by Wild (lit)
I stepped out of the bus and started walking. It was dark now and the street lights had trouble penetrating the fog and the darkness.
I took a shortcut from Market Street through to Mission Street and regretted it after taking the first ten steps. I was in an unlit alley. The alley was narrow and surrounded by high buildings on either side. I had taken it many times during the day and it had never bothered me, but it was quite different at night. I could see the light at the end of it where it was connecting to Mission Street, but I could also see the shadow of a person coming toward me.
Something about the person’s demeanor told me I would not want to be too close to him. I turned and started to run back to where I had come from, promptly tripping over an unevenness on the sidewalk. I fell and hit my knees. It was painful, but I had to get up. The footsteps came closer and closer. Their sound was menacing in my ears.
“Want some company?” I heard a male voice behind me and shrieked. I started running, but before I could make two steps his hand grabbed me.
He slammed me against the wall before turning me around. He was Caucasian and in his thirties or forties. I could smell the alcohol on his breath. His grin was evil. While he held me against the wall his free hand tried to rip my jeans open. For once I was glad I wore my tightest pair.
“Help!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. I struggled, beat at him with my firsts, but it felt like my hands just bounced off him without doing any damage. I tried to pull free, but he was strong and towered over me. I was no match for him.
He was still trying to pry my jeans off, but seemed to become more and more frustrated when he realized he didn’t make any progress. Maybe he would just let go. I wasn’t that lucky. He got angrier and angrier.
“You little bitch!”
Suddenly he pulled out a knife.
“Somebody, help me!”
I remembered the self-defense class I had taken in my freshman year at college and frantically tried to remember any of the moves they had taught us. I wore trainers so the defensive move I remembered about stepping firmly onto the top of his foot would have had no impact – high heels would have hurt him, not trainers. Wasn’t there anything else I could remember?
Kick him in the balls!
I jerked my leg up to kick my knee into his groin, but too late noticed his hand holding the knife. It interfered and cut my motion short of reaching its intended goal. The knife drove deep into my thigh.
I had never felt a more intense kind of pain before. My stomach turned and my body twisted in pain as I found my voice again and screamed in agony. He pulled his knife out of my leg, twisting it as he did so and lunged at me again. In mid-movement he abruptly pulled back.
He stared at me in shock, and then I saw them: the claws which had seized him from behind. Before I fell, I saw a set of amber colored eyes behind my assailant. As I tried to hold the gaze of those eyes I felt a strange familiarity.
Take me home.
Suddenly I knew I would be safe.
2. Vince’s Dilemma
The girl stared right at me. As her eyes locked with mine I discovered no fear in them. I barely felt her attacker struggle in my grip. I was too fascinated with her, unable to understand why she did not erupt in fear when she had clearly seen my amber eyes and observed my claws around the man.
She was undoubtedly going into shock. Then, as if in slow motion, I noticed her knees buckle. With one swift move I flung the man into the wall and heard several of his ribs crack. While he tumbled to the floor I leapt toward the girl and caught her in my arms before she hit the sidewalk.
Glancing at the man on the ground I verified that he was knocked out cold for a while before turning my attention to the girl in my arms. She was unconscious, her thigh bleeding profusely. I looked at her angelic face.
What I did then was contrary to all the rules I had put in place for myself. Even later I could not explain why I did it. Maybe it was because she had seen my eyes and not shown any fear. Maybe it was just fate. Whatever the reason, I would perhaps never know for sure, I knew that I didn’t want to leave her there. The right thing would have been to bring her to the main road, call 9-1-1 and make sure she was picked up by an ambulance. Even though she was injured, my experience as a physician told me she would make it if she got taken care of within the next hour.
It was irresponsible of me to not follow my modus operandi. I had saved many women from their attackers and always made sure the police or an ambulance would take care of them. I had always been cautious so they couldn’t see my face and would never know what had saved them.
It was different with this girl. Had I reacted as usual she would not even have seen me nor had a chance to stare into my eyes, but as soon as I had gotten a glimpse of her, something had made me hesitate for a fraction of a second. In that fraction her eyes had locked with mine and I had felt unable to tear myself away. All I had been able to think of was to take her home. It was in my head: Take me home.
I looked down at her wound again and knew I had to make a decision. So I ran. In the storefronts I passed I saw my reflection. While my torso had remained that of a man, my hands had turned into sharp claws, my shoulders and neck had bulked up to give me more strength and my jaw had widened to accommodate the large razor-sharp teeth of a wild animal. My eyes glowed amber, a sign that the beast within me was in control. I was a frightening sight to behold.
I kept her as still in my arms as I could as we crossed Market Street and entered the Financial District. Only minutes later we arrived at my front door.
The reason I had chosen to live in the Financial District was the fact that it wasn’t a residential area. Very few people actually lived there, and those who resided in one of the high rises didn’t spend much time outside. It made it easier for me to remain unnoticed when I entered and exited my place at night. Not having nosy neighbors was essential to living anonymously.
