keep my eyes open, and when the room later fell into darkness, I knew it was because night had arrived.

My host returned again that night. From the faint flickers of light that showed, I surmised that he had lighted candles and had placed them around me. My senses were growing stronger for although the odor was faint to me, I could smell something foul and wretched. Possibly it was a salve that my host had placed over my wounds. As a chemist I was familiar with many compounds and I tried to detect what this one could have been made from, but the odor came from substances I was unfamiliar with. While I tried to solve this vexing puzzle, I heard my host chanting. His voice was too low for me to understand his words or even the language being used, but the rhythmic chanting felt as if it were something thick and oppressive. There was something unholy about it.

After the candles were snuffed out and my host had departed, I understood the truth. That I was in the dwelling of a sorcerer.

I last saw Johanna the Sunday before my execution. She was the niece of my employer, Herr Klemmen, who owned the Ingolstadt apothecary where I was employed as a chemist. The beautiful Johanna was originally from Leipzig, but both her parents had died tragically from scarlet fever and she was sent to live with her uncle. From the first moment I saw her I was enraptured, and from the way she had blushed, as well as the smile that had escaped onto her lips, I knew that to some degree she shared my feelings. It wasn't long after our introduction that I began to court her, and with Herr Klemmen's blessing, Johanna consented to marry me.

Johanna and I shared so many of the same sentiments that are important for a joyful union. On most Sundays I would rent a carriage so that we could take it outside the city's walls and to the woods beyond. There we would walk along a path that I had discovered years earlier when I had first arrived in Ingolstadt. During our walks together we would collect wildflowers, mushrooms, and berries and enjoy the pleasant sights and sounds of nature. That last Sunday the gates to the city were to be locked and not to be opened until the next morning, so instead we strolled arm and arm through the main avenue of Ingolstadt, and I knew I was the envy of every young man who spied upon us. When we reached a grassy knoll near the city hall, I spread a blanket that I had brought, and Johanna and I sat together and talked about our upcoming wedding and the life that we were to share. I don't know if I ever knew more happiness than I did that afternoon. When I turned to steal a kiss, Johanna anticipated my intended theft and moved so that my lips pressed against her own instead of her cheek. She blushed deeply from this, but stayed positioned as she was so that our kiss would continue. A fever overtook me as our lips touched, and it was I who pulled away, afraid that I would burn up with ecstasy if I didn't.

After that we sat together quietly with her small delicate hand resting on top of my much coarser and larger hand. It was Johanna who spoke first, sighing with melancholy, and saying how she wished our wedding day had already come so that we wouldn't have to separate later. When I brought her back to Herr Klemmen's home, little could I have suspected that those would be our last moments together.

The next day started off ordinary enough. I woke at six, and performed my duties at the apothecary as usual from seven in the morning until seven that same evening. Once I left work, I stopped at the beer hall. This had been my custom, to relax and have a single pint of ale after my day's labor. But as I walked from the beer hall, a great and unexplained tiredness overtook me. I must have lain down in an alley to rest, though I don't remember doing it. My next memory was that of being violently awoken by a mob that had surrounded me. They demanded to know why I was sleeping in an alley, and as I struggled to come up with an explanation, one of them pointed toward my coat and exclaimed that it had my victim's blood marked upon it. With a great surprise I saw that the sleeves of my coat were stained with blood, and I could not answer where the blood had come from or how it had come to happen. They held me down and searched my person before pulling a gold locket from out of my trouser pocket.

"Why do you have this?" one of them demanded.

The locket was held in front of my eyes and I recognized it as belonging to Johanna. Inside the locket was a cameo of her beloved mother that had been carved in ivory. Johanna always wore that locket around her neck.

"I do not know," I said, too confused to understand the events that were transpiring, or the evil meaning of them. I couldn't fathom why I would have Johanna's prized locket in my possession, or why that fact would inspire such belligerence and hatred among this mob.

