The smell of blood is thick in the air as I walked toward home. I was returning from my visit in the slums of the city and I saw little children running around. They were playing with knives and were cutting each other, pretending to be part of gangs and getting into a gang fight with one another. A little boy kicked a girl down and sat on top or her, knife poised at the ready. Slowly his head turned toward me and the red eyes glinted out at me under a mop of white hair. A malicious smile stretched across his face. He turned back to his prey and started to stab her in the chest and neck over and over again. The talisman around his neck swung back and forth, thudding against his chest. Slowly the blood seeped down and stained the ground and the pants the boy is wearing, already covered in speckles of blood. He stood up slowly as the girl twitched between his feet, adjusting his robes so that they sat on his shoulders again. Grabbing the girl by her foot her started to drag her away whistling a little tune to himself; the tune that his mother used to sing to him when he was a baby.
I stand there and blink and realize that the little girl is crying and holding her elbow because the little boy had knocked the girl down. Now the boys had run away leaving the little girl alone. She sat there crying for what seemed like an eternity as the images blurred together. I couldn’t take it any longer.
“Are you alright little girl?” I asked stretching my hand out to her. Wiping the snot from her face she reached her hand out. Slowly she rose to her feet; she weighed hardly anything.
“Those boys knocked me down and I got a cut, see?” she replied, sucking snot back up into her nose between every few words. She held her arm down and twisted it a little so that I could see the little cut. Blood glistened in the hazy sun and the smell was over powering.
“May I?” I asked, lifting her harm up a little. She nodded her eyes wide open as I lowered my head down to the cut and kissed it. I licked my lips and the sweet taste filled my mouth. I slowly slid my tongue along the abrasion, savoring her taste.
“Uh, Mister I…”she started then my hand came up and clamped over her mouth. I looked her in the eyes pure hunger consuming me, and she looked at me like the poor weak animal that she was. She started to struggle against my grip on her arm and I tightened my grip on her arm until I heard it snap. She let out a muffled scream as I twisted it around and pulled her into me. Slowly, I fell into the dark alleyway and whispered into her ear.
“You taste so good,” I cooed to her, “Now be a good little girl.” She started to squirm and I felt myself changing into a beast. My hands turned into claws and started to cut into her face, I think one went into her eye. She continued to squirm, hoping to stay free. My robe started to melt into me as I became the beast that I was born to become it seemed. She stopped after she could feel my hard body against her and my hot breath on her neck. “Shhhhhhhhh…” I hissed at her through my mangled mouth, and I bit down on her neck. The blood rushed in and I finished the bite chewing on her flesh.
I walked back out into the main road that I had backed away from with her. My hood pulled down so that no one would see my face, which was still covered in blood. I could still feel her feeble heart beating away in her chest before I finally tore it out and ate it; always the best part of the meal. After that I had grown bored with her and had left the body there to be found by the family or to just decompose over time. I didn’t care anymore. I licked my lips one more time, savoring her taste; it had been months since I had felt the need to really kill anyone like that, to change into a beast. It had been so long and it had felt so good.
My head pounded as I reached the house and I fell down on the bed. Gabriel came in and lied down beside me, but I didn’t feel like looking at her. I could feel her body neck to mine, as her breath fell into a rhythm; she wasn’t asleep but she dreaming or as close as she could come to it. She was recalling memories that she hadn’t visited for awhile. We couldn’t forget anything now; we just had to recall to remember.
“It’s been a while Mircea,” a voice called from the past, “I thought you had been…ignoring me. Don’t you like remembering that day? The day that I saved you and gave you your life back? Hm? The day that I showed you your true calling?”
It was spring and all the boys and I were playing together by the river. It was still ice cold in some parts and chunks of ice still floated here and there, but that hadn’t stopped us from swimming in it. We were playing a game in the water with a leather ball; it was heavy so the younger kids had chosen not to play, except for me. I wanted them to accept me; for some reason no had seemed to accept me all. I had thrown the ball and it had only a couple of yards. Leon, one of the older boys, rolled his eyes at me and pulled the ball out of the depths of the water.
“Look Mircea, if you can’t throw the ball to anyone then you can’t play,” he said tossing the ball to one of his friends, “You can’t even catch it either. Every time it comes to you let it fall into the water.”
“I can to catch it!” I yelled, and suddenly the ball was flying out at me. I put my hands up to catch it but it slipped through and slammed into my face. I fell back in slow motion as the other boys tried to reach out for me, and then I was under water and could see everything. The current had been so quick that spring and even if I had been able to do anything it wouldn’t of made a difference. The water around my face was tinted a bit read and I could feel myself getting light headed from the lack of oxygen. My lungs burned for so long it seemed until I had to suck in the water. I was done for, and I knew it. Slowly everything seemed to fade to black and then, there was a soft light. At the middle of it there was something dark and swirling. “Am I dead?” I asked, the words seemed to bounce around off of nothingness. There weren’t any walls just never ending darkness, and then I heard it from the depth of the light.
“You might be dead,” a voice said in an amused kind of way, “but then again you might not be dead. It really depends on you.” The words didn’t echo as mine had done through the darkness, his seemed to just be there.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked, looking around at the nothingness. There was a small chuckle from the orb.
“What I mean is, will you accept my help? If you do you live, if you don’t then…” the words trailed off and seemed to get consumed by the darkness. It felt like it had started to press in on me. My head felt like it was being pressed between two big hands.
“What do you want if I let you help me?” I asked, but if felt like my mouth was moving slower and slower now, the words more of a mumble than anything.
“I want nothing more than for you to become what you are meant to be, and that is a killer,” the voice came to an abrupt stop there and this time the word seemed to hang in the air. The darkness seemed to be coming down even harder on me. It felt like my eyes were going to pop out of my head. “Don’t deny it any longer; I know what you think about at night and what you dream of. The other children ignore you and that makes you feel horrible. Your own brothers can’t look at you and your baby sister runs from you and cries when she is near you. You dream of killing them all and making them feel your pain. You dream of bathing in blood, and of chewing on flesh. I know you do…”
“How do you know what I’m thinking?” I asked, but it was hard to even comprehend what the voice was saying any longer.
“Because I am you,” the voice answered, “I am the evil inside of you that you keep suppressing because of others because you fear them. Don’t fear them any longer because they fear you. Just let me help you; you don’t want to die now do you?”
“No…I….”suddenly the darkness started to swirl around me and press even hard. It started to go inside my mouth, choking me, inside my eyes, my nose, anywhere it could go in. I was back by the river again and I was coughing up water. I looked around and saw a little squirrel.
“Don’t deny me…” it came from nowhere and everywhere. Slowly I got to me feet and stretched my hand out. The squirrel came to me. I grabbed it and started to squeeze. I could feel the little body moving around in between my fingers and the little heart pounding, and then it was done. I looked around and the world seemed so much clearer. “Much better…”