..dead or alive..
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This, this is weird. I'm... not someone that anyone would expect to read anything from. I keep to the fringes. Really... I am... or was, a very, very bad person. Not outwardly, not to the people that have my acquaintance. To them I was probably quiet, boring. Exactly how I wanted it to be. No undue attention.
It's because I'm, well, was, sick. I had a sick hatred in me. A terrible monstrous thing. I did... bad, bad things. And then it seemed like the world caught up with me.
I know I'm being, what's it called... cryptic. Mysterious or something. I'll explain it all. Before whatever is going to happen to me happens. Don't know what this urge is, to relate it. I don't think it matters. Maybe if I do, make it a story, write it down, it will really become real, and I might not wake up. Because I don't want to wake up.
Right now though, it's bad. The world, it might be the end for it. At least for humans. I'll tell it short, and I'll be honest with you, how it all felt. Maybe you'll get some, what's it called... insight.
So, as you probably know, lots of people were getting sick recently. With that Mister Crowley virus, the street name people called it. I heard it was because of something NATO had done to the Haitians and it was like, a curse or some shit. Which sounds like a load. Who knows the real reason.
But the symptoms, they were as bad as you can think. It went straight for the brain and made people ravenous, like cannibals. After a while their bodies were like, rotting. News anchors learned a new word, 'necrotizing'. Lots of bleeding from pores in the latest stages. Their minds were totally gone. Like, well, zombies I guess. Dumb as that sounds, like a fucking horror movie or something. And it just kept getting worse. Blood-born and transmitted through... biting. And scratching, clawing. If their blood got into your eyes, you were one of them and nothing could stop it.
Lots of people committed suicide before that could happen. Many didn't even have Mister Crowley, they just panicked and offed themselves before it happened.
And for me, well. I told you I was a bad person. What I meant by that is that before all this went down, I killed people. Lots of them. Ever heard of The Bloody Hand Man? Yeah... that's me. 62 people across all 50 states. More than any other 'serial killer' ever did, far as I know. The thing inside me did it though. Not me. The rational part of me was disgusted by it. But the link to that is the feeling I get when I do it. It feels so goddamned good. So goddamned good. And once it starts it can never stop. Ever. I don't want it to. I was glad for that awful, hungering thing in me. It made me do things I couldn't stop, and it made me feel so so so goddamned good.
So, naturally, I wanted to kill some of these things. See if it gave me the same feeling. I thought, maybe, there could be some, what do you call it, 'redemption'. Because even though it felt really, really goddamned good to kill, it also felt really, really bad. All I can think about after is my mom. How sad she'd be if she'd ever known. What a bad, bad boy I was to her.
I thought if I killed these things instead, and it felt good too, then I could stop killing the others. So I got it in my head to go hunting.
I knew that the first problem would be the blood. See, when I did the others in, the blood was a big, big part of it. I loved the feeling of tiny spatters of it flecking against me, like, well... this is a little embarrassing to admit. But it was like something was orgasming on me. Their screams, the convulsing... you can see the similarities. And, you can see the problem. I didn't want any of these things' blood on me. And, of course there's the other problem with it, but I'll get to that in a minute.
By the way, I'm sorry if this is all really gross to you. I'm trying to keep the details to a minimum, but the whole thing might seem disgusting, so some parts can't be omitted. I'm sorry about that.
Anyway, I'm getting to it.
I made a special suit. Around the time I got this idea most of the stores were just opened up, windows busted out, looters running around. It was pretty dangerous to be out even in the day, so I carried some big gun around I pilfered from a dead military guy I'd found (I didn't kill him). Most non-sick people avoided me with that thing. I didn't even know if it was loaded or not.
So I checked out some sporting goods stores and found some wetsuits. They were skin tight and would cover everything but my face. It made me think of my mom; she was nuts for diving. When I was a kid she'd let me put on her flippers and flip-flop around the house, pretending to be the Creature from the Black Lagoon. She was really sweet to me. I miss her.
I remember pictures of her in Belize with my stepdad, all suntanned and beautiful. She was really, really happy. Before... well, that's not part of this story, but before she got really sad.
Anyway, I also got a gas-mask from the store too. I fitted everything together so it was one suit, with the gas-mask on my head and a sort of apron made of mosquito netting around the mask. It was fairly lighter than I thought it would be. I stood in the shower (couldn't believe the water was still on, but that was then... it's not now) for five minutes or so and didn't get wet inside at all. Worked just like I wanted it to. I must have looked... man, something weird.
I also fitted the right hand with my special glove. That was the other problem, I had to have the glove I used when I killed. The glove that made me feel like I had a super power. I'd gotten the idea from Freddy Krueger, that comical murderer from those movies. The first problem I'd found was that if I wore 2 gloves my dexterity was severely limited, so I stuck to just one, the right hand. Worked perfectly.
But the glove wasn't sealed around the joints. I'd had to segment it to allow for freedom of movement, so it was all connected by tendon-like rubber strips I'd epoxied to the cut-off fingers. In the end I just took 3 small plastic trash bags and jammed them down over the blades like some giant condom, leaving only the knives exposed.
So then I went out. I waited until nighttime, when I knew the cover of darkness would keep anyone from interfering, and when they were out the most. They seemed to sleep during the day, deep down in subway tunnels or basements. Then they'd go out at night, looking for food. Living things.
I went to the library. I thought that if any were hanging out there they'd be weaklings if they were the bookish type. The thought of encountering one soon, up close, was causing me to feel strange. In a way I hadn't felt before. My pulse was up.
