Posted for feedback and critique.
There's no official- nor tentative- title. It's my first attempt at mystery, something I've been amusing myself with. Enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
“…and topping our news at this hour, another victim to the recent string of killings has been discovered, bringing the death toll to ten in just the span of one week. Incoming reports have coincided that the victims appear to have been mauled by one or more feral animals. It’s believed there may be a wild beast on the loose, though authorities have not encountered this elusive creature nor can they offer any whereabouts of it‘s current location…”
A trembling hand manipulated the remote, reducing the television’s volume to a near-inaudible level. The report of a bestial presence slaughtering helpless innocents had upset him, caused something to stir deep within. It was more than coincidence. The recent series of murders was bordering on a schizophrenic episode, certainly -in his mind- the premise of a dormant alternate personality was an unpleasant thought surfacing in his turbulent mind.
He shifted his legs uncomfortably, kicking up his right across his lap and he held the jittering leg still with his elbows resting on his knee and his foot. Leaning his torso forward, his hands joined together in a triangular formation, with his index fingers resting upon his lips. With a heavy sigh his head lowered, slowly shutting his eyes simultaneously. A worrisome groan completed the contemplative pose he often struck when in deep thought or deeply stressed. A near-frantic mind raced over the possibilities, attempting to rationalize such horribly-realistic visions. Sweat dripped from his brow in strained frustration.
A shrill ringing startled him back to reality and he jumped in his seat, heart pounding and breath hastened. Tentatively, he reached out for the cell phone on the coffee table. Hand trembling, he ceased the phone’s ringing.
“H-hello…?” the soft, wavering voice carried fear.
“Free the beast.” commanded a deep, soothing voice and the line went dead.
Quickly hanging up his phone from what was perceived as a prank call, he spasmed, dropping the cell phone onto the floor. Gripping his wrist tightly to keep it still wasn’t effective as it quivered violently, yowling in pain when his fingernails erupted in lethal claws.
----------
“Have you heard? Some sicko’s using animals to kill people.. Now that would make an ‘A‘ psyche paper for sure.” Josh commented, walking from class to his truck with, his friend, Nathan. “Come on… think about it… the real killer doesn’t want to be found, so he trains animals to kill humans. You know, rogues, animals with the taste for human flesh. I’m not talking about some run-of-the-mill sociopath out for a sick thrill.”
“How do you figure?” his class-and-roommate replied, intrigue shone in his orange eyes. Sometimes his friend’s ideas and theories were a bit too creative, better suited for the comic books. Sometimes, they were closer to the truth than Josh could ever realize. Then again, that was part of the attraction. “Maybe the person behind it isn’t human at all.” he jested, flashing his friend an incredulous smirk.
“You’re just plain weird, Nathan.” he couldn’t help but grin back.
“Hey! I’m not weird! I’m just enlightened to reality.” he quipped. “Afterall, truth is stranger than fiction, my friend. I’m not talking about some run-of-the-mill sociopath out for a sick thrill. I’m talking about something more terrifying to humans.”
“What do you mean?” his mind almost paused at the manner in which he’d said ‘humans’ “Are you trying to say someone in an animal costume is killing people? How would you explain the claw marks? Or maybe it‘s werewolves!” he exclaimed with a roll of his eyes. Josh could only shake his head in befuddled loss, side-tracked on a tangent about Bigfoot.
“Bigfoot? What the heck ARE you talking about? Everyone knows that’s just a hoax. You know.. I think some of those bumps affected your mind.” Nathan teased, giving his friend a teasing punch to the shoulder.
“That happened when we were nine and no, it hasn’t affected my mind. Geez. I’ve never heard the end of that one. I wasn’t watching where I was going and I ran into that tree.”
“I still don’t understand how you got back to the campsite if you slammed into a tree. In the middle of the forest. AND woke up hours later IN your sleeping bag.”