During the day the streets teamed with office workers who didn’t take much notice of anybody. They just wanted to get to work. It was the ideal place to live beneath society’s radar.
I had no direct neighbors. The building was in an alley off Sansome Street. Its entrance was easily overlooked. There was no mailbox, no address, no door bell. For all anybody knew it was a fire exit for one of the office buildings on Sansome Street. Even though the office building behind my little warehouse was much taller, it had no windows on this side, which afforded me the privacy I craved.
The warehouse I had turned into my home was of red brick construction, originally unreinforced. However, in the first year after I had bought it, I had retrofitted the place so it would withstand the frequent earthquakes the Bay Area had to deal with. Steel bracing and reinforcement as well as sheer walling would make it possible for the building to at least withstand a 7.5 magnitude earthquake. The ’89 earthquake which had rocked San Francisco and lead to a collapse of a portion of the double-decker Bay Bridge, had not caused any damage to my home.
Instead of taking her upstairs, I walked through the door underneath the stairs. The motion sensors detected me and all lights turned on instantly. I stood in an enormous room equipped as a laboratory. Stainless steel benches, industrial size refrigerators and freezers, microscopes, centrifuges, I had it all. I was better equipped than many commercial labs.
Gently I placed her onto the surgery bench and noticed with relief that my claws had turned back into hands. I took off my bloody shirt and grabbed one of the lab coats hanging over a chair and put it on.
I wanted to look as normal as possible when she woke up so I wouldn’t frighten her.
So I wouldn’t frighten her?
What the hell was I thinking? I had taken her and brought her into my lab. I was alone with her and she had no means of escaping. I was a stranger to her, and I was a man, a natural predator. What made me think she wouldn’t be frightened?
I’m a doctor.
What? My lab coat would make her fear me any less? I shook my head.
> Vince, what are you doing?
I looked at her again and reminded myself that I had to take care of her wound first and deal with the consequences later.
I took off her trainers first then freed her from the tangled strap of her handbag. Her jeans were tight and the only way to get them off without moving her excessively was to cut them off. As I sliced through the fabric inch by inch I revealed more and more of her beautifully formed legs. Her skin was smooth, and every time I touched it while cutting her jeans, it felt like a lightening bolt went through my body. Nobody else had ever had an effect like this on me. I had carried other women to safety and never felt anything other than making sure they were safe. I had never been tempted to take any one of them with me. But when I looked at this girl, all I could think of was to touch her, to kiss her, to make love to her, to make her mine.
I had to start thinking of something else. I threw the bloody shreds of denim onto the bench behind me and disinfected my hands to examine her stab wound. It was deep, but had not hit any main arteries. My time during my residency at San Francisco General Hospital had given me lots of opportunities to deal with knife wounds. It wouldn’t be hard to patch her up and stop the loss of blood. She would be okay.
I had everything I needed and started by cleaning her wound. I put pressure on it to stop the bleeding. I needed to give her a small amount of morphine for the pain before I would be able to suture the wound. As I rolled up the sleeve of her sweater and turned the inside of her arm toward me, I noticed a band aid, therefore I decided to use the other arm instead.
I tapped her skin and found a vein instantly. While I administered the morphine intravenously I felt her soft skin again. With the back of my free hand I touched her cheeks, telling myself I needed to check her temperature, when I knew her temperature wasn’t elevated. Her skin was soft as a baby’s and just touching her face made my body tingle.
I felt like a stalker as I gazed at her defenseless body and knew that at this moment I wasn’t any better than the man who had assaulted her in the alley. The only thing which had changed was geography. She was in my house, or should I say my lair, where she had even less of a chance of escaping than in the alley. I could keep her here forever, and she wouldn’t be able to get away. She would be trapped.
My thoughts about what I wanted weren’t any less evil than her attacker’s, with one difference: I wanted her to want me too. I wanted her to respond to me with the same desire I had for her, to open up her arms and wrap them around me eagerly, to feel her press her body against me willingly, to ask me to take her. Looking at her slender legs I wondered what it would feel like if she wrapped them around my hips and pulled me toward the center of her body, inviting me.
As I began suturing her wound, I was disgusted by my thoughts. The fact that I had to handle her soft skin while I worked on her injury didn’t help me eliminate my inappropriate thoughts in the slightest.
My animal instincts told me to take her and make her mine, while my human instincts battled against the notion of taken a woman by force. I still had enough humanity left in me, but the longer I felt her half-naked body so close to mine the greater the risk was that my human instincts would lose the battle.
I couldn’t allow this to happen. In all the years I had lived in seclusion hidden away from society, and despite the loneliness I felt, I had never desired a woman nor had I felt any particular temptations. I had learned to control most of my emotions and only unleash my animal self onto the evil in the City. I knew it didn’t make me good, but I hoped in some small way some innocents would be spared because of my actions.
I put all instruments I had used into the sink to sterilize them later. As I turned back to her I could feel her stir. I was by her side at once. She didn’t open her eyes. Tenderly I slipped my arms underneath her and lifted her up. She shivered slightly.
