Short story: The inevitable plight of the Chillingsworth Fiend

Author’s note: This is a monologue written from the perspective of Roger Chillingsworth from “The Scarlet Letter” for an AP Literature and Composition class. Please refrain from copying the work.

My blackest of deeds remain untarnished at the present

Indeed the most pithy of roses will wither with insipid spirit

Any man rues the Day of Judgement when it cease a shadow over the most

tormented of sinners, choking on his own guilt and spit 

Oh how he vexes me in his despicable carnival of faces, he slithers about

swathed in white and drunk on the purest of spiritual water 

An enmity of spite, cleaned hallow with the clanks of crawling shadows

Cascading spires of hissing snakes unbeatable with a staff swarm my soul

It lights up, smoldering within its cocoon of black ice

Fiery licks of red iron besmirch the rose-head, 

burning off its exoskeleton of moss galls 

like hot coals 

As incandescent as the finest tumbling streams,

criss-crossed glassy white shears shackle me 

Each day I swallow blood, side effects from the malice-infested air  

What cruelty! I will prevail from whichever sphere, whichever means

No, he cannot escape me, he cannot!

His burnt feet leaves sticky residue and toasted weeds at his wake

I have not met a more hateful fellow than he

What he deserves are glugs of berry wine,

Of the darkest and murkiest sheen

Here!– dull green leaves, cherry-sized berries of vitriol–

No Holy Spirit is here, it’s long fled;

Only the curdling of piety and beheading of twisted vines remain 

The streaked mirror beholds a furrowed face seething, wrestling, 

agitated with antithetical musings of forgiveness and revenge,

and murky convictions darkening a shade with every passing shadow

Tears dry in my heart of stone, folly and selfishness deflects from it 

No other missions I have, no more adventures or hungry dreams 

Uncloak the fool, the witless jester staggering among the sheep

His sickly constitution betrays him to the fasting vulture 

Canes are dashed upon the ground, disturbed only by the haunts of the Black Man

I was predestined to walk alone, a widow of even the Dark

The bridge of science and mortality, I was doomed since my first sighting of Hester Prynne

With vile child, but not devoid of companionship

Sufferings are abound; they dance in spirals,

Tying off every inch of my dust and grime with strained white linen

Degraded into sin and sin alone, ignominy is my name 

Hatred, my vice, and fear, my dish 

I catch hints of the Devil in my bestial tongue and sooty countenance

My burning eyes of scarlet smokes out the stingers, and my tasteless food and drink 

Flicker a living flame down my throat with every swallow

The dying spirit of Dimmesdale alerted me of my perversion, it delighted me! 

It roamed down my body in sour tingles

My conniving victim has darted past me and my instruments of torture, 

fled into the Veils of Death

What can I do, but follow?  

I am nothing more but a hunching shadow of tainted gray, striped with iron

and plagued with the embroiling sickness of failure

Observe, and watch! To my dying breath I am consumed,

gulping in vain,

in desperate surrender to my bleaching addiction of vengeance

I limp and crumble into the withering gates of flames and eternal rotting

of the spirit and the flesh; how soothing is my tomb– my grave is my bed 

In the dim lights of two weeks heretofore, I bequeath the flitting child

Not tarnished nor varnished with the most abusive sins

with the remainder of my material legacy, long before it’s close shave to

pollution, or a stamp of blood money