Josh scratched at the back of his head with a nervous chuckle, at a loss for an answer himself. That had always remained a mystery to him, his best friend, and his family. When he’d awoken, there was no trace of blood, his head wound had been treated and bandaged, and he’d even made a remarkable recovery. His scar had healed and faded within the week. “Honestly, I still have no clue what happened that day. After everything went black, I have no recollection of what happened till I woke up in my tent.”
“We searched most of the afternoon for you, till we were too exhausted to continue.” Nathan reflected, holding his head low. “Your family was afraid you were dead.”
Josh listened to this familiar story and nodded, till he paused- hand on his car door- as if something had struck him as odd and out of place. He looked up as if he’d seen a ghost and blinked in a puzzled stupor. “Wait… if you were looking for me WITH my parents, then how were you there with me when I came to?” He’d never seriously given thought to it nor had it occurred to him to ask that question before, like a fog had obscured his mind from inquiry.
There was no answer, in fact there was an awkward silence as Nathan got into the passenger-side of Josh’s pickup. Nathan was avoiding eye contact as well, looking out the now-open window with his arm hanging out and over the door. Josh closed his door and threw his books into his seat as he proceeded around the front of the truck and made his way to the passenger‘s side. Nathan averted his gaze to the floorboard.
“You know what happened, don’t you?” he was fanatic to know. “Don’t you?” he repeated with more urgency. All his life he’d questioned the odd events of the world around him, but never had he given a second’s notice to the unexplainable events of his own life. There had been many. There had been too many obscured circumstances since he’d known his close friend. As if a dense fog had lifted, he was now flooded with those sketchy moments. Memories were fuzzy, but they were coming to him. There was a definite connection. Everything that had happened, that he had seemingly forgotten about or repressed into the depths of his mind revealed that in each and every instance, Nathan had been present. Almost as if Josh were blessed by a guardian angel. When they were ten, he’d been beaten within an inch of his life by a thug. He’d been on the ground -bloodied and crying for mercy- and then the thug was nowhere to be seen, nor never to be heard from again. Nathan had arrived to take him home.
“Josh. I’m worried about you.” Nathan spoke softly. “The stress of your class load is getting to you. I’ve never seen you act so irrationally before. You’re scaring me. Please, let’s just go home and we can forget this happened.”
“No way! You’re hiding something from me! I don‘t know how, but you‘ve been doing it all my life, since I‘ve known you! Why? Why are you doing this? Is it some sick practical joke?”
Nathan’s soothing orange eyes lifted level to Josh’s blue. Their soft gaze bore intensely through Josh’s mind. The anger he felt lessened as those orange eyes continued to stare into his. It was peaceful, entrancing. His expression softened to a more stoic, calmed state, eyes falling heavily halfway. Josh looked like a zombie standing there in his mindless stance.
“I do this for your own protection, Josh…” he muttered under his breath.
As if he’d awoken from a dream he wasn’t aware he’d been apart of, Josh blinked and shook his head out, refreshed and calm. “Uh…? Oh, hey, Nathan. Sorry, I must have spaced out for a moment. That’s been happening a lot lately. I’ve been seeing someone about it, but they don’t know anymore than I do.” He shrugged and walked around the truck. Nathan smiled at him as friendly and deceitfully as ever as e grasped a hold of the door handle. It was convincing enough, but still it was forced for good reason. That was too close for comfort, but it was true what Josh had inadvertently spoken on the matter: it was occurring more frequently and with each time it was happening, he wasn’t sure what would happen next. He didn’t know what he would ever say to his friend. His lifetime with Josh had been spent avoiding this moment of disclosure. Every time his mind had to be suppressed, it took more out of them both. Josh was building greater resistance and it would only be time before there was nothing he, nor anyone could do to prevent the inevitable fallout. A scene at school would have been the worst-case scenario. Nathan didn’t want to deal with the guilt of any more casualties. It was becoming difficult for him to deal with the number of lives he’d felt so responsible for taking. It could have been prevented, as all the other instances. It had always been necessary to suppress such horrific memories of blood thirst. It was easier than letting events repeat, but it was never easy. There had never been anyone to suppress Nathan’s mind, to erase the look of horror on Josh’s face, to protect him from the ghastly images of blood-soaked brutality.
