Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28060931-20190519221956

The winter of ‘97 is forever going to be etched into my memory. It stands in my mind like a monolit, among other effects which altered the course of my life forever -- my mother’s years of subtle sneers and caustic insults; her finding me kissing that girl, and her dragging me away hurling vile vitriol from her mouth as she locked me in room, confined with a great sense of shame… and other such events.

The day, in all its detail, is still distinct in my memory. What lead me to break on that day I can only speculate at.

We are the sum total of our experiences. My early childhood is nothing to me but the hopeless loneliness of wandering through those tight streets choked with exhaust-smoke, and the rows of ferruginous houses tilting ominously at each other. And my mind still recalls my sister(her pink cheeks, fresh face, the dumb joy in her eyes, her shining white dress), and I remember how I treated her then. The hatred I harbored towards her -- not because of anything she did, of course; I don’t think she could do any wrong. She was too sweet, too innocent. No doubt that’s why mother adored and cherished her so much.

But towards me, she made every show of hatred, vitriol, and derision she could think of. She thought I was dirty, disturbed, disgusting. I couldn’t blame her after a while: the thoughts which forced themselves into my head, daily and hourly, confirmed her estimation of me as horrible and abhorrent.

I think she despised the men and boys in general. Having known my father, I can’t blame her. But on this, I will not expand; not least, because it isn’t the purpose of this narration -- which I can’t help but think I am purposely delaying.

The day was bitter and cold, and the sky was the color of lead. After the class-bell had knelled the university -- and the whole term -- to a close, I walked(or, rather, shambled) out into the chill winter air, with a sickening feeling in my chest. I describe it as “sickening” for lack of a better word -- but it was a weird maelstrom of expectation, desire, inundation, and sickness.

I stopped at a local bar, dingy and desolate, and ordered stiff whiskey. I was still irresolute, and quivering with unease; but soon visions and recollection forced themselves into my mind, and steadfast resolution gripped me. Not to say I wasn’t without a deep, secret sense of shame -- I was; but it was this feeling of shame which made me more steadfast.

I was frozen in this terror and I was small and weak and childish again: I felt myself being dragged by my hair into the bathroom. Mother shut the door closed behind her -- she screamed to me to undress -- in the dim, ill-litten room -- she poured searing water in -- forced to sit in it, she violently scrubbed and pulled and tugged, and told me how dirty boys are. How ashamed I should be. I heaved and sighed, and nearly crushed the glass, looking over the bar at the barman staring me -- puffy-faced and in a sweat.

I rushed out of the bar. My feet carried me down the darkened, smoggy streets of Arkham down increasing dereliction and desolation, where the houses looked more like blocks of solid darkness and where everything else seemed grey and diseased in the gathering gloom. Our apartment stood just outside Newbury street, a towering structure which always made me feel small.

The light was out in our apartment. I stood on the sidewalk staring at it for some time. Then, snapping back, bent my gaze on the car. It was old and rusted when my father bought it; and, then, it was a miracle the thing worked.

I slipped through the door, and snuck upstairs until I reached our room. The tenebrous stairway was thick with dust, and creaked as I reached our room, on the fourth floor. Opening the door a crack just big enough for me to steal in, I crept in to my mother’s room. The door was open; I entered. Tip-toeing, careful as if I was walking a tightrope, I managed to get to her bedside table. I heard my heart in my head, beating wildly; she was in bed, her breast oscillating rhythmically with her breathing, and my hands shook at the sight; yet I snatched her purse from the bed-table. I rummaged inside until I produced the car-keys. That’s all I came for -- but then I saw her wallet.

A sudden movement, somewhere, made me start.

I sighed in relief when I realized it was probably just a rat: and that mother was still sound asleep. “Fucking ugly, red-faced bitch,” I murmured through gritted teeth. Standing there, in the wan moonlight slanting in through the window, I remembered myself years ago -- small scrawny, vainly trying to steal out of her wallet.

I think it was only about four or five dollars. And I felt a thrill of pleasure at thinking my task accomplished. I felt free as I have never felt; as if I overcame some enormous tribulation. But then I turned around, still grinning dumbly. She was standing there.

The thought of my terror then still turns my blood cold now. My mouth jibbered and jabbered insensibly, while she advanced like an earthquake, quaking with rage, face redder than usual, teeth grit so hard you’d think her jaw would burst.

“You little fucking shit,” I can still remember the sting of the belt.

