Volume II: Chapter VII:

“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.”

Text Revision (form the perspective of Felix):

As Safie, Agatha and I return from a serene country walk, a dark feeling of imminent malevolence strikes me at the center of my chest. Glancing over at my sister and my beloved, I notice that I’m the only one who experiences the distorted atmosphere around our cottage. Their smiling faces help dispel my apparent paranoia and lessen my ability to assume that all happy situations must come to an end. Nevertheless, I clutch the wedge-of-a-weapon in my hand anxiously and lead the way into our home.

Upon opening the door, the dark feeling I felt prior in my chest mutated into a prison of terror that shackled my every heart beat. Before my eyes stood a living, breathing abomination of a man whose own monstrous form depicted nothing less than a malignant spirit from the deepest depths of hell. It stood before my poor, old and blind father with an atrocious aura of foreboding. When the exact contents of its visage no longer remained obscure and it revealed its demonic anatomy of piercing eyes, I felt a fire within me swell beyond the boiling point of the densest of metals. My father was in danger, my sister collapsed in a plummet of panic, and my love trembled for an escape. The very existence of my family depended on me. It is now that I can fulfill the sole purpose of my being and finally clear my name of all its horrible grievances!

Shuddering, yet stern; uncertain and yet determined, I raise my club as if it were a sword of indispensable legends; a sword capable of cutting through any fiend that may threaten all that is morally good in this world! The beast’s eyes widen, my heart pounds, and as I lift the weapon that will determine the very fate of the creature before me… I drop it.

The resonance of the bludgeon’s blunt battering as it hit the floor rang through my soul like the sweet sound of my name finding solace in itself once again. It was with passion, impulse and pride that I had ruined my family the first time, but it was with calm, patience, and compassion that I had begun to restore it. This is my moment to prove that I can escape my vices, and in this moment, the creature runs as if it had seen terror far worse than I.

As my body suspends belief, I engage with a feeling nothing less than sublime. Agatha may recover from her stupor, I can return to my Safie, and my father can indulge in security once again. Would the beast have fought back if I had attacked? Did this malicious abomination intend on violence? It is now that I find time to ask myself these questions, questions that I could have answered wrongly if I had approached with false retribution. I glance to my father whose facial expression returns the notion that it meant no harm. With this, I relapse back into reality, ready to help my family and whatever being that may be out there recover from this traumatic experience, an experience that I alone quelled.

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