“…and topping our news at this hour, another victim to the recent string of killings has been discovered, bringing the death toll to ten in just the span of one week. Incoming reports have coincided that the victims appear to have been mauled by one or more feral animals. It’s believed there may be a wild beast on the loose, though authorities have not encountered this elusive creature nor can they offer any whereabouts of it‘s current location…”
A trembling hand manipulated the remote, reducing the television’s volume to a near-inaudible level. The report of a bestial presence slaughtering helpless innocents had upset him, caused something to stir deep within. It was more than coincidence. The recent series of murders was bordering on a schizophrenic episode, certainly -in his mind- the premise of a dormant alternate personality was an unpleasant thought surfacing in his turbulent mind.
He shifted his legs uncomfortably, kicking up his right across his lap and he held the jittering leg still with his elbows resting on his knee and his foot. Leaning his torso forward, his hands joined together in a triangular formation, with his index fingers resting upon his lips. With a heavy sigh his head lowered, slowly shutting his eyes simultaneously. A worrisome groan completed the contemplative pose he often struck when in deep thought or deeply stressed. A near-frantic mind raced over the possibilities, attempting to rationalize such horribly-realistic visions. Sweat dripped from his brow in strained frustration.
A shrill ringing startled him back to reality and he jumped in his seat, heart pounding and breath hastened. Tentatively, he reached out for the cell phone on the coffee table. Hand trembling, he ceased the phone’s ringing.
“H-hello…?” the soft, wavering voice carried fear.
“Free the beast.” commanded a deep, soothing voice and the line went dead.
Quickly hanging up his phone from what was perceived as a prank call, he spasmed, dropping the cell phone onto the floor. Gripping his wrist tightly to keep it still wasn’t effective as it quivered violently, yowling in pain when his fingernails erupted in lethal claws.
----------
“Have you heard? Some sicko’s using animals to kill people.. Now that would make an ‘A‘ psyche paper for sure.” Josh commented, walking from class to his truck with, his friend, Nathan. “Come on… think about it… the real killer doesn’t want to be found, so he trains animals to kill humans. You know, rogues, animals with the taste for human flesh. I’m not talking about some run-of-the-mill sociopath out for a sick thrill.”
“How do you figure?” his class-and-roommate replied, intrigue shone in his orange eyes. Sometimes his friend’s ideas and theories were a bit too creative, better suited for the comic books. Sometimes, they were closer to the truth than Josh could ever realize. Then again, that was part of the attraction. “Maybe the person behind it isn’t human at all.” he jested, flashing his friend an incredulous smirk.
“You’re just plain weird, Nathan.” he couldn’t help but grin back.
“Hey! I’m not weird! I’m just enlightened to reality.” he quipped. “Afterall, truth is stranger than fiction, my friend. I’m not talking about some run-of-the-mill sociopath out for a sick thrill. I’m talking about something more terrifying to humans.”
“What do you mean?” his mind almost paused at the manner in which he’d said ‘humans’ “Are you trying to say someone in an animal costume is killing people? How would you explain the claw marks? Or maybe it‘s werewolves!” he exclaimed with a roll of his eyes. Josh could only shake his head in befuddled loss, side-tracked on a tangent about Bigfoot.
“Bigfoot? What the heck ARE you talking about? Everyone knows that’s just a hoax. You know.. I think some of those bumps affected your mind.” Nathan teased, giving his friend a teasing punch to the shoulder.
“That happened when we were nine and no, it hasn’t affected my mind. Geez. I’ve never heard the end of that one. I wasn’t watching where I was going and I ran into that tree.”
“I still don’t understand how you got back to the campsite if you slammed into a tree. In the middle of the forest. AND woke up hours later IN your sleeping bag.”
Josh scratched at the back of his head with a nervous chuckle, at a loss for an answer himself. That had always remained a mystery to him, his best friend, and his family. When he’d awoken, there was no trace of blood, his head wound had been treated and bandaged, and he’d even made a remarkable recovery. His scar had healed and faded within the week. “Honestly, I still have no clue what happened that day. After everything went black, I have no recollection of what happened till I woke up in my tent.”