I stood over her now, and I felt a tingle of pleasure pulse through my body as I sneered at the sleeping figure before me; feeling, for once, superior, standing over her, feeling in control.

“You little fucking shit!”-- “And what about all I’ve done for you?”-- “You’re dirty, disgusting… little brat..”-- “If you ever touch that girl, or any girl again, I swear to God…”

.

I stood entranced in ghastly thought. I had fantasized -- in my most secret daydreams, and in my most eldritch nightmares -- of killing, of hitting, of beating bloody, and ripping to gory shreds that bulbous fucking bitch. But this time, these thoughts brought no shame or horror with them.

Rage -- rage which had been building and collecting and festering inside for so long -- crawled to the surface again; I felt my blood rush and pump furiously; my fists clenched, veins tightened; my breath came in harsh, heavy gasps.

I was about to bound upon her like a feral beast; but I restrained myself.

Quickly, in dumbfounded disbelief, I grabbed the money from her wallet, and, with a heaving chest and sweat lashing out of every pore, I rushed out of the house as swiftly and silently as I could.

Outside, I felt the relief of the cold air. I jumped into the car, and started off into and then out of the heart of the city, and towards the vast, unknown beyond.

In a dark grove where suffocating gloom abounds, perhaps lighted by weak, wan moonlight, a man waits poised with a sword. He haunts the grove the whole night, keenly searching for the victim; probably himself tremering and acutely responsive to the slightest ruffle in the bushes, or flitting shape in the shade. Because the same man he is hunting can also kill him, and if he kills him, the victim because the new King of the Wood. This strange ritual is an incarnation of an ancient rite performed by a sect of Diana at Nemi, in Italy. The mythological account of the sect no doubt was used to explain other, real cults who held similar, singular rituals.

Whatever was or remained of the ancient cult of Nemi, some say, survived, and still survives; but in weird reincarnation. Sellers and Sadhir(1986) in their paper posited this very account. As the ages progressed, and tradition of the ritual was passed down generations, the rituals remained in the subconsciousness of man. The cult again become renascent again in the middle ages, but in altered form through the metamorphoses it endured when it came in contact with different cultures,and geo- and socio-political climates, etc.

Diana, the virgin hunter-goddess, was represented also as a symbol of chastity, restraint, and composure.. Sellers and Sadhir argued, based on later accounts, that the cult bifurcated somewhere in the middle ages into two sects -- one which followed the original, and another, which formed when it came into contact with witch-cults of England and France. This one differed in important aspects that it adopted wild and chaotic ways, repudiating the self-mastery and moderance of Diana-worshippers; it adopted the worship of the Devil -- as reported, anyhow, by contemporary sources who saw any God who was not the biblical Yahweh as the Evil One. There were rumors of frenzied orgies, of grisly scenes of massacre, blood-rituals, all reported to occur at these Sabbaths. The original variations disappeared almost entirely, surviving only in folklore and hushed rumors.

I studied anthropology in Miskatonic University. I entered on a scholarship, and had pursued a doctorate in anthropology thinking it would appeal to my flair for the fantastic and the grim, and not anticipating the dreary evenings stuck in classrooms listening to garrulous lectures.

I had discovered the cult of Nemi at my third year in the university. There was some appeal air of mystery to it which enticed me. The accounts were nebulous and mysterious enough to excite in me an unshakable curiosity -- one which confined me to long solitary hours in the library, reading every single source I could track down on this cult, or anything associated with it; and at the expense of a myriad of missed classes.

One night, while I was penning a paper on my discoveries, I froze.

I thought about what I discovered: about the grim disappearances, rumors, and sightings in small hamlet in the north of Louisiana.

During my studies, I found inextricable links between the new-Nemi cult and werewolf lore. A feature which especially struck me about the accounts of these revels was the presence of Dionysian masks, those used in performances in Ancient Greece.

They, by association with the God, symbolized transformation of identity. Bacchus -- the ancient God of wine and wild revels; of passionate exuberance and feral sexual instinct -- in the plainest terms, a God of freedom and joy. These cults faded to oblivion, but their traditions still survives.

In my paper, I advanced a theory which accounted for all the changes and incarnation of the aboriginal Nemi cult. I showed how the remnants of the savage Nemi cult adapted to the Christian age; how they bifurcated; and how the newer sect split off the trope of the hunter-goddess as a chaste, pure deity(possibly in rebellion against the prudish morals of the Christian empire) and adapted, instead, ancient Bacchic customs.

