November 3
Tonight, gentle reader, I played a hero. This is, for reference, inadvisable for monsters to do. It is not only counterproductive, it is not well-accepted by the rescued. Probably because it confuses the hell out of them. After all, the hero is meant to be a strapping man with a confident voice, and the villain, a creepy sallow-faced menace.
Blame Disney.
So, tonight, I went to see one of those dime-a-dozen demon possession films. Yes, I know it seems strange for a creature like me to go to a theater to watch inexplicable things terrorize families, but honestly, I find them amusing. The screams and laughter of the crowd are a perfect landscape for independent research into the nature of fear. And to be honest, nothing tastes like cinema popcorn.
Never mind that.
I have a love-hate relationship with tales of faith and magic. On one hand, I benefit from their preposterous fictions. Unsuspecting victims placidly believe I am something linking them to the divine. But on the other hand, the condition of “stupid” does not impress. An invisible friend in the sky who refuses to help but insists upon obedience makes me wonder about the quality of your brains. For culinary reasons, obviously.
As it happens, it was not a very good film regardless.
I walk home via the service drive that runs behind my home. It used to be a path for shipping vehicles to the loading docks of this line of ramshackle warehouses, but now it is a driveway for the patrons and renters who frequent these urban reclamation projects. My home is the last warehouse at the end of the street, atop a small hill. Along the tree line are numerous garbage heaps and abandoned pieces of furniture.
Normally, I like the decay, the sparkling amber glass, and the shards of moldering wood. But tonight there is some kind of scuffle taking place ahead of me, behind a group of old metal drums. A human might exit the path, but a monster is not bothered by raccoons. I walk closer, my senses on the alert, and detect the labored breathing and hormone clouds of two people. A muffled scream warns of the true ugliness taking place.
I halt and think for a moment.
Doing nothing when one has the capacity to act is a crime in human society; even though most embrace cowardice when no one is looking. I, however, cannot die. and tangling in moral quandaries often stocks my freezer. It isn’t bravery (just in case you think to praise me), but necessity. So, I take off my motorcycle jacket, lay it gently over a decomposing sofa back, and roll up my sleeves.
There is no transformation, if you’ve been waiting for me to describe one. I pop out my fake teeth. I extend my claws like a feline. I collapse my skeleton, because I am able to do this, by compressing and flexing joints. I perform an exercise similar to a professional body builder about to lift a stupefying amount of weight, and I spring. It is impressive to behold, but only because witnesses seldom have a grasp of the mechanics, and they frequently do not live very long to reason through it.
I land on the other side of the drums. A woman is pressed to the ground on her stomach. Her dress is torn and pushed up above her waist, exposing her underwear. Her right hand is disabled and bleeding, while her left is twisted behind her back. Atop her sits a fat and stupid-looking man. He stinks of booze and is gripping a knife in his teeth.
The sort of people taking back this neighborhood are brightly colored, listen to music with “wind” in the title, and always smell of potting soil, so this brutality is a strange thing to see. But it is my element. I suppose it is stranger to realize one’s element has become foreign, and that it has no business in one’s neighborhood.
I reach out, take hold of his face, and with a tug, dislodge him. He shrieks behind the knife, which makes a bloody grin of his mouth. The woman, her arm still twisted, shrieks as well. With a well-placed stab of my hand, the man’s arm falls limp. His fingers relax from around her wrist, and as she squirms, I bring the forehead sharply to my knee and feel a bone give. He tumbles off her body.
The haze of instinct is rising in me. I hold onto cool wrath until the blood flows, and then I am completely myself. Or, not myself, depending upon how you look at the situation. My rational mind retreats and I am a monster with truly terrible ferocity. When this happens, nothing can stop me but careful conditioning or the taste of flesh.
I growl and jerk him to his feet. He staggers, swiping out at me with his hands. A mighty toss sends him sprawling into an old television box filled with mildewing clothes. I spring atop him as he rolls to face his enemy, and with a battle cry, bite into his throat. I tear and tear, ripping skin from his chest and his protruding belly. I pull and yank muscle loose.
Suddenly the fog lifts, and I sit atop a ruin of a man.
I lick my lips. He is greasy, inside and out.
A sniffle wakes me. The woman is still here.
There is no going back. The truth is all over her bruised and bleeding face. Her whole body is shuddering with such violence that her one dangling earring jingles. She is sitting, legs akimbo, her one working hand wrapped around the man’s knife.
The contents of her bag are strewn over the ground. Her cell phone is almost ten feet from us — a blessing. If it were within her reach, I might have to kill her too.
We are locked in a standoff that is distinctly in my favor. I watch her stoically over my shoulder. She sits there and shakes. Finally, after many minutes, she jabs the knife toward my perch.
“Is he… dead?”
“Most assuredly,” I reply, though it comes out frightfully lisped around my pointed teeth.
A tiny wheeze releases a torrent of tears and sobs. She hurls the knife away as if it is red hot and hastily begins to pull her shredded clothing down over what naked parts of her it can still cover. Her movements are frantic and uncoordinated. I watch as she smoothes her hair and tries to calm herself.
The corpse beneath me gurgles and squelches, but I cannot get up. If I move at all, I will frighten her into some kind of seizure, and it is very important that she remain calm. The dead body releases an effusion of gases. I grunt at it.
She looks up and swallows. The expression on her face is a kind of agreement.
Slowly I shift my weight until I am crouched over his revolting meat-sack.
“You’re strong,” she whispers.
I tilt my head.
“And fast.”
In the back of my mind I am hoping this is not about to turn into a scene from another terrible movie franchise. I reach down and pinch the corpse’s cheek. His eyes are yellowed and cloudy. Overweight liver is the tastiest, but his is certainly diseased. I begin to feel “put out.” Nothing salvageable.
