Her name was Sezinah.
With eyes that pierced the night like the glint of a golden blade
And long, flowing hair the shade of the mountains on that misty autumn night,
A young Hrothgar, great ruler of the Danes,
Could not avert his eyes from her astounding figure
Wandering the fields of his castle grounds,
Bare-skinned and barely malicious.

Exuding seduction under her guise of woman,
She twisted a cruel finger, beckoning the naïve king to her illustrious embrace,
And he yielded with nary a hesitation,
Crossing the night into its vixen’s arms and
Diving into her fair grotto,
Sinning and pleasuring
Until the sun rose him back to the sea’s surface,
From whence he retreated to his chamber to pray.

Sezinah let out a flurry of laughter and cackling in Hrothgar’s absence,
Relishing her triumph as her dastardly plan set course.
With the presence of a human missing, she relaxed and transformed
Back to her true form:
Limbs elongated into slime-drenched tentacles
And peachy skin shifted to scales of a sickly green and overbearing gold,
Illuminating the many treasures she had purged from unsuspecting ships
And deceased kings who were cast off into her domain with gloriously filled boats.
Her succubus torso morphed into an aberration of monstrous proportion,
Oozing her putrid slime over numerous extremities
And holding up a long, swaying gold-green neck,
Which propped up a face only Hell itself would lay eyes on.
Her long, flowing hair was replaced with horrid spikes
That hung above a snarled muzzle and gnarled fangs,
Intensified by her golden-glinting eyes.

The sun cycled around the sky and soon
Ice had encased the dreaded Hell Bride’s waters.
Hrothgar gazed into the ice every night, praying for his lovely Wealtheow’s ignorance
And hoping the Lord above would forgive his misdeed
As a fiend writhed and struggled to grow inside
Sezinah.

The ice was clearing over the ocean,
And the sun was brightening the day yet again,
With colorful flowers speckling the fields,
Warm cheers exploding through village roads,
And celebrations of spring’s return filling the king’s jubilant hall of Heorot.
As mead was poured and minstrels’ voices frolicked,
Sezinah heaved and twisted in her dank abode,
The beast in her belly grown and growing free from its demonic prison,
Until it finally burst from her feral womb,
Flailing and wheezing its way out of her grotto,
Searching for breath up through the sea’s deep waters,
And into the glare of the spring sun, burning the hell-born to blindness
And warping his features to such a degree,
No man could accept him. His name was Grendel.

Grendel crawled to the shore,
Feebly clawing through the sand, reaching out for a helping hand,
But alas, no hand would intertwine with a claw.
Villagers shrieked and fled at his ghastly sight,
Children were herded inside,
And out of forced-upon exclusion, Grendel ran.

He ran to the mountains, and Sezinah,
Chasing after her hell born,
Transmogrified into a swift golden dragon,
Soaring through the Danes’ sky and swooping into the shelter of a cave,
An abyss no man would dare shriek nor yelp in.

“Dear Grendel,” Sezinah whispered to her shivering spawn,
“Why do you run? Why do you swim away from your dear mother,
Who will love you, and raise you to be the great Grendel you are?
I can make you big and strong like your grandfather, like his grandfather,
And almost as great as the Magnificent Satan they sprouted from.
Just let me be your mother, Grendel. Will you?”
Sezinah laid a golden claw on her child,
And the hell born raised an imp’s ear toward its maternal mistress.

Garbles of a croak escaped from its throat,
And Sezinah grinned with a crooked malice.
Night fell, and she scooped up her baby into her talon,
Taking flight over the mountains, the woods, the fields, and Heorot,
Where a cacophony of shrill voices and celebratory squeals
Enveloped Grendel’s head,
Creating a din so violent it caused his head to throb.
Grendel flailed and freaked, beating his way out of his mother’s hold
Until he was released and plummeted to the roof of the king’s hall.

The terrible chatter and clatter ceased,
And Grendel, baffled and battered, pounded his gangly fists at the hall’s roof,
Screaming and stomping in a vicious fit of rage.
Sezinah, watching with intense vigor and interest,
Roosted by the shore and descended into the sea,
Slowly shedding her draconic exterior
Until not but her golden glinting eyes hid beneath the ripples of seawater.

Humans scurried out of Heorot’s doors and shouted at his ringing ears,
Pointing fingers and swords at his miserably disfigured shape.
Grendel erupted into a bestial rampage of terror,
Swiping and slashing at anything that caused his throbbing ears to drum so.
Heads were severed, blades sent flying to the hills,
Minstrels were mangled, and maidens’ cries were silenced.
The onslaught brought a gleam to Sezinah’s golden glint,
And she observed, poised and delighted throughout the whole spectacle.

