A Voice Of Fangs

By Lauren Hemphill

Revised 10.31.2020

They tried to take the tiger out of me. First, they tried with god.

    Encircled by followers draped in silken white robes, they brought me into his chambers. The house of the lord stood tall, pointed like the tip of a knife towards the sky. Double doors opened as we approached, the dead grass cracking beneath my paws before my nails clicked against carpet, the blue stands coming loose with each step I took. Inside, walls arched upwards of nine feet in height, before stopping abruptly and closing the ceiling off in a square. 

    Worshippers sat among the pews as I was brought forward to the altar. A man sat upon it in a throne draped in lion furs, bear claws, and decorated with the teeth of tigers. I reached the end of the aisle and lifted my eyes to his, even as whispers and chastizations spun through the room. God’s form was unknowable. I was forbidden to look.

    Bloated flesh oozed gold from open wounds that wrapped upon his pale arms, his freckled cheeks. His skin stretched across molten liquid, oozing and undulating whenever he shifted, whenever he breathed. His eyes met mine as a halo of bones gleamed above his brow, muscle and veins and gore sloughing off the perpetually rotting symbol of holiness. His feet were wrapped in fine silks. 

    Animals are not welcome in my kingdom, he boomed, his voice rattling my skull, threatening to imprint itself upon the marrow of my being. You must shed your pelt and release your canines. 

    Those that had guided me in now quickly took their seats in the pews. They bowed their heads and steepled their hands. As I was about to draw my attention elsewhere, I saw the one closest to me kneel, reach beneath his seat, and pull out sheers and rope and rocks. 

    Once you are free of these things, god continued, then you may experience my unconditional love. I whipped toward him as he spread his hands. His underarms burst. Amber gurgled onto the floor and rivered down the steps of his throne. His smile revealed yellowed teeth with blackened holes. 

    The first of dozens of hands grasped upon my fur, sheers lifting above my attackers’ heads. I clawed and bit, blood splattering upon the carpet. The worshippers retreated as my talons sunk into the moist ground beneath. These stains were not the first. The ground here was soaked with bloodshed, marred with dark brown and crimson. My chest burned. My teeth barred. I turned toward god and growled.

    The sound cut the room like a murder. God’s captive audience stared as he watched me, eyes wide. He gripped his armrests and stood, feeble and uncertain as the blood did not stop pouring from his body, down the throne, down the steps, underneath the pews. God pointed his finger at me. A pinprick of skin broke, and a trail of gold dripped from his flesh.

    You dare growl at me? 

    I hunkered down, bending my back legs. The growl did not stop. 

    Rebellion! god cried. Rebellion against me! Though I have brought you into my home, you turn your fangs to me! 

    I surged forward, bounding past the steps and lunging into the air. My teeth crunched against his neck. The taste of wealth flowed upon my tongue, nearly suffocating me as we hit the back of his throne. I tore out his throat. God choked. He grasped for me. Gold blood tainted my black stripes. His eyes met mine. Within his wounds, I saw what he was.

    They tried something closer to home next.

    With my fangs dripping from god’s blood, I turned to find his mother entering the double doors. She strode inside god’s domain with beauty and grace, with white fur and gold stripes and a face like mine. Her claws had been clipped, and a radio collar sat around her throat, the ebony antenna reaching towards the ceiling. Each step was perfect, silent, and poised. Rehearsed, even. Her chin lifted, her gaze meeting mine, demanding me to bow with a look. She stopped at the foot of the altar, god’s blood touching her toes.

    She looked nothing like the woman who raised me. I climbed off god’s corpse to face the tiger who stood seven feet at the shoulder. 

    Gold suits you, she said, nodding at my paws, at the splatters against my pelt. All tigers should be gold. 

    My tail whipped the air behind me. My shoulders tightened as I lowered myself to the ground, showed my god-stained teeth. She stepped onto the altar.

    We were made to be gold. You were made to be loved by it. 

    A growl began. Lower, more hesitant than before. It tumbled from my throat and reached, haltingly, past my teeth. I backed up. As the tigress stepped into god’s amber liquid, her own stripes began to drip, to drool off her body, to leave a trail as she approached. Her facial markings spilled onto the floor below. 

    Do you not feel the same? Do you not know the words written upon your own heart? 

    My hackles rose and my claws dug into the stage beneath me. She paused, regarded my stance, and flicked her tail dismissively.

    Your hatred dirties you. What have we done besides try to heal you? Try to love you? 

    My foot pressed against the wall behind god’s throne as I took two more steps back. There was space to flee. Behind the tigress, I could see the followers, saliva spilling from their open mouths as they watched us. Hands clutched to knees, leaning forward, eyes wide as they hungered. They wanted us both. With gnashing teeth and starved moans, they cared not which fell first, only that we fell. My tail wrapped around my hind leg, violation churning my stomach and twisting my features with disgust. God’s mother noticed and offered little more than a pitying sneer. As her teeth caught the light, the room began to dim. Each canine was blunted, as if cut in half with a sharp blade, left as nothing more than flat, grotesque reminders of a hunter she used to be.

