Me and My Concrete Box

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Thought is a precious resource: you need to ration it in order to survive here.

Her words echo in your mind unobstructed: there's no other sounds to distract you in your cell. She's wrong, of course. That was the first time you'd done that. You've probably had chances with other doctors, but you never felt the need to. She's different, of course.

You don't continue this train of thought. Thought is a precious resource: you need to ration it in order to survive here. You've found that it's better to take the actually interesting thoughts in small chunks, interspersed with idle musings. Watering down your liquor, so to speak. Between your visiting hours, there's simply nothing to do here but think. There's no light or sound, certainly no furnishings. You are in a concrete box.

You don't know exactly how thick the walls are, but they're thick enough. You used to try to break through them constantly, chipping away at them and your claws in kind. Your claws regrow, but so do the walls. They just pump sedatives in every so often and when you wake up it's all repaired. You don't attack the cell as often anymore. You heard from a doctor that the main reason they're giving you people to talk to is to save on the concrete bill, so you figure it's in your best interest to not rock the boat. You still want to, though. The concrete is thick, but not soundproof. You're more than capable of hearing footsteps and voices beyond it, and they remind you of how hungry you are. Oh, you thought about it.

Your hunger is ever-present in your mind. It's a sharp background noise behind your thoughts that periodically stabs into conscious awareness. You can only distract yourself so long before you inevitably remind yourself of it. It's a uniquely terrible experience. The point stabs in and leaves behind a great chasm. Your stomach is empty space. All of your thoughts are accented by a black downward-ness. It feels like your mind is being pulled under the surface of a vast, dark ocean. You're painfully conscious of how the muscle and sinew moves beneath your skin. Your saliva thickens. Your dorsal spines flex desperately. You could go on like this for a long, long time; the great hole in you precipitates a thousand minor aches and pains across your body. You need to stop thinking about it. Unfortunately, you can't just will yourself to stop thinking about something. You need to naturally segue out of it until you eventually forget that you're doing it. For that purpose, you decide to reminisce.

You've been sick again recently. The pit in your stomach is back, almost as bad as it was the first time. This time, however, it has friends. The headache has been boring into your skull for about a week. It's made focusing even harder, and painkillers seem to have no effect. The real problem, however, began yesterday: The itching. Since it started, you've been absentmindedly scratching at your arms whenever you aren't paying enough attention to stop yourself. Your arms are already raw and bloody, and the itching is only getting worse. While you were showering this morning, you caught yourself clawing at your back, gouging your shoulders. Your mother doesn't seem to have noticed yet, but at this rate she has to soon. You're wearing far more clothing today than you'd like in an attempt to prevent this. Right now, though, she can't see you. You're in the woods again, near where you took Amira's life. The shade of the trees is soothing: your headache has made the lights of your house feel too bright lately. You're here because you've been feeling an inexplicable impulse to find a body of water, and the stream you washed yourself off in is the best candidate you could identify. When you get there, your clothes come off automatically. You're not really thinking about what you're doing. The combined sensations of hunger, headache, and itching assailing you make it impossible to do anything other than run on instinct.

You dip your toes into the stream. It's pretty cold, but you don't really care. The water doesn't relieve the itching, but it still feels like a blessing. You hastily put as much of your body as possible in the stream, gasping at the temperature shock. The itching actually starts to get worse, but you somehow sense that staying in the water is necessary. Your hands wander, and soon the water has tiny rivulets of red leading away from you. Your nails feel wrong and your fingers hurt like hell. Your skin parts under them with too little resistance. You force yourself to stop scratching with one of your hands long enough to take a look. You feel sick. The nails are gone or almost detached, but under them you see much larger, sharper claws. You pull away at the skin of your ring finger and it comes off easily, revealing even more of the claw. You attempt to do the same for your pinky, but when you pull, the finger snaps backwards. You scream, but it doesn't actually hurt that much, relatively speaking. It's more the horror and surprise that got you. You keep going, revealing the rest of your claws and snapping off your other pinky. What the fuck are you doing? Even in your fugue state you start to recognize that something impossible is happening. Once your claws are free of their packaging, you go back to your arms. Much of the water is stained red, but the current keeps carrying the blood away. You should probably be unconscious after losing this much blood. Your arms are soon stripped bare. You appreciate your new skin for the first time. So red. Next is the legs. They go as easily as the arms. You run your claws over your new thighs. Slimy from the ordeal, but pleasingly cold to the touch. The itching isn't nearly as bad anymore, but you're not done yet. You tear open your chest, leaving wings of slimy red. Your belly goes, and your entrails with it. You intuitively understand that you don't need them anymore. Your crotch is soon smooth, which delights you even in these circumstances.

You look up at the sky on a whim. Your eyes burn and you scream in a warped voice. The light is oppressive. You need to get rid of it. Before you think about it, your claws dig into your face, tearing away the offending organs. They keep going, tearing off your nose, tongue, ears. Your jaw snaps in half as you rip it out. Eventually there's nothing left of your original head. You don't need it anymore. Your long teeth gleam in the light you can no longer see as you clack them together testingly. Your dorsal spines rise erect for the first time, taking in the sensations. It's you.

You would cry if you had eyes. It's really you. You feel an odd sense of relief. Like a warm drink in your stomach, it wells up inside you. You place the sensation, something you've occasionally felt previously. Euphoria. You have an answer to what you are. You're in a body that feels right. You're so happy, so relieved. Then your new hearing asserts itself. You want to cry even more. You can hear so much now. The babble of the stream was already audible, but now you can hear the contours of the rocks that make up its bed. Birdsong is accompanied by tiny heartbeats. The rustle of the wind is made up of a million individual leaves. As you soak in the beauty, you hear footsteps. Human footsteps.

