The birth of a baby is always an important event. The child’s arrival into the benevolent world of people is rightly celebrated with cigars, champagne, and—for the lucky ones—the opening of a savings account.
But how fleeting is the golden age!
Because with the passing of the years, it becomes impossible not to admit that the child loses much of its charm. Physique and personality deteriorate with each birthday. Time thickens, disfigures, stupefies… And whose fault is that? It’s the fault of the Beast that grows within the child, like a weed taking over a garden.
The age of reason marks the start of this spectacular deterioration. The faded cherub begins to ask questions, express ideas, and negotiate agendas. Capricious, gluttonous, and none too hygienic, the growing child’s taste for raucous music and faddish clothing is an inconvenient and costly burden.
Yes, the golden age is fleeting!
And when cooing and baby talk have faded away, the parents are left with the prospect of a pimple-faced teenager.
Abandonment becomes necessary, in order to preserve pleasant memories. And so it is that a considerable number of children are abandoned every year in forests. In France alone, the number is estimated at sixty thousand. It is never with a light heart that parents hand over to Mother Nature the fate of their progeny. But they’ll always find consolation in the resale of clothing and toys, a profit that will allow them to enjoy a few days of well-deserved rest and relaxation.
Lost in the depths of the forest and left to their own devices, these unfortunate wretches gradually return to their natural state. Far from school, they forget language and express themselves instead in rumbles and grunts of rage.
By observing them, we can get a basic idea of what humans were like at the dawn of our era: small starving bands in a permanent state of war, without faith, law, or toothbrushes, wandering the forest in search of fresh meat and blood.
This observation isn’t of great interest because humanity has hardly evolved since the Iron Age.
Imagine the excitement of these wild children when they find the dying Yark on a path.
The snot oozing from their noses betrays their joy. This colossus will make a succulent treat! And what a windfall to satisfy their thirst for cruelty! Because the little beasts are well acquainted with the Yark’s weakness. They know that their wickedness will keep the Monster from defending himself, much less from gobbling them up. The Yark denies their presence. The smell of these brats makes him nauseous. But, stunned by his fall, he’s too weak to escape.
Like a thunderclap, the horde of children falls upon him. There are more than a hundred of them to bite, wrench, strangle, cling to his fangs, and yank on his wings, trying to tear them off. The Yark roars in pain.
“My time has come,” he thinks, with a wave of sorrow and a hint of relief.
And so the huge hairy Monster stretches out on the ground to let them eat him raw. Certainly, he could shorten his ordeal by decapitating his diminutive adversaries with a snap of his jaws. Their venomous flesh would kill him on the spot! But the tender-hearted Monster pities his assailants. Would they be so nasty if they hadn’t been abandoned? Would they be so cruel if they had ever truly been loved? And then, the Yark thinks of all the children he’s eaten. And as if to gain some smidgen of forgiveness, he finds it hardly unjust to be eaten in his turn.
But the wild children don’t mean to finish off their prisoner right away. Even though they’re famished—for weeks they’ve subsisted on spider droppings—their thirst for cruelty is more intense than their hunger.
The Yark is tied upside down to a tree trunk and the little beasts dance around their prisoner with bloodcurdling cries.
A little redheaded boy, as skinny as a nail, approaches the Monster. He yanks a few hairs from his own head and stuffs them into the Yark’s mouth. The colossus utters a hideous cry. This wisp from a naughty child burns like a white-hot needle. Amused by the spectacle, the children burst out laughing.
Then, taking turns in front of the Monster, they thrust down his throat small portions of their bodies: knee scabs, torn-off toenails, nose boogers, and things like that…
The children are careful not to feed him more than minuscule doses of poison. It would be a waste to kill the Yark straightaway. For a torture session to be fun, it must be drawn out!
All night, the infernal celebration goes on.
At the end of his strength, the Monster can no longer so much as groan. He tells himself that by dawn it will all be over.
“Only a few hours to go,” he thinks, “before these noxious imps will have finished me off.”
But as his strength leaves him, an image surges up before his eyes. Madeleine’s face appears in all its loveliness. Her smile wipes away his suffering. Her memory stamps out his sorrow.
And so the Yark no longer dreads the hours that remain until dawn.