Louisiana Weekly October 12, 199 Grim Sightings in village of Ananbend In this little town of no more than 900 people, two locals have been reported missing. A young girl and her older brother had disappeared -- two nights ago -- while on a walk through the surrounding country. Reports of strange masked figures, ritual droning, and thumping tom-toms have also been reported by locals in the town; police are at a loss, despite numerous interviews and a thorough search of the area. Rumors of cult activity floating around.

This is the excerpt of the faithful article which so altered the course of my life. I had already reason to suppose that the cult spread to America(probably due to the Irish mass-immigration during the famine), and that there was a strong network of it in Louisiana swamplands.

When I discovered this clipping, an idea struck me. What if I was to write a book, I thought… the idea seemed ridiculous, improbable; but it would guarantee me enough money to move out, forever, if published; it would possibly open up job position, maybe as a professor of anthropology. It would be something to distinguish me: something I longed for desperately. Also, it would serve well-enough as a dissertation for my graduation which would eclipse my failing grades.

With vague, mostly barren, hopes I hatched plans to travel to Louisiana to investigate this first-hand; hoping to get some good first-hand research on it. If it wasn’t a cult, or at least I’d still have a modern case to write about and to use a guiding analogy for my work… I already imagined the reviews. Vague embers of rebellion had already started silently sweltering inside of me: a sickness with being a puppet, a pet, a thing to be shoved and pushed around

These were the events that lead up to my speeding out that dolorous city of my birth in the commandeered vehicle.

My recollections of that time -- partially, probably, because the adrenaline and shock -- are dim and hazy; but I do remember a tremendous feeling of weightlessness -- like a feather must feel wafted on a cool breeze. Amid those rolling, moon-litten hills, vast mountains misty in the distance, and plains stretching away silently into the far, nebulous horizons.

The next episode I remember is boarding a flight I had booked, and feeling so weird and outlandish in the airport and on the plane: of course, I had never flown before and I always felt strange in the company of people.

Next, I was landing, dizzied with vertigo, and renting a car; then stopping at a cheap BandB for the night. The next morning, after a paltry, insipid breakfast, I set off into the north, towards Ananbend.

The drive was through increasingly desolate and bleak country: as if the land itself withered and darkened the closer it was the village. Finally coming to read which would lead directly the town, I felt a shudder of anxiety in my body. Ghastly, twisted trees leaned solemnly in over the road, forming a tunnel, and I saw that the branches looked withered and jagged like deformed claws. They pressed ever-closer as I proceeded up the road. Finally, I saw the village. Huddled together in a valley between two hills, the houses loomed in the evening darkness, looking like spectral shades.

I knew there was something awful about the village when I came to it. There was some tinge of things forbidden and… frightful; some portentous dread hung over the place clung to every walls of the houses. The rough and ragged rock streets seemed themselves hostile to any car passing by; sordid houses which seemed to sneer at anyone who passed by. The wind whispered wistfully, and swept from the swamp a putrid stench which suffused the town. I would occasionally catch glimpses of furtive face quickly flitting away from sight as I looked towards them.

A derelict sign hanging limply from a building, informed me that it was “Harty’s Inn” -- an ostentatiously suggestive name for a place like that. Getting out of the car, I proceeded through the heavy air to the weather-worn door which barely stood in place, and entered. The darkness there was almost solid; no sound was audible, for a while; until I heard a heavy grunting.

Whirling in the direction where I thought I heard it, I saw a plump, red-faced man in bedraggled work clothes. He was sitting at a desk(which was eaten away and eroded to a pitiful state by the lapse of time), and he was eyeing me suspiciously, with those black beady. I think I still remember them to this day.

“Excuse me,” I muttered.

He grunted a guttural grunt.

“Excuse me -- but do you have any room available.” His eyes fixed on me, and I could always feel with a shudder, their caustic influence searing into my soul.

“Erhgh-eh,” he grunted; he nodded his head backwards, as if he meant for me to approach.

“Room-21,” he grunted again, in a thick Southern drawl, and handed me a key from under the desk.

“Oh, by the way,” I said, “I’m sorry to hear... I am very sorry to hear about the tragedy which befell your town.”

“Course you are.”

Confused, and not exactly being well-endowed with conversational skills, I nodded feebly, and awkwardly retreated up the stairs to where my room was.

After unpacking the little I had, I felt there was nothing more to do than go to bed and wait for the next morning. The thought of my work and purpose, and my temerity in escaping Arkham, did somewhat relieve my dejection.

