Catharsis (Book 1)

by D. Andrew Campbell

  My tongue instinctively runs along my teeth checking them for sharpness, but nothing useful registers. My thumbs gently run across my fingertips searching for the point of a nail, but they are all smooth. A growl of anger wells up from inside of me. I won't be denied.

  The image of tearing into her like a horror-movie zombie flashes into my mind, but the brutality of such an attack is sobering. Something tells me that's not how it's done. That it's wrong.

  Then another idea sparks in my brain: a knife. But I don't have one on me (School regulations and all. Who would have thought they would apply in a case like this?). Maybe she does?

  "knife? get me one." My voice has gotten even deeper and thicker than before, and I know my need for the pointy object was draped across every word I uttered.

  She blinks at me for a moment, before responding quietly, "In the kitchen."

  "get it," and I force every bit of my desire for the knife into those words.

  The thought that I will soon be satiated washes over me in a wonderful wave of warmth and calmness. Getting to drink is all I can think about, and I watch her step over to the door of her office and grab the door handle.

  The kitchen? In the cafeteria? But the connection hits me a moment too late. She opens the door to leave and the blast of fluorescent light from the school hallway strikes my unshielded eyes like the Nazi's looking upon the Ark at the end of Raiders.

  The pain shatters my hypnotized stare and becomes the only thing I can think about. The pain consumes my entire being. I howl as my nerve endings rage against the whiteness. Must. Make. It. Stop.

  I leap for the door and slam it shut with every bit of my strength, but in my attempt to solve the problem I overdo it. The wooden door slams into the frame hard enough to splinter it, and a hinge pops next to the wall. It may have been overkill, but at least it's dark for the moment.

  It's enough to allow me to relax and quit screaming. Then I realize I can still hear screaming. From the hallway. It's Nurse Pritchett, and she sounds hysterical. I shake my head, and the memories of the last few moments come back to me. What was I about to do? I'm horrified as I realize I was a single sharp pointy object away from eating the nurse. I wanted to cannibalize another human being!

  This can't be happening. This isn't right. I have to get out of here.

  Grabbing my sunglasses off the chair and putting them back on, I pull my sweatshirt’s hood over my head and cinch the strings as tight as they will go. I have no idea what I'm going to do, but I know I have to get away from here. Right now.

  Looking at the busted oaken door sitting in the blue metal frame, I make a decision. Settling my weight into my legs, I leap straight at the door hitting it with my shoulder. It cracks down the middle, and I erupt through it and land in the hallway. Kids, teachers and administrators are everywhere and they are all staring at me as I stand in the dead quiet of the hallway (Then again who wouldn't stare at the pixie of a teen that just burst through a wooden door. Probably not part of any school’s daily curriculum.). They just stare. A scream pierces the air behind me, and I jump. It's a scream that will haunt me for as long as I live. The scream of a person I just tried to eat!

  Turning toward the emptiest hallway I can see, I take off sprinting, moving faster than any kid has ever moved in that building. Moving faster than probably any kid has ever moved in the history of schools. Running without paying attention to where I am in the building, I make three quick turns down different hallways. I’m moving with so much speed that I'm past kids before they even get a chance to process what's moving towards them.

  The brightness of sunlight finally glints off metal and glass at the end of one hall, and I aim directly for it. Twelve paces away from it, I realize it's not a door but a window. The fuzzy horizon I can barely make out behind it tells me this isn't even a first story window. I must have climbed stairs at some point and not even realized it.

  It's either turn and retreat or jump. That’s not even a choice I care to consider. Three paces from the window I put all my weight into my left foot and push as hard as I can into the air and propel myself towards the glass like a Hispanic cannon ball, making sure to duck my head and pull my knees up to my chest. The window exploding around me as I hit it barely registers as the harsh yellow of the sun bathes over me grabbing my attention.