Stupid me! She was cold. I had laid her onto the cold surgery bench without at least covering her body partially with a blanket to keep her warm. It was inexcusable. I whisked her upstairs.
Most of the upper floor was just one large space where I had let the furniture define the use. The red brick walls were exposed in many portions of the building, but they were interrupted by steel braces and some strategically placed sheer walls. I had tried to make it look as appealing as possible without compromising safety.
Toward one end was what I would have called my bedroom, if it wasn’t for the fact that I rarely slept. Rather, I rested without ever really letting my senses shut off. The king size bed was comfortable even though I would have felt just as comfortable on the floor which was concrete. Concrete was a bad conductor of sound which suited my purpose. I had used a system of cubes locked into each other to create a room divider to give the illusion of privacy and separation in the bedroom.
In the living room which occupied the center of the warehouse one wall was equipped with every electronic gadget available on the market. An oversized couch occupied the middle of the room together with a coffee table and a comfortable armchair. A large TV was mounted on the other wall. The kitchen was at the back of the building. It was framed by a bar. There was a door which led into the bathroom. It was the only room on this floor which had a door.
The most remarkable thing about my place was probably the fact that besides the huge skylight above the living area it had no windows whatsoever. It was what I had wanted: complete privacy. Nobody could see into the skylight – it was protected by windowless buildings on all sides. In order to make up for the lack of ventilation I had an elaborate air conditioning system in place, and the kitchen and bathroom were equipped with industrial strength vents which would suck out any excess moisture and smells.
I laid her into my bed being careful not to put any pressure on her leg. The down comforter I covered her with would keep her warm. She would be safe for now, as safe as she could be in the home of a stranger. I looked at the clock beside the bed. It wasn’t even midnight yet and I settled in for a long night of waiting.
I went to my wall of electronics and switched on the monitors: surveillance. While glancing at one of the monitors which gave me a live picture of what was happening outside on the street, I reset the digital recorder to the time when I had left earlier. I pressed play and went through it in fast forward mode.
Early in the evening there had been some activity: the odd office worker leaving the office late, an occasional homeless guy, some Chinese youngsters taking a shortcut through the area to get to Chinatown just a few blocks away, some cars and taxis passing by. A tourist couple looked lost. They were obviously trying to find their way back to their hotel after a night out in North Beach. I saw nothing out of the ordinary. I reached the point on the tape where I had come home and stopped it.
Nobody apart from me had ever set foot into my home. Technically she hadn’t either, since I had carried her in, but that was beside the point. She was here, and I had no idea what I should say to her when she woke up. How would I explain myself?
She would scream, no doubt. Nobody would hear her, but she was unaware of that. The place was soundproof as long as the blinds to the skylight were closed.
There was nothing I could possibly say which wouldn’t frighten her. She was alone in the home of a strange man. She was injured and wouldn’t be able to walk much without assistance for a few days.
What the hell had I done? I couldn’t think clearly. I needed to get my strength back.
I strode to the fridge and opened it. It was filled mostly with steaks. I took out two 18-ounce rib-eyes and threw them onto the butcher block. The industrial gas-fired grill was right next to it. The burner came on in an instant and it wasn’t long before the grill was hot. I flipped the steaks onto it, gave it fifteen seconds on each side and was done with it.
I didn’t need tongs to take them off the hot grill. My hands took the heat easily. I wouldn’t even have needed to put the steaks onto the grill, but again, I liked things to resemble the time when I was still different. I had
always liked my steaks rare, but now I ate them barely seared on the outside.
I tasted the blood as I bit into the first one and devoured it in only a few bites. I took more time for the second one and tried to savor it, but alas I didn’t have the patience. No animal did as long as it was hungry. After the second steak my immediate hunger was satisfied. I hadn’t even sat down to eat at the bar. The hunger was often too great to take the time to sit.
As the food settled in my stomach I felt my strength coming back. It was the same after every night of roaming the streets. Why did I do it? I never really knew. Maybe it was penance for my sins. Maybe I just wanted to feel that I had some purpose in my life. I wanted to prove to myself that there was good left in me, that I hadn’t completely turned into an animal.
I tried to hold on to my humanity, because I still had hope, that one day I would be fully human again. In the meantime I did what I had to do. I worked on my research by day and tried to help innocents by night. I didn’t pretend to be one of the good guys, as much as I wanted to. I tried to fight the bad in me and others as much as I could with varying degrees of success.
My thoughts went back to the girl in my bed. She shouldn’t be here with me. It was too dangerous for her. I could still take her to a hospital now, drop her off at the emergency room entrance without being seen and she wouldn’t be the wiser. She would be confused as to how she had gotten there, but she would be safe, safer than here.
I looked over to the bed and the feeling of her lying under the same covers under which I had spent so many sleepless nights, gave me an unreal sense of closeness to her, as if she belonged to me. I fantasized she would wake up in my arms and not be frightened. What was it about this girl that made her so special, that made me want her?
She was quite pretty, but not conventionally beautiful. There was nothing extraordinary about her, only the fact that when she had looked into my eyes the only thought in my mind had been to take her home.