The morning came cold and grey. Sickly beams of sunlight slanted in through the window, and wind whirled outside. An inundating sentiment of poignant gloom hung over the place, but my spirits were high on account of it being a new day ripe with opportunity.

I brushed my teeth and went downstairs. As I descended, the same garrulous voice(distinctly belonging to the boorish brute I had talked to last night) grunted out a few words I caught before I came fully down.. “The new tenant… asking questions… odd man… east, I think, has that accent… no, I don’t think we should… no, the others don’t know…”

I stopped and listened. Another voice, this one much clearer.

“Fuckin’ yokels tryna snoop ‘rund. Ah dunno why that cunt had to snitch; sure, I get ets his family missin’; but what use es et ter get the outsiders invalved.”

When I came to the hall, they both looked at me. The man whose voice I did not recognize looked young. He was dressed in a flaming red jacket and refulgent yellow short, but boot-cut jeans and stylishly-spiked hair. He smiled at me amiably. His voice was loud, confident and friendly; it set you immediately at ease.

“‘Ello,” he said, “You’re new here, right? That’s good; glad ter see nea ‘aces rund ‘ere. Ehhr, speakin’ of faces -- why the long one, my friend; bad mornin?”

Puzzled at what he was referring to, I remember the usual pallid, scowling grimace I have stuck to my features.

“Oh, yeah. It’s nothing. Just the morning, yeah.”

“‘Ey, come ‘ere, I’ll buy ya a drink; it’ll cheer yer raight up. ‘Sides, I like meetin new people.”

I nodded, hiding any reservation I had behind my placid expression.

He brought me across the street to a small building. The inside looked like despondency incarnate. A dreadful stillness hung in the air; darkness swallowed up half the place, and the only lights there were the dim and grey shafts slanting in through the windows. Mold and dust made the place their home, and spread and festered everywhere they could. The place as of yet empty except a decrepit man hunched over the counter which I took to be the bar man.

“‘Eyyo, Joey,” said my companion, “How ‘bout two whiskey for me and here this my friend.”

Joey looked from under his brow at me: his gaze piercing and uninviting. But he finally got up and got two glasses, which he filled with something dark and brown which did not taste like any whiskey I ever had.

“Name’s Ben, by the way,” he said, “Don't believe I ever said so.” He strained his voice for me, trying to suppress his accent. All the while, his eyes glistened with mild kindliness, and his face seemed fresh and kind.

“So, what brings yeh here?”

I contemplated this for a moment, then said, sipping the drink -- “I was passing through this part of the country; thought I’d stop here.”

He didn’t comment, just sipped his drink.

“I’ve heard what happened here,” I said; “I’m very sorry to hear it; but is it true? What they say --the strange occurs, you know? Have you seen anything?”

“People here abuts don’t much like these kinds of questions,” he said; he signalled to Joey, and asked for more whiskey as we had both finished our first glass. I began to protest, but he quelled me with a movement of his hand and a look in his eyes. I sank back down into my seat, dejected and ashamed at this trammel. The next round came; and, heavy with a returning sense of shame which always brought a savage deluge of rage with it, I drank the bottle in almost one gulp; and another was promptly sent to me.

“Whar abouts do ye come from?” Ben asked.

“Well, I was born in a town just outside of Boston -- probably never heard of it.”

“So yer a town boy. Bet yer not too rich, judging by them scruffy rag ye’ve get on yeah. What’s wrong? Ye look angry -- yeh, ah’ve noticed that abut yeah; you have a lot of anger in yer, yung friend.”

I sneered at him, “So what does it concern you. Hey, you, Joey; another one of these.”

There was something, some invisible but barely palpable link, between him and me; something intangible yet existing.

“Do you wanna punch me?”

“What?” I said, taken aback.

“If want ter, do it.”

“No.”

“But I do piss yeh off, don't I?”

“Yes,” I said, knocking back the whiskey. “Another, Joey.”

“So what’s wrong -- ye afraid? Of someone, something? I recognize that face face well ‘nough, suppressed anger, caged in shame, ain’t you, boy?”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s more like et. See -- what I think -- you’ve been holding that rage up inside fer long enough, and et’s been building up; see, I know people like you the moment I see them. Society telling what you can or can’t do; tired of having ter to keep all that hate in, of pretending it’s all fine, of being someone’s bitch. Yer need to be free. The world -- the real world -- operates on a rule of the weak and the strong; you’re constantly told to be the weak.”