Instinct kicks in again. You need to hide for a moment, then this should be easy. You scan for rocks or bushes, but nothing's big enough for you. Your skin looks near enough to meat, though. You curl up, flattening your spines and hiding your teeth and claws. The obscuring water and the gory scene around you should make this plenty convincing. The footsteps get closer. You hold still. A gasp, then the footsteps rapidly approach. You wait a heartbeat and lunge. Your prey is only beginning to shout as you land on top of it. Bones crack against the ground. Your new teeth crush the skull easily, letting you eat your meal in peace and quiet. That was the most fun you've ever had. The rush is momentary, but it still leaves you feeling fulfilled in a way you haven't felt before. You want to do it again. You want to draw it out more, too. You want to really savor it.

You stop there. Rationing is still in effect. You have two gaps a day: there's one you were last told to be 4 hours, between the morning and evening shifts. Then there's a whole 10 hours at night. Unfortunately, your kind only sleeps a few hours a day, and you've never been able to force yourself to sleep longer. And so you've developed a strategy. You eventually run out of thoughts after a couple hours, at which point you go to sleep. You wake up with a couple more hours left before the morning shift, but you have a somewhat refreshed bank of distractions. As long as you ration properly you can safely orbit the hole in you without falling in.

Back to her, then. She's totally in love, that much is obvious. Normally you'd worry about eating her. But she's safely far away from you, through a microphone. Wait, shit. You might've fucked it up with her. You scared her and now she might not come back. The one girl that's into you that you're not gonna be able to eat. Why'd you try to blackmail her? This is going to blow up in your face and you'll deserve it. Oh god. She'll get revenge and it'll be over for you. She's going to leave you, or she's going to cut off your visiting hours and everyone will leave you. You can't be alone like this. You decide that's enough on that topic for now. Keep up rationing. Move on.

Your quarry is nervous. Fast heartbeat, jittery movements. It makes sense: the whole town knows there's a monster in the forest now. The cops can't find any culprit and the murders are too quick and brutal for a normal human. Thus, nobody goes out at night if they can avoid it. You're not entirely nocturnal, but it's much easier to hunt at night. Your prey has figured that much out. However, this one stayed out too late and now it's getting dark as it comes home. You're crouching on the house's roof, just out of view. The shaky animal below you is almost to the door. You breathe out heavily, practically right into its mouth. It seems a little unsteady now, heartbeat slowing. The hook is baited. You wait for it to go into the house, then carefully clamber off the roof and into the forest nearby. Now you just wait.

This kind of hunting is quite fun. You don't get the intense rush of the chasedown, but you get a pleasant anticipatory sensation, and eventually you're bound to get what you're waiting for. You're lying curled up near the house, mouth pointing towards it, minute concentrations of your breath drifting in. It should only take a few hours for the attraction to overcome the fear. Then the confused meat stumbles out of the house and towards your jaws. You were never taught how your breath works, but you have an intuitive understanding. It causes memory loss, confusion, and a subconscious attraction to sources of it, like you.

You almost drift off to sleep while waiting; it takes a bit longer than usual. But you do hear the door open, and then a nervous voice asks "Who's there?". Footsteps approach unsteadily, hands gripping something heavy by the sound of it. A makeshift weapon, likely. You call back, in your best distressed voice. "Help! Over here! Please!" The footsteps accelerate. As it gets closer, you catch a faint whiff of something unpleasant. It's within reach. You wait until you can't take it anymore and leap. As you do, you're deafened by a terrible sound. A sharp pain spreads through your shoulder but your momentum still carries through and you're on top of your prey and you bite down with a satisfying crunch.

You have to run away immediately to avoid anyone drawn to investigate the gunshot. You carry your meal in your teeth and clutch your wounded shoulder with a claw. After you make it some distance away, you sit down to eat. The pain is distracting, but eating is just as fulfilling as always. You'll never get tired of this. Bite, rip, chew. The sweet sounds of meat tearing and bone cracking fill your ears. You hope you can keep doing this forever. You're already looking forward to next time. What a blessing this is.

You cycle through distractions for another few hours, circling the pit. You snap away from the topic of Melanie faster each time. But soon enough you're left with a choice. Your other options are exhausted, so it's between Melanie and the pit. You decide to go to sleep.

You dream of meat. It's the only thing you ever dream about in here. Sinew splitting beneath your teeth. Blood soaking into the forest floor. Not much to it. When you wake up, you take stock of your thoughts. Your wine cellar is looking rather bare. There's a few idle musings, but you run through them quickly. It's her or the pit.

She wasn't afraid of you. The instant you decide to think about her, that thought cuts through you. She actually wasn't afraid of you. But now she is, has to be. Do you want her to be afraid of you? You think that she should be. You think that she's right to fear the monster in the woods. But do you want that? You don't know. You desperately wish to escape this topic, but it's the only thing keeping you above the pit. Nothing else to do. She's going to ruin everything now. Scared people lash out. Bullets fly in dying moments. She's scared and she's going to hurt you. You're scared. Your fear chokes you, sending you to the floor. You need to get away, or kill her, or kill everyone else. Your claws meet concrete without thinking. Get out of here. Get to her. Fix this.

You stop when you realize it's got to be almost time for the morning shift. Your claws are ragged and bloody, and deep gouges line the frame of the massive metal door. Your fear turns to paralysis. She's not going to be there, or she's going to say goodbye, or nobody's going to be there, or you'll be alone.

The sound of the door opening, and your anticipation reaches a crescendo. It's her. What will she say?

…

Ha.