Chapter 1
I didn’t mean to kill her.
That’s what most people say. The excuses run through their head like cherished memories, a plea for sanity, for their own humanities. But not me.
As I bathed in her blood, the droplets of crimson liquid running burning streams across my stained skin, I knew that was a lie. I meant to kill her. To soak the damp soil with her blood. My finger ran across the gaping wound of her exposed stomach as if I was caressing a long-lost lover. Instead of caressing her lips in a warm embrace, or whatever romantic shit you’d otherwise expect, I leaned closer to bring my red-stained finger greedily to my mouth, tasting her life-giving liquid. The lush copper taste exploded on my tongue, my mind begging for more.
Just a small slice, is what I tell myself at the start. One little piece of her flesh is all I need to feel something, to feel complete. To push back that painful urge that consumes my every waking thought. A bigger spark to the quaking afterglow of committing murder with my own hands, my blood entirely replaced with delightful adrenaline.
Hands, taught with the experience of many prior, made quick work of the pale meat as I found the softest parts that made up this previous human. Just the smallest bit. Not too much to cause concern, I tell myself under breathless lips, unable to see anything but the chuck rested on my bloodied fingers. Nothing could stop me, for in that moment, I’d risk my life for just a bite. The flesh slipped down my throat piece after bloody red piece, more than a small slice.
I knew it was a risk. Even in my bliss, the short hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Being this close to her lifeless form, this covered in her blood, this exposed, stirred the voice of reason from its depths in my subconscious.
Leave, you are not alone.
But not yet, not yet, I yelled back, loud enough to drown out the warning growls from the voice. A voice of reason, a voice of desire. One which haunted my every waking thought, now it wanted to interrupt the only time I felt truly alive. It would be the last mistake someone made to step too close to me right now, as the sounds of life-filled woods echoed in my heightened ears.
The animals sat right outside the circle of my kill, waiting patiently for me to finish my part and leave. They felt the power flaking off of my skin like the now drying blood of my kill. Even wild animals knew better than to disrupt me, their survival instinct so heightened, they understood. Unlike humans who wondered blissfully unaware of the dangers around them.
Like me.
That’s how I managed to lure my victim to her final resting spot. A hiker, I pertained from her slashed windbreaker, unaware that just meters away, I would end her existence on this planet and consume her flesh to satisfy my own needs. I managed to give her such a false sense of security that she trusted me enough to follow me into the dark.
Help, my girlfriend, she’s twisted her ankle!
Anxiety on her face as she followed me quickly through the unmarked path, turned to true fear as she found I was no longer behind her. Lost, confused in the adrenaline that pumped through her for the moment she thought she would be a hero.
“Hiker saves the life of stranger!”
What a fool.
Both of us in this body agreed on that.
The being occupying my consciousness encouraged my bloodlust. They were a nuncience, a hindrance to my everyday life, creating a cloud of improbability to each and every humane action I do. Help an old woman with heavy boxes? Yes, you can, however, she did murder her husband back in 1977. A child is having difficulties crossing the busy street? They were the product of incest, a creature not worth their weight in the cells that built them. All of these personal and, quite frankly, boring human sins echo in my mind in that deep, booming, voice each and every time I try to at least act normal.
I would take that voices’ obsessive need to dictate each and every person’s deepest, darkest secrets if it meant I could achieve my true heart’s desires. Simply the wave of euphoria that ran through my system as that flesh slipped down my hard throat, was enough to keep me begging at their mercy for more, more power, more need. They helped me to understand exactly what I wanted, what I needed.
This was it.
The knife I used sat at my side, the grooves carved in an unknown language filled with the pooling blood, as I tipped the handle into her gaping, bloodied, open wound.
Some for me, some for them.
Carefully, with the skilled hands of a butcher, I cut off a few pieces of the flesh and muscle to take with me. Of course, I could not forget my favorite organ, the heart. That’s kind of how this started, a young obsession with warriors who would eat the heart of their victims to gain their strength. The first heart I consumed showed I wouldn’t gain their strength, but I sure as hell would be happy for the first time in my long, dull life.
You need to leave, They growled in my ears, my body almost moving against its will. The bag of meat was safely secured in a false bottom of my backpack, the knife sitting snug beside it in its ancient leather sheath. I suppose with all I wanted, and this victim as good as dead, I would peacefully leave. Though I hated it when they would try to take control of my body. Sure, the first time this knife plunged into someone’s soft flesh, I hesitated. Their assistance made me the ruthless killer I was today, and I thanked them for that. But now it was like a babysitter, trying to control me under soft threats and stern eyes.
Yes, they were right, as always. The creatures of the night feasted on her remains, but not as quickly as a safety officer with a gun. I was walking along the trail with my hood up, eyes down, inauspicious as one can be, so I didn’t know for sure besides the ringing in my ear from their gun. Or the scream that left their throat.
By the time they ran out to the path, I was gone. Back into the city, across the stinking, rotting pavement to the upstairs apartment I called my home.
With blood coating my hands, sticky where they rested in my pockets, I relished in the last few moments I would remain in ecstasy. Once the blood was gone, once her flesh was digested, I would no longer be happy. The only way I get a wave of serotonin is when I have a fresh kill at my feet.
In my bathroom, I saw in the mirror the blood which sprinkled on my face, rimming my thin lips like a cheap cosmetic. I let my tongue dart out to taste them as I started the water, ready to remove myself from my blissful state. Once the cold porcelain sink filled enough, I dunked my head into the cold liquid, watching around me as the water tinted pink with blood.
My hair fought against the hair tye I forced it in, coming free with as little as one tug. The brown strains joined me in the water, their medium-length strands circling my eyes like small worms.
The first time I killed someone, it was before I met the freeloader in my head. Not being well versed in the criminal system or anything for that matter, I did what any murderous teenager would do: I kept going back. Day after day, I would return to feel as the abdominal cavity stretched with the gases, busted with their release, then became partially devoured by wildlife. The active thought of worms wiggling in the flesh as flies and other insects laid their young in each bloody, purple crevice I left from stab wound after stab wound swirled in my head.
Supposedly, that makes me different. Thinking about decomposition from my own hands, rather than education, love, or friendships. None of those matter quite like the rush that pumped through my veins like right now.
Not that I was a slacker in school. While I was forced to attend each and every course like the punctual, little catholic boy I was, I found time for my extracurricular activity whenever I could. Especially after I first tasted someone’s flesh. It was, in sorts, a dare I played on myself.
You’re too chicken.
No, I’m not!
You’ll never do it.
Watch me!
The slice slid down my throat like a jello shot, the slime of blood coating my mouth like decadent cream, iron in taste and thick inconsistency. My entire body shook, the feeling of completion hitting me for the first time in my life.
This was the moment we, as humans, lived for. A feeling, a sensation, a- understanding.
I’ve been chasing that high ever since. Yet now, as the blood-tinted water drained down the sink, I knew it wouldn’t hit the same this time. But maybe the next, I tell myself.
Maybe the next. The voice taunted in my ears, the words swirling around my brain like a cloud of thick smoke. Or maybe, you’ll stop lying to yourself. It’s getting pathetic.
“You’re the pathetic one!” I shouted at myself in the mirror, feeling my hands shake. “This is what we have to do! You know that otherwise, you’d occupy some other chumps body. No one will give you as much as me!” The tension in my body faded as the numbness of existence crept its vines up my body, freezing me from the inside out. Watching in the mirror as my light brown eyes went from so full of life, or emotion, to so, so, incredibly empty.
Just like always, so empty. So lifeless.
Until next time.
