The Mark of the Beast

Written by Rudyard Kipling

Narrated by Cathy Dobson

Fleete, a relative newcomer to India, becomes extremely drunk on New Year's Eve and on the way home desecrates the temple of the monkey-god Hanuman, by stubbing out his cigar on the statue of the deity. A mysterious leper appears and bites Fleete on the chest, leaving a strange mark. Another priest warns Fleete that Hanuman has not yet finished with him.

During the next day, Fleete's behaviour becomes stranger and stranger. He gnaws ravenously on raw meat, grovels in the earth of the garden and begins to howl like a wolf. His companions resort to extreme and terrible measures to try to get the spell revoked.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Door Consulting
• Release date: Feb 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781467653978

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English author and poet who began writing in India and shortly found his work celebrated in England. An extravagantly popular, but critically polarizing, figure even in his own lifetime, the author wrote several books for adults and children that have become classics, Kim, The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, Captains Courageous and others. Although taken to task by some critics for his frequently imperialistic stance, the author’s best work rises above his era’s politics. Kipling refused offers of both knighthood and the position of Poet Laureate, but was the first English author to receive the Nobel prize.

Reviews for The Mark of the Beast

[altheaann · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

(1890) Just recently, Kipling's horror stories were recommended to me. This one is quite excellent.
The 'mark of the beast' here has nothing to do with Satan. It's a bit more literal than that...

Some wealthy British men in India are out late at a party. One of their number gets falling-down drunk, and two of his associates take it upon themselves to get him home. However, on their way, the drunk man gets aggressive, and before his friends can stop him, in a move of total douchebaggery he intentionally desecrates a shrine of Hanuman that they happen to be passing. Religious services were in progress and the less-drunk men fully expect to be physically attacked in punishment for their serious transgression. Instead, the only thing that happens just then is a strange encounter with a leper at the temple.

Later, however, they realize that they might not actually have gotten off as easily at it seemed.

Kipling often gets a bad rap for his colonialism and belief in Manifest Destiny - but this story, while it may not portray Hinduism accurately, has a pretty strong message about having respect for belief systems that may differ from your own.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A collection of short stories from Rudyard Kipling that was of some interest, but turned out to be very uneven. “The City of Dreadful Night”, on Lahore, “The Dream of Duncan Parrenness” on the loss of innocence, and “The Mark of the Beast” were all pretty good, but there were many others that were poor (“In the House of Suddhoo”, “Haunted Subalterns”, “By Word of Mouth”…). Just a couple of quotes:On growing up, from “The Dream of Duncan Parrenness”:“Yet there be certain times in a young man’s life, when, through great sorrow or sin, all the boy in him is burnt and seared away so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of manhood…”On work, from “The Phantom Rickshaw”:“Heatherlegh is the dearest doctor that ever was, and his invariable prescription to all his patients is, ‘Lie low, go slow, and keep cool.’ He says that more men are killed by overwork than the importance of this world justifies.”