The slaughter lasted until finally, an eerie silence filled the field around Heorot.
Grendel felt a filthy unease, and in the lifeless night,
He filled his blood-covered claws with human corpses,
And dragged all thirty bodies through the field aimlessly,
Crying out for his mother’s loving hiss.

“I’m here, my dear Grendel,” a sly voice hissed from outside the hall.
Hrothgar’s lovely Wealtheow peeped her eyes over an overturned table
Inside Heorot, as she, the singularly silent survivor of the monster’s attack,
Watched the horrid scene before her.
The warped, hideous Grendel fiend hunched over his pile of her decapitated friends
While a naked woman with long, flowing hair slithered around him,
Whispering the devil’s language into his ear.
As soon as the demon’s had taken flight,
She rushed to her king’s bedchamber and warned him of what she had witnessed.

In Grendel’s cave, Sezinah laid her baby down to rest,
His head cushioned by a pillow she had fashioned
From his enemies’ flesh and tender innards,
Sewn together with the maidens’ fair hairs and the soldiers’ facial fur.
Stroking his hell born head, she crooned him a lullaby
That echoed through the land off the walls of the cave:

“Hush little baby, don’t say a word.
Mama’s gonna find you a mockingbird.
And if that mockingbird won’t sing,
Mama’s gonna find you a diamond ring.
And if that diamond ring turns brass,
Mama’s gonna find you the Queen’s best glass.
And if that looking glass is broke,
Mama’s gonna kill you a billy goat.
And if that goat don’t make you full,
Mama’s gonna find you the King’s best bull.
And if that bull can’t put you down,
Then we’ll find the sweetest baby in town.

“And if those men ever disturb your slumber again, my dear, dear Grendel,
You just go down to their hall and quiet them, just as tonight.
Goodnight, my dear, dear child.”
And she retreated to her grotto under the waves.

Twelve years passed of Grendel growing
And collecting human skulls in his abyssal den, until one night,
Sezinah flew to her hell born’s cave to find him
Limping, wrestling to grasp at his flesh-pillow.
His arm had been ripped right off,
Bones snapped and blood soiling the ground in his stead.
Before a final breath was released, Grendel lurched forward,
Reaching for a helping hand.
His mother intertwined her talon with his claw,
And a croak garbled out of his weary mouth,

“Beowulf…”

Sezinah’s golden glint burst into an enraged pyre
As the intertwined claw flopped to the cave’s floor,
And the granddaughter of Malice shot through the night,
Landing at Heorot’s gates and morphing to a mosquito
Plaguing the calm of Hrothgar’s hall.
She slipped between a crack in the hall’s doors and again changed form
To the one with long, flowing hair and an insatiable thirst for
Revenge.

In the hall lay soldiers, maidens, princes, and servants,
All resting about with drunken mugs and jugs clenched in their hands,
Gone to a far-off wonderland
Where they would’ve hoped to awaken from when the sun will have risen.
“Beowulf…” Sezinah hissed.
Two ocean-blue eyes flickered open on a regal throne-bed across the hall,
A strong, handsome man encased in passed out concubines,
And as soon as they closed again in satisfied slumber, Sezinah struck.
Soldiers’ bodies were diced and strewn about the hall,
Maidens’ bones were cracked and flung over benches.
Blood was poured into the mead cauldron,
Heads were lined around the sleeping man’s throne,
And concubines were skewered and hung from the ceiling.
When the ‘hero’ awoke, he would surely flee.

But this was not to come to pass.
Sezinah, sulking and mourning her hell born’s demise in her cavern,
Felt a tremble, an unforgiving force, moving through her waters to her own home.
A golden-haired hero undulated through the sea,
Coming to face Sezinah to finish off the demons once and for all.
Sezinah, anger fueling her every gesture, lashed out at him,
Tentacles sweeping, teeth gnashing, claws slicing.
He fought back with more force than any normal human could,
And she had to resort to pulling weapons out of her treasure trove and swiping at him.
Still, after she had tried to pierce, stab, slash, and bludgeon,
The golden-haired mongrel would not fall back.
Sezinah howled in loathing and transformed into her woman form,
Hoping he would be chivalrous.
But alas, such a man could not bestow chivalry on such a wretch,
And so he struggled harder, until Sezinah finally seized a dagger and rammed it
Into his chainmail.
The metals clashed and the dirk ricocheted off, and in utter confusion on rage,
Sezinah began to flail wildly like her hell born before.

In that instant, she had made a gruesome mistake,
As her tantrum gave the man the chance he needed
To unsheathe her finest greatsword from the golden trove,
And swing it through the waves and through her neck,
Beheading Sezinah.

Alas, she was the last of the demons,
And with that final blow from the golden-haired man,
All legacies of the demons were wiped from existence;
And when Wealtheow put down her newborn to rest that night,
She crooned it a lullaby that had been heard in the distance
Twelve years ago:

“Hush little baby don’t say a word,
Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird…”