"A Common Tongue" by MJ Huntsgood

Immortality is far from a silent thing.

Your mother tongue babbled around you in your youth—voices in chirped and croaking tones and babies whose first words spoke of the sun and the stones. Mothers who crooned of the cold sand and the fire that could warm the meat of the beasts you hunted.

Of the creatures in the dark.

Your tribe did not know what exactly the creatures did or how they came to be in the dark, but you all knew they were there.

They found you first. The bite felt like a thousand stinging nettles. A hushed voice asked you if you wanted to live forever.
Yes.

You thought you said the word. Eternity flooded your veins. It was over for them. For you, it was just beginning.

Back then, you huddled with the masses and fed on them when they slept. Their pained cries were drowned out through layers of furs and found later in the piles of bodies struggling to keep warm as winter arrived.

It was so cold. They didn't have time to silence you.

Eventually it was Kang, the leader’s boy, who stood up to you. Called you what you were.

Monster. The word was more complex. It doesn't translate well.

Banishment tasted more sour than the blood of the beasts of the forest.

But, immortality meant that all things turned to dust eventually. The tribe would die. The rocks would weather. The ice would melt. The chirps and croaks would make way for a smooth, ancient Germanic language.

You would learn it, of course. Perfectly rolling off your tongue in cool, clear tones like a viola played to perfection. In this era, you did not have to huddle in tiny caves; you could pull in a bar wench and talk to her. Seduce her. She would coo and she would cry against your ear as you purred against her throat.

But in your head, you thought only in your native tongue. In the language that was dust, along with the cave and the tribe. The occasional time you would run into another like yourself, you might hear the language, but the Ancient Ones were getting rarer. Too much sunlight. Too many accidents.

The word for what you were was different then, too.

Vampyre.

By the time you reach the age of technology, you stop thinking in your native tongue. When you think about the fact that your back hurts, it is easier to just think that it hurts in English, rather than to translate.

You press your thumb against the button on the frame to your door. Another long day at the university with the shades drawn. Late nights. You're so knowledgeable about history, so many languages known. So charismatic. They think you need the additional security to keep the obsessed students from clamoring through your doors.

In a way, yes.

The door opens, and you step into the empty building. No furniture. No tables. One lone leather chair in front of a flat screen television, a wine rack, and a coffin. Your patent leather shoes click against the concrete floor as you step over to pour yourself a glass of wine.

Professor of linguistics.

What a hock of crap.

You've forgotten more languages than your department head ever knew. You've written more books than are in that college library. You've been more than those students will ever be.
You flip on the TV and lower the blinds on your floor-to-ceiling windows.

A sunrise starts on the screen, playing from the camera positioned outside your home.

That.

That is what they have that you do not.

The envy you feel is palpable. Vicious. It swirls inside of you like the red wine in your glass and it makes you want to vomit. Your anger is more real than the image on the screen.

You had no choice back in the cave.

With the vampire.

You had no words for what was happening to you.

Words for what it was didn't exist. The bite. The Turning. They came later, when you left the Stone Age.

Back then, you were but a victim.

Choosing to change was like breathing. You breathed. And now, now they breathe--

But look at your accomplishments. And they haven't caught you yet.

It should be worth it.

A notification interrupts the sunrise. News. You flip away from the things you want and cannot have to the things you deal with that are part of the world you live in instead.

“And now we have the latest candidate to jump in the Senate race, dark horse candidate, Kris Kartsoris. Kris, do you have anything to say?”

You follow politics. You follow what the world is up to. After all, you're going to be here a long time.

However, the person who steps on screen, standing under a dark umbrella is known to you. The dark hair, the tawny skin, the black eyes. He smiles a broken-toothed smile that has all the charm of a man who has led more people under harder, more dire circumstances.

It's Kang.

“This city is hurting. Every day, we see violence to the youth of our city at night, and we don't know why. I'm going to start campaigning to clean up our universities and find out what's been happening to the children of our state.”

Prick.

The mobile phone on your chair rings. You step towards it and look down. It is from an unknown number. The tinny noise reverberates across the empty room like a baby's cry in a cave.

You answer.

“It has been a long time, Monster.”

A language with one is dead.

A language with two is alive.

He has come to find you and to stop you. For him, you will be his Monster.
​
Your mother tongue was immortal after all.

---

MJ Huntsgood is a speculative thriller and horror author who enjoys exploring the use of perspective and deep POV in her work to find the nightmare not just in a situation, but within ourselves. She hopes you, like her, dream of leaving this boring dystopia where we work to earn the right to work and human rights are even remotely up for debate. She lives in an unreasonably haunted townhome in Washington DC with her ever dwindling number of underwatered plants, 2 cats and trophy husband.

---