“Your teeth …” she breathes, “and your claws …”
“Yes, they are sharp,” I say with some annoyance, hoping she will not say the “V” word.
“Are you supposed to be some kind of vampire?”
I growl and lift the corpse’s lips to examine his teeth. Rotting. His fingers are showing signs of clubbing. His heart is also unusable.
“Fuck.” I do not often swear. Most of the four letter words used in such circumstances are not compatible with a mouth of jagged edges, and I end up slicing myself in an obnoxious karmic loop.
“Are you going to—”
“Eat you?” I glare at her sardonically. She is suffering from shock and numbness has taken over. Her response is a dull whimper. “No, I am not going to eat you.”
“Are you going to eat…him?”
I wrinkle my nose.
“Can I…” she waves her uninjured hand at the trail, “Can I go?”
I am tempted to demand she assist me in disposing of the corpse, since her altercation has inconvenienced me completely. I will need to eat a great deal tonight to recover, and I have already rationed my supply to stretch thin. Then I glance her way.
She sits very still. Her tears are completely gone. Her eyes glow in the dull light of a street lamp like two little suns. Her body is limp with fatigue, and I can smell her blood oozing from the cuts and abrasions.
Any anger I feel is replaced by a certainty that even if I ask her to assist, she will not be able. She has just been through something I will never understand, and her life has changed forever. I am strong and experienced enough to handle the body. I do not need her.
“Go.”
“What…the body…what will you do with it?”
I slap its face and stand up, pulling my teeth out of my pocket and snapping them into place. “Throw it away. There is no place in my freezer for that thing.”
She blinks furiously. “You have…a body freezer?”
“Only for halfway decent meat that won’t screw up a recipe. He smoked, drank, and ate himself to death. Not a usable piece on him. He reeks of cancer. I couldn’t even trust his marrow.”
A shudder rolls over her frame like an earthquake, until her mouth erupts like a volcano. She vomits and coughs for several minutes while I watch her, knowing that I am not behaving in a way that is sympathetic as I understand the definition of the word.
When she has coughed up everything and wiped her mouth clean, she looks at me. A sheen of sweat is on her dirty brow, her mouth is slack, but it is her eyes that strike me. There is no horror. There is utter and all-consuming relief.
“You do…eat people?”
“Yes.”
Planting her uninjured palm carefully on the ground, she struggles to stand. Her strength has been eroded by the acid of adrenalin poisoning and her shoes are mangled. “Where will you take him?”
“To my home. I will cut him into pieces.”
She swoons a bit, steadying herself against a drum. “You have a home?”
I cock my head at my chest. “I’m wearing Armani. Which means I have a closet…and an iron.”
“Yes … of course.” She takes a few wobbly steps and looks around forlornly at her scattered possessions. “I’m sorry … I’m a bit out of sorts.”
“Understandable,” I reply with a certain gruffness to my voice. I am considering how out of sorts I will be in an hour after dragging this mass of putrefaction down the road and up into my shop.
“He must have followed me from that place on the corner.”
I am not certain what place she means. There are several, of the box wine and humus variety. I despise humus. There are far more interesting and palette-pleasing ways of preparing legumes. And box wine is a crime against grapes. And boxes.
Forgive me. My mind does tend to get preoccupied, particularly when it comes to food.
“I live in the apartment complex, you know?” She points. “I’m sorry … I’m making a terrible mess of this.”
“You were assaulted by a human and rescued by a people-eating monster.”
She attempts a half-hearted chuckle. “And I just told you where I live.”
“I didn’t notice.” I wipe off some of the oily blood that smells of dirty pennies.
“I guess … I keep your secret, and you don’t eat me? Is that the deal?”
I walk back to my jacket. She watches me don my disguise with detached interest.
“I don’t have secrets,” I say. “I Facebook.”
“Of course you do.” She looks down at the body. “But if you write this, everyone will know what you did.”
“They won’t believe it, and no one will find him.”
“Well, that’s good.” Suddenly, she stops and flaps her arms in frustration. “You’re a god-damned…what are you?”
“A monster,” I say monotonically.
“Well, what kind?”
“The only kind that’s real.”
She seems crestfallen. ”Oh. And do you save ladies all the time? Isn’t that, like, not a part of the um…idiom?”
“This is the first time. Though two days ago I found a lost little girl.”
“Noble of you.” She looks at me suspiciously. “You didn’t eat—”
“No.”
She tucks some hair behind her damaged ear. “Does anyone follow you..online, like fans?”
“I don’t know.”
Her strength is fading quickly, yet she is engaging in “social” behavior. I have seen people in odd circumstances do truly bizarre things, just before they collapsed. I stoop down and begin gathering every item of hers I can find. I shove them all into her bag and press it to her body. She wraps a loose arm around it dully.
“So…just…walk home?”
“Go. Call a friend and have them take you to a hospital. You will probably need stitches.”
She begins to limp past me, but as she looks down and sees the dead man’s leg jutting out, she is reminded of the bizarre events.
“You’re a monster?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
She turns back to the trail, and with tottering progress, makes her way toward whatever destination had been hers before the world shape-shifted around her. I wait until I am sure I hear her enter a building before I hoist the bleeding bulk over my shoulder and carry it up the back stair of my warehouse.
I have now just finished carving the turkey, as it were. I have wrapped the pieces in biodegradable webbing used in gardening and stored them inside a plastic tub in the trunk of my car. Tomorrow I will dispose of them in the woods near the northern border of my territory. Hopefully my nearest non-human neighbor will find them before the state troopers do. A bit like a “get well” casserole, or something.
One of my many records is playing; a lovely German waltz. I have a glass of wine. I am showered and fed. I am calm.
And I am having second thoughts.
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