  Instinctively, I rotate my body in the air so that I hit the ground sneaker-first and immediately roll for several feet before coming up into a run. I have a brief moment of realizing how cool that was and how much of an action movie I just lived through before the fact that I just jumped out of a two story window, unharmed, hits me. Following shortly behind that thought is the memory of trying to eat another human.

  I run, and I don't look back. The life I had before today is gone, and something new is about to begin.

  PART TWO

  -ACCEPTANCE -

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It's been over a day since I've holed myself up in what I'm assuming was at one time a clothing warehouse on the city's South side. I can smell the sharp sting of chemicals in the air that would have been used to clean the fabric. It's pungent, but at least it seems to be the worst of the assaults on my senses I’ve experienced since finding this place.

  The warehouse premises were chained up, and all the doors on the main floor were locked. It doesn't appear many people have been through here in the years since the company left town. In a city as large as ours, this was the best solution I could come up with to keep me and my new appetite away from other people. And that is what I want right now. Distance. I'm scared. Both for who I thought I was and for whatever I'm becoming. And also for other people if I get too close to them. I'm still in shock over the fact that I tried to eat the last person who breached my personal space.

  I've gone over the scene in Nurse Pritchett's office in my head as many times as I can. Nothing changes, and I can't make sense of it. Why would I do that? Why would I want to do that? What's wrong with me?

  It's been over thirty-six hours since I slept, and that isn't by choice. I found a pile of old clothes in a closet and curled up on them late last night to try and relax, but I couldn't. My senses wouldn't let me. Eventually, I was able to cut down light and sound by wrapping the sleeves of a dress around my eyes. To compensate for my body’s loss of those two senses, though, my ability to taste and smell the air only got stronger (Air I can apparently now taste. Food? Not so much. Lucky me.). I wrapped the hem of the dress around my nose and mouth to filter the air, but that only made it hard to breathe and distracted me more.

  Moving my setup into a remote closet in a far corner of the warehouse helped cut down on the sensory distractions, but it only bought me short stints of sleep. Any insects crawling around or rats scurrying by - even if they were on the other side of the building floor at times - would startle me and ruin my reprieve.

  Thinking about the situation, I realized what I needed was some kind of container that I could get into that would block out all light and sound and smells. Like a sensory deprivation tank (I'd read about one once in science class. You float in water and can't see or hear anything. It's supposed to be relaxing, but at the time I read about it it just seemed weird. Now? That's a different story.). But I don't have one of those. Plus water wouldn't be good to sleep in. I need a tank that opens and closes easily and has a pillow and bed in it. I daydream about that while wrapped in the old dress, and then it hits me what type of sleeping device I've just imagined. I shudder and part of me wants to cry, but I don't have the energy for it.

  What I’ve been describing is a coffin.

  With that thought, I give up on sleep and concentrate on my next pressing issue: food. I've been scared to even think about sustenance since realizing what my stomach was lusting after. Eating a person is out of the question, though (Who in their right mind ever thinks they will have to say that phrase? Seriously.).

  Leaving the building to search for real food has crossed my mind, but something tells me that it woul
d be useless. Eating breakfast yesterday morning (Or was it a year ago?) barely dented my ravenous belly's siren call. I know what I need to consume, but I don't want to accept it.

  I know my parents must be worried sick about me. For all they know, I tried to attack the school staff and then fled the scene by jumping out a second story window. I can't imagine what they're thinking right now, but that issue is not at the forefront of my thinking. It's there and it's important and I know that, but I can't bring myself to care. I want to care, but its importance just won't gain hold in my psyche at the moment. It's like storming the beach at Normandy in WWII and realizing you might have left the oven on back home. It's important and could have serious lasting effects, but worrying about it at the moment just won't help things.

  For the most part, though, I've stopped caring about anything. For the last day I've sat in this building and contemplated my own demise. Everything around me has become more flat, uninteresting and unrelatable. The only thing that perks my interest at all is satiating my hunger. And then I think about how that might happen. I remember yesterday morning and go back to the flat affect and not caring, and the cycle begins again.

