Original Text:

“At that instant the cottage door was opened, and Felix, Safie, and Agatha entered. Who can describe their horror and consternation on beholding me? Agatha fainted; and Safie, unable to attend to her friend, rushed out of the cottage. Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung: in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground, and struck me violently with a stick. I could have torn him limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope. But my heart sunk within me as with bitter sickness, and I refrained. I saw him on the point of repeating his blow, when overcome by pain and anguish, I quitted the cottage, and in the general tumult escaped unperceived to my hovel.” (Volume II, Chapter VIII, Page 103)

Revision:

Who can describe my horror and consternation on beholding such a massive, gruesome form looming over my unsuspecting father? The demon (surely not human?) standing before me looked as if it had crept from the blackest depths of the most depraved consciousness−it was a being fit for nightmares, not for this world, and surely not for the cottage of my unfortunate family! What had my life become, that even after I had consciously resolved to protect my loved ones from every possible harm, I returned to find what appeared to be the very manifestation of danger in my home?

Then the creature spoke (as if it was somehow worthy of the privilege of human communication!), though I heard not a single word over the frantic tumult of my thoughts. Any hope of controlling my actions fled with the recognition of my native language passing through those dark, shriveled lips. I was immediately overwhelmed with a mixture of loathing, fear, and disgust; I could feel my heart sink within me as with bitter sickness.

I do not recall specifically what phrases I then shouted at the creature, only that I unleashed a torrent of hatred and condemnation as I darted forward and proceeded to strike it repeatedly with a stick I had been carrying. With each blow, I felt my fury rise anew within my chest, not just at my present situation, but from every misfortune that had led to it. Injustice! Betrayal! Failure! Loss! I wanted to make as many wounds on the fiend’s sallow skin as I could feel reopening in the fabric of my soul; I desired to create as many bruises as I had collected on the surface of my heart. Then, in a movement surprisingly agile, the creature sprang from the floor and escaped the cottage, more quickly than I thought possible, and more easily than I could rationalize. What kind of being would submissively endure an attack when it all along possessed the ability to evade me so effortlessly?

The following silence was utterly paralyzing. Any emotions I had been experiencing could not equal in unpleasantness the slow, sinking feeling of absolute dread I felt as I gradually recovered my senses and absorbed the vastly different, yet equally horrifying scene I was now at the center of. I was numb to my father’s shocked silence, to the sight of Agatha’s unconscious body, even to the stick as it slid from my now feeble grasp and struck the cottage floor, though I would later compare its sharp percussion to the sound produced by a gavel. In that moment, there was but a single subject that fully captured my attention. This was the face of my beloved Safie, carrying an expression which revealed that she too had seen a monster, one who continued to stare back at her.

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