I walked up the pale steps, even whiter because the moon was out. It was a bit cold and I could see my breath, pluming out evenly before me. Suddenly I was calm. Always got really calm before I did bad things. This time would be different though. I was about to do something that might possibly not be considered bad.
But would it feel the same? If it didn't then I knew it was over. Really over. Forever.
Inside the place looked empty. It looked normal really. There hadn't been any cause to loot a library so it had been relatively untouched. I walked in and looked around. Toward the back, in a corner, I saw something moving. I lifted the gun up, holding it by my waist. Just as a threat, I had no idea how to fire the thing.
The thing moving was whitish, hunched over. I heard sounds. Noises I was familiar with. Wet, ripping sounds. I lowered the gun and set it down quietly on the rug, and lifted my right hand, moving closer. The thing stopped moving, and straightened up, turning toward me.
It was a woman. She was naked, hence the particular whitishness of her. Her hair was long, long, and blonde. Her face... was sad. The moonlight creeping through the windows lit her up as she turned and moved toward me. I wasn't scared. She looked so weak. Oddly, I felt my skin tightening under the wetsuit, clammy and hot. I stopped, unnerved for a moment.
That never happened. An erection. In all the times I'd killed, stared down at beautiful women and men, I had never taken sexual advantage. I couldn't. My mom's face would loom inside my lids and the sadness in her sweet face was so complete that sex was the furthest thing from my mind.
In fact, I'd never. Had sex that is. Ever. As you can imagine it's very difficult for me to get close to people enough to get involved. So I just avoided them. I lived through movies and TV. Their satisfactions were enough emotional contact for me. And anyway, I knew a much, much better high. Taking life was the most satisfying feeling I could imagine.
But then, here, this thing before me. So beautiful. So... sad. I looked down at my right hand, razored and sharp. I could cut her, so easily. My groin throbbed. I could push myself, my hand, inside her. Past the skin, through the sternum, into her chest. I felt weak suddenly. Thinking of doing it. What would it do? She was already dead.
And so was I, up to this point. Brief flashes of my life rose before me. I saw the moon. And spattering. My mom's face, so pretty. My bloody, bloody right hand, gleaming. And this creature before me. Soft, and coming. Her hands reached out toward me, dirty, and painted in red. I looked down and saw her woman parts. A fine fur of golden down covering it. Like the hair on my momma's brush.
The madness in me, it rose. And rose. Billowing up like a sudden flame. I felt wreathed in fire and twisted within it. I rushed into the thing, that girl. We fell to the floor. She struggled under me, not to get away, but to grasp at me, like a lover. I pushed the glove off. I tore at the suit's zipper, freeing my body, heat radiating from me like a sun. Her teeth sought me, my neck, my chest. I held her neck with my left hand down, and she was too weak to rise. My right hand pulled her scissoring legs apart, her breasts shaking, the nipples red in the moonlight.
This feeling. Calmness gone. Control gone. Only maddening, consuming desire. This was... I didn't know. The sadness in this weak, writhing thing's face was the sadness I saw in my mom near the end. And then as I moved toward her, my hardness pushing into her, I saw her face transform. The eyes opened wider, a bit, and her mouth parted. I found it, inside her. A tiny glowing point of light. All of my heat went into it, consumed, and then brightening. Strengthened by it. I felt my own point of light inside, black and miserable all these years, awaken.
It was dirty, and delicious. I fucked her. She fucked me back, grunting, her bloody hands clawing at me, arching her back and buttocks into me as I fucked fucked fucked her, heaving, groaning myself. Surprised at the noises coming from us. I pressed into her, closer, feeling her breasts against my skin. She wasn't cold. She was hot. Feverishly burning. I felt her shuddering under me, at the same time I reached the peak of the mountain and leapt off.
I ejaculated into her forever, spasm after spasm matching her own. I watched her face the entire time and witnessed the miracle of her crying, tears streaking down her cheeks, catching the moon.
The release was so so different from how it was before. When I killed before it was a one-way street. When I thrust the hand into them, and pulled it out, bloodied, that struggling muscle, their still-beating hearts, it was as if they weren't even there then. I connected with nothing but that which was within me. The hunger. The awful, cold thing that I hated and needed. The thing that was left of them was trash. Worth nothing to me.
And then, this. She... the dead thing under me, was already dead in body. I couldn't kill her. But I could take away the sad look, the pain, my mom. It lived, this thing. Through death, it felt. We both felt.
I moved off of her and she lay there, staring at me with that wondrous gaze. I saw some of my fluid on her belly. Her hand moved to it, swirling it with a finger, still looking at me. My chest squirmed painfully. I was still hard, and it wasn't going away. I reached down and lifted her easily off the ground. She lay in my arms pliantly. I wondered if she would try to bite me. I asked her if she would. Her lips opened but the sounds that came out were unintelligible song. Her hands caressed my shoulders.
Was this what they wanted? Love? Would that cure them? It felt like it worked for me. Since it happened I have had no urges to kill. The feeling is gone gone. Wiped from me like the smear of a dead insect from a window. All I wanted was her. Her. Was that what I'd wanted? Love?
I walked out, carrying her, leaving the wetsuit and that awful glove behind, both of us naked.
She's started talking to me. A little. I sort of hear words in the things she gurgles to me. Like she's going through childhood development again. But her face, once a bit slack, has started to animate. The fever has gone down in her. And as her heat as lowered, the cold, coldness in me that lived there for so many years has warmed. We're both coming to life.
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