  With my back against the wall of the closet, I look out through the open hole and watch a large rat scurry from pillar to pillar on the warehouse floor. I focus on it and watch it move. It isn't exactly exciting, but it's a distraction from what I’ve been thinking about. The furry creature moves quickly, and its nose moves constantly taking in its surroundings and any immediate dangers they might contain. The rat is larger than most, I imagine (My rat experience doesn't go much beyond pet stores, and most of those are only small white ones that look like slightly 'roided up mice.), with a body that is nearly the size of my forearm. A body that size would have to limit any predators it might have.

  I continue to watch its darting movements and smile.

  How difficult would it be to catch a creature like that? I wonder. To sneak up on it without it knowing you were there. How much of a challenge would that be? That train of thought gives me my first solid distraction since I broke into this building and secluded myself from humanity. I'm going to hunt a rat, I think.

  As soon as I come up with the idea, something inside of me relaxes and I feel a faint flush of - I pause and relish the sensation as it flows through me -something I haven't felt in a while. Or ever. Happiness? Excitement? Purpose? Whatever it is, I know that going after this rat is a good thing. It's something I need. It’s a necessary step that will be taken.

  The scratchy woolen dress falls away from me as I move into a crouch and go down onto my hands and toes. I move forward a few paces in the direction of my quarry, and then stop and open my mouth and breath through my nose. There are other rats around me; I would guess at more than a dozen judging from the intermingling of smells, but I don't want them. I want the rat I've marked for death. He's the one I have chosen. The others are ignored for now.

  How do I approach the animal without it seeing me with its peripheral vision? I ask myself. Currently I am to its side and about forty yards away. There’s nothing between us aside from an open exposed floor, but still it’s been ignoring me so far. Once I start moving, though, I’m sure I’ll be on its predator-radar.

  An old movie I saw pops into my mind, and I wonder if something that works against Nazi guards will also work with a foot long rodent. It's worth a try.

  My hand moves along the floor in front of me until I find a decent chunk of cement or rock - I don't look down to check which one - that will fit my need. Part of me realizes that I could probably hurl this and hit the rat where it squats and kill it instantly, but that is not what I want. I want to hunt. I need to track it and take it down with my hands.

  I watch it until it starts to move again and its attention is on the floor in front of its whiskers, and then I whip the chunk of rock up and across the warehouse in one smooth motion. The rock crashes against the wall on the far side of the building (Over a hundred yards away! I paced the distance later out of curiosity.), and the rat instantly drops flat to the ground and turns in that direction. I shoot up and forward as soon as I see the rock hit the far wall in anticipation of the rat turning its head.

  My feet make no noise as I sprint towards my furry objective, and I close the distance in mere seconds. Ten yards from him, I sense the distraction has faded and he begins to turn back towards me. Leaping into the air and stretching out my right arm, I pluck the rat from the ground just as my neck and shoulder land where he had been a moment before. As I tuck into a roll, I do my best to disperse my momentum and break my fall. After sliding a few feet, I curl back into my crouch with my prize clutched in my hand.

  The rat is momentarily stunned by the speed of my pounce (I can't really blame him on that.), and it just stares up into my eyes...well, my sunglasses. His chest moves against my palm, and I pick up the slight thump of his speedy heart with the tip of a finger. The beast is massive for a rat, and I'm impressed by his size. I smile at it and breathe deeply to relax myself after the sudden exertion. It was fun but exhausting.

  When I breathe in, I smell it again. The aroma from the nurse's office. The deliciousness that I couldn't resist. But there aren't any people around. There's nobody here to spark the horrifying side of me into flaring up. Why can I smell it? It isn't as powerful as it was yesterday, but it's still there.