    They cannot help it, she said. Tigers are beautiful. 

    She struck then, the mother of god, reaching out with clipped talons to slash at my face. Foolishly, I thought I could withstand her strike, but her paw smashed against my cranium, rattled my mind, and threw me to the opposite wall. I scrambled to my feet and narrowly evaded her second attack as she pounced upon where I had been. The radio collar blinked gold. More of her body bled away, her stripes engulfing her white fur more and more by the second. She did not falter, however. As I sprinted through the pews, past the grasping hands, she charged after me, her coat staining the watchers, coating the doors, bringing color to the dead grass outside.

    It is within the nature of tigers to fight for territory. And it is within the nature of gods to claim my pelt. Yes, the second thing the followers tried was family.

    The trees gave little welcome, their arching canopies of tangled branches shielding me from the light of day only to grab at my paws, snag my tail, wrap vines around my limbs and beckon me to submit. This forest had seen me grow, and now it witnessed me stumble and fall and taste the leaves. And still, the mother chased me.

    The white fur will come in time. Let us bathe you in the gold, make you what you should be. 

    From the sandalwood trees I broke, stumbling onto the shoreline of a wide river. I leapt into it, beating my claws against the waves as I struggled to stay afloat. The mother crashed into the surface and dived beneath, refusing to give up the chase. She came up for air as my talons gripped the shoreline, tugging my soaked body from its grasp. The mother gripped the shore behind me, her blunted talons granting her no leverage. Her head bobbed beneath the water and she rose again, choking and gagging as she strained to stay above the waves. I watched a moment as she was pulled downstream, as her body began to melt away into the warm embrace of the river. She would die within its grasp. 

I rushed down alongside her, reached over, and took her scruff into my mouth. With a heave, I dragged her ashore, rocks shifting beneath my feet. When I released her, she managed to stand as the last of gold and white dripped off her body. 

    She stood before me as an old tigress, with bones poking through her pelt, her face drawn, her orange and black hues dulled with age. The collar sat loose around her neck and flashed red. Her legs shook. She collapsed.

    The mother refused to let me bite off the collar, struck me whenever I ventured too close. There was no helping her. When the followers broke through the forest on the other side of the river, I had no choice but to flee into the trees.

    And, at last, they tried one final thing.

    I slept beneath a saptaparni tree, miles away from the mother and the body of god. The devilish smell spilled from the blossoms around me and eased my woes, the leaves sheltering me from the moonlight. I thought, perhaps, in this place of my refuge, I had fled the violence and the reach of those who sought to bring me harm. But it was there that they found me, with scythes and rope and muzzle.

    The followers threw rope over my body and it pressed down against my back, pushing my belly into the dirt as I awoke, startled and afraid. I bucked, pushing back against my restraints as they swung their blades. 

My blood was crimson. It hit the ground hot and thick as it oozed from my shoulder, my back, my side. I struck out where I could, but more rope was swung, more cords against my back, rough against my wounds. I could not see their faces, wrapped as they were in scarves, golden eyes gleaming in the night and burrowing into my soul.

    If you cannot see reason by yourself, they spoke, as one voice, as no voice, together, we shall make you. 

    The cords loosened and I reared back, taking my chance to strike. I swung onto my hind legs and raised one deadly paw. A blade sliced open my throat.

    Intoxicating pain dizzied my mind as I fell. The dirt flew into the air as my body collapsed, as blood gushed from my second mouth. The followers grabbed at my fallen frame immediately, hands and feet and knives and sheers. They slipped their blades beneath my flesh, cut the skin from muscle to have my pelt for their own. The growl I produced could not choose which mouth to spill from.

    A deep breath entered my lungs. The last before I was stripped of the animal. Before I was stripped of me. My lids drooped as pain began to fade, as my nerves began to fail. I opened my mouth, the one with teeth and tongue. And I spoke.

    I WILL ALWAYS BE A TIGER.

    The sound of my voice made my nose bleed and my ears ring. Grasping at their own heads, the followers fell back, screeching as wounded prey, abandoning their weapons in my body. If they were to kill me, I would die standing, as any tiger should. I dragged my feet beneath me, and with the last of my strength, I stood. I pressed a paw to my throat in hopes of slowing the bleeding. Where god’s blood once stained my toes, now it was my own.

    The followers were not dazed forever, and soon they stood, grasping what weapons they still had. With scythes and daggers, they circled me. I bared my teeth, but could do little else. My strength had waned. But at least I would die before my pelt was stolen.

    And then an echo replied.

    AND YOU SHOULD NEVER BE ANYTHING ELSE.

    Springing from the trees, from the bushes, from the shadows and darkness itself, were a collection of scarred beasts with faces like mine, with stripes like mine. They buried their fangs into the monsters who hunted me, tore off their limbs, split open their chests. And when it was done, the four approached. One after the other, they licked my wounds clean, they sealed my second mouth, they sat with me as I used my voice.

    And as we spoke, I learned I was not the only one who slew god.