“We searched most of the afternoon for you, till we were too exhausted to continue.” Nathan reflected, holding his head low. “Your family was afraid you were dead.”
Josh listened to this familiar story and nodded, till he paused- hand on his car door- as if something had struck him as odd and out of place. He looked up as if he’d seen a ghost and blinked in a puzzled stupor. “Wait… if you were looking for me WITH my parents, then how were you there with me when I came to?” He’d never seriously given thought to it nor had it occurred to him to ask that question before, like a fog had obscured his mind from inquiry.
There was no answer, in fact there was an awkward silence as Nathan got into the passenger-side of Josh’s pickup. Nathan was avoiding eye contact as well, looking out the now-open window with his arm hanging out and over the door. Josh closed his door and threw his books into his seat as he proceeded around the front of the truck and made his way to the passenger‘s side. Nathan averted his gaze to the floorboard.
“You know what happened, don’t you?” he was fanatic to know. “Don’t you?” he repeated with more urgency. All his life he’d questioned the odd events of the world around him, but never had he given a second’s notice to the unexplainable events of his own life. There had been many. There had been too many obscured circumstances since he’d known his close friend. As if a dense fog had lifted, he was now flooded with those sketchy moments. Memories were fuzzy, but they were coming to him. There was a definite connection. Everything that had happened, that he had seemingly forgotten about or repressed into the depths of his mind revealed that in each and every instance, Nathan had been present. Almost as if Josh were blessed by a guardian angel. When they were ten, he’d been beaten within an inch of his life by a thug. He’d been on the ground -bloodied and crying for mercy- and then the thug was nowhere to be seen, nor never to be heard from again. Nathan had arrived to take him home.
“Josh. I’m worried about you.” Nathan spoke softly. “The stress of your class load is getting to you. I’ve never seen you act so irrationally before. You’re scaring me. Please, let’s just go home and we can forget this happened.”
“No way! You’re hiding something from me! I don‘t know how, but you‘ve been doing it all my life, since I‘ve known you! Why? Why are you doing this? Is it some sick practical joke?”
Nathan’s soothing orange eyes lifted level to Josh’s blue. Their soft gaze bore intensely through Josh’s mind. The anger he felt lessened as those orange eyes continued to stare into his. It was peaceful, entrancing. His expression softened to a more stoic, calmed state, eyes falling heavily halfway. Josh looked like a zombie standing there in his mindless stance.
“I do this for your own protection, Josh…” he muttered under his breath.
As if he’d awoken from a dream he wasn’t aware he’d been apart of, Josh blinked and shook his head out, refreshed and calm. “Uh…? Oh, hey, Nathan. Sorry, I must have spaced out for a moment. That’s been happening a lot lately. I’ve been seeing someone about it, but they don’t know anymore than I do.” He shrugged and walked around the truck. Nathan smiled at him as friendly and deceitfully as ever as e grasped a hold of the door handle. It was convincing enough, but still it was forced for good reason. That was too close for comfort, but it was true what Josh had inadvertently spoken on the matter: it was occurring more frequently and with each time it was happening, he wasn’t sure what would happen next. He didn’t know what he would ever say to his friend. His lifetime with Josh had been spent avoiding this moment of disclosure. Every time his mind had to be suppressed, it took more out of them both. Josh was building greater resistance and it would only be time before there was nothing he, nor anyone could do to prevent the inevitable fallout. A scene at school would have been the worst-case scenario. Nathan didn’t want to deal with the guilt of any more casualties. It was becoming difficult for him to deal with the number of lives he’d felt so responsible for taking. It could have been prevented, as all the other instances. It had always been necessary to suppress such horrific memories of blood thirst. It was easier than letting events repeat, but it was never easy. There had never been anyone to suppress Nathan’s mind, to erase the look of horror on Josh’s face, to protect him from the ghastly images of blood-soaked brutality.