  The rat wiggles in my grip, and its struggles let me know that it is over being shocked by my attack. I move to let it go - my game with it is over - and then I stop. The smell is coming from the creature in my hand. Amazed, I lift it up to get a better look, and as I do it tries to bite my nose.

  relax, I tell it while infusing my voice with the odd deepness I remember from the nurse's office. I don't want to deal with a nipping, flea-carrying vermin right now. The body goes limp in my hand, and its little mouth opens and begins panting.

  How did that happen, I wonder. Did the rat just listen to me? No way.

  Lifting the rat closer to my face, I inhale deeply. The aroma of deliciousness that attracted me yesterday clings to it. Desire rips through me as my stomach clenches into an intestinal fist. I'm momentarily aware of my mouth filling with saliva and my breathing accelerating as my vision begins to get splotchy.

  Raising the rat to my mouth, my brain roils at the idea of what I'm about to do. I don't want to eat something as disgusting as a rat, but my stomach is tired of getting outvoted and shuts down any conduit my conscious has to my arms and mouth. I close my eyes as I realize what I am about to do.

  No, I think. I don't want this.

  But I do. I know I do, and my teeth sink into the fur.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I can taste the blood, and it's delicious. After not tasting any food for days, the saltiness of the liquid pouring forth from the rat is a sublime relief. I had feared I'd never taste anything again, and I was wrong. I can taste food, and it's wonderful. Unfortunately, that particular food happens to be coming from the vermin that I've just sunk my teeth into.

  Closing my eyes, I relish the flavor and do my best to not think about where my pleasure is coming from. I don't want to be drinking the blood of another living creature, but I can't deny the satisfaction it is bringing to my raging stomach.

  I continue my macabre act with my furry dinner until his little heart ceases pumping. There is wetness around my mouth, and I gingerly wipe the back of my hand across my lips fearing a smear of red gore will appear. My hand comes away damp with saliva but clear of blood. I didn't spill a drop during my feast.

  Laying the limp body down onto the floor of the warehouse, I sit back and consider what I've done. I have no further desire to eat the body of the rat, and that's a relief to me. I didn't want to have to skin the creature, but I feared my impulses would drive me to consume it whole. Now that the poor thing is deflated like an old birthday balloon, my stomach has no more pull towards it. At the same time, I'm not fully satiated, either. I need more. That rat was just the beginning.
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br />   My nausea that had been wracking me for the last day has been quelled by the blood, and the fuzziness that had clouded my brain is beginning to recede. This is the best I've felt since this horrible ordeal began. I stand and stretch, and energy flows through me that I haven't felt in days. It’s a wonderful sensation.

  But it's not enough. My body is already burning off what little energy I gleaned from the rat. I've been running on empty for over a day, and the little bit of sustenance the rat gave me is only enough to wake me up. I need more.

  Crouching back down, I close my eyes and open my other senses to the room. I want - no, I need - another rat. Another living creature will become my prey. My early attack and feasting created enough noise to scare off any other rats, so my next target will be more difficult. But it won't be impossible. I have the distinct feeling that very little will ever be impossible for me after today.

  I spend the afternoon hunting as many rats as I'm able to track down. Each one I devour makes me stronger and faster, thus making the hunt for the next one even easier. The pile of bodies reaches a dozen before I take a break for the evening. I feel strong and healthy and fit and better than I've felt in a long time. The only part of me not feeling great is my conscious which is bothered by my method for achieving this sublime feeling. The corpses of the rats (Are they corpses or just bodies? Can animals be corpses? Where is the justification line?) serve as a stark reminder of what I currently am.

  That thought gives me pause. What am I?

  Looking back over the past forty-eight hours leaves me with more questions than answers, and that bothers me. The strength and vitality coursing through me are tremendous, and everything in me yearns to test what I can do. But at the same time, twelve rats had to die in order for me to feel this way. I've never thought of myself as a "tree hugger", but those deflated furry balloons of guilt on the ground in front of me are haunting. That's not right. Getting invigorating sustenance from the lifeblood of another living creature is not how man was created.