The one who held the locket opened it. When he saw the cameo within it he proclaimed me a murderer. I was still too confused to understand what he meant or to offer any defense of my innocence. The other members of the mob descended on me with their fists and beat me into near senselessness. I was then dragged to the city's jail, where I was locked behind iron bars.

Of course, I should have pieced together from what had happened that my dear Johanna had been cruelly murdered and that I was being accused as the fiend responsible, but my mind stayed lost in a cloud of confusion and refused to accept any of this. While I felt a sickening dread sinking into my heart, my mind worked to keep me in ignorance; otherwise the horror of the events would surely have crushed me.

The judge arrived at the jail a short time later, and I was brought out. The rest of the mob charged in behind me and filled up the room. I had heard stories of this judge, of course, but this was the first time I had been within his company. He was every bit as compassionless and stern as his reputation. A short and stout man of sixty with a harsh pallor to match his gray hair, he had the unnerving eyes of a bird of prey, and his features were likewise as sharp as a hawk's. I looked away from him and saw Herr Klemmen, but there was no love or compassion in his face either, and as he looked at me he trembled with rage. He only looked away when he was shown Johanna's locket. He confirmed in a choked voice that the locket had belonged to his niece.

The judge addressed me next. In a voice every bit as harsh as his features, he told me that the evidence against me was insurmountable. That with my victim's blood on my coat sleeves and her locket found in my trouser pocket, as well as the unexplained nature of my being found asleep in an alley, I had, without doubt, ravaged and murdered Johanna Klemmen.

It was only then that the fog surrounding my brain lifted and I could no longer deny what was evident. I fell to my knees sobbing. The thought of my Johanna being robbed of her life sank me into the deepest misery the human heart could know.

"Please, let me see my dearest Johanna," I begged through my weeping.

The judge scoffed at that. "You wish to view the fruits of your villainous act?" he asked in a voice bitter with outrage. "Herr Hoffmann, I find you one of the world's most contemptible creatures, and you will be shown the same mercy that you showed your betrothed, Johanna Klemmen. You are to be broken at the wheel in such a fashion as to cause the greatest amount of suffering. The executioner is commanded to wring every drop possible from your wretched body."

The crowd enthusiastically cheered the judge's decision. I couldn't speak. I had little concern for my own fate, and instead was too overwhelmed with what had befallen my beloved to utter a single word in my defense. They took me quickly from the jail to the courtyard beyond. The executioner's wheel sat there beckoning.

* * *

Sleep did not come to me that night, and my eyes had remained open to witness the first morning light that seeped into the room. The only physical movements available to me were the opening and closing of my eyes, but my senses seemed sharper. I could hear birds singing from outside, and as sunlight spread throughout the room my vision was no longer filled with a golden haziness, but instead I could now make out distinct patterns within the wood beam ceiling above me. All of this left no question that I was still of this earth. A body as shattered as mine should have fallen into death within hours, if not minutes. All I could imagine was that my host was indeed a sorcerer and had bewitched me. I had never before believed in witchcraft or spells, always attributing the stories I would hear to that of an uneducated and superstitious mind, but what else could explain my still being alive? The words of my host also troubled me. What could he have meant by calling me his magnificent creature? And his promise that in time I would grow stronger? My body had been left in an utterly ruined state. Unless magic was to be used to repair my body, that would not be possible. There was nothing known within the scientific world that could undo the damage that had been done to me.

Later that morning my host arrived. At least I believed it was still morning, for I had difficulty in my present state judging the passing of time. But it seemed as if only a few hours had passed since those first morning rays of sunlight appeared before I heard a door opening, and then footsteps creaking along a wooden floor. While I couldn't see him, I recognized his voice when he called out to remark how glad he was that I was now able to open my eyes.

"Good, good," he exclaimed with much excitement, "this means that you are becoming stronger, my pet!"

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Excerpted from "Monster"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Dave Zeltserman.
Excerpted by permission of Abrams Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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