I peered at him dumbfounded, dizzy with the alcohol, head whirring in an incomprehensible maelstrom of thoughts, feelings, impulses.

“But et dun’t have to be like that,” he continued; “you can be free. Free as the wild is free. I know people let yer; I sometimes search for people like yer; and there’s many of us -- collected through the centuries -- we live for long, very long; that’s the gift of blood.”

I chortled, spit spewing from my mouth. I was too amazed and stupefied in my drunken stupor to properly understand.

“But it don’t have to be this way,” he continued, “See, I can free you. You just have to prove your strength, your will.” He was now gazing, with a manic flame in his eyes, staring deep at me; he started laughing. I was too intoxicated to comprehend. I hadn’t even noticed Joey sneaking up behind me, until I felt the searing pain as he slipped some rope over my neck, and choked me out.

I was too drunk to fight back. But, gradually, the burning around my neck receded; then a thick darkness swallowed me.

Then...

A feeling of being carried, bouncing up and down.

Cold, very cold.

Smell of grass.

I know I saw night.

But then, I remember waking up. And, God, I wish I didn’t. That frigid horror gripping me: a chilly dread creeping over me, feeling it crawl up and down my back, as I awoke on the dampness of a dark forest floor. The ground was murky, and I saw pools of water. Covered with pines and grass, and with towering trees with raggled vines, like lattice, clinging to them, looming high and ominous in the gathering, misty gloom. My eyes stung with tears; I trembled.

By degrees, I got up, confused, dazed. I prayed for this to be a dream -- but in the most dispassionate areas of my mind, I knew well what had happened.

The headache of a hangover pounded in my head. My legs felt like lead; my hands heavy like weights; and pangs of paranoia stabbed at my spine. The rocky ground crunched under my feet and I followed through the eerie landscape.

The branches jutted out, jagged; the bushes were full of baneful briars and prickly thorns; occasionally, out some obscure corners, thin twisted tree-limb would look like a shrivelled hand grasping out to snatch you. No sound broke the silence, except my crunching footsteps and the moaning wind. The night was freezing, and the cold wind whipped the air..

Trudging through the swampy depths, I heard some sudden noise behind me. Whirling around, I was just quick and receptive enough to avoid a steel sword slashing at me. I ducked, and tripped.

High over me, towered a stout figure, vague in the shade. Big and burly, but imperceptible.. The long sword it held glistened faintly in the sickly moonlight. It swung at me again.

I began scrambling on the ground to avoid to whirring slashes. I eventually gained my footing and began a frenzied sprint through the swampland. I caught my foot in a root above the ground and I tumbled into a glade.

I saw my pursuer emerge into it, and I saw immediately who it was. The face was Ben’s, distinctly, but he was clothed in wild and ragged pelts of animals. A necklace of bone -- I still shiver to think those looked like human bones -- hung around his neck. His sneer revealed rows of large, razor-sharp teeth; his eyes flamed with fury. And I felt fear freeze me in place.

He approached me with the sword, in great leaps and bound I thought no human is capable of. I quickly resumed my feet and turned and ran. I bolted back into the thickly-wooded areas of the swamp land. Hiding behind a thicket,I heard the thud of the heavy footsteps.

My hand landed on a rough-edged rock. I grasped it and held it tightly, eyes shut, breast heaving.

I heard the footsteps approaching. There was I, feeling so small and weak and vulnerable.

I was so small and so weak and so vulnerable then, when she used to drag me out of bed in the darkness of the night -- drag me to the bathroom -- in the dim light, order me to strip -- that fucking bitch, fucking fucked me up life-- she -- she washed --

Fire-red rage blazed in me. All my fear -- all my shame -- disappeared.

As the footsteps thumped nearer and nearer, I suddenly sprang up and bounded up what I thought was the source. I saw a monstrous, gigantic form before me; but, unfaltering, flew at it and drove the rock into it. His head exploded into a spurting burst of blood, and he collapsed. He writhed and twisted on the ground, screaming out shrieks of utter terror and agony. These shortly died down to ululations of defeat and melancholy; and his sobbing faded into silence. His head was in a dark pool of blood: the wound in his skull still spurting.

I hardly realized what I had done. Soon, emotion have must overcame me, because I fainted. But -- perhaps most interesting of all -- just before the rock collided with his skull, I swore -- and still swear -- that I saw my mother’s face in his features.

When I had woken up again, it was to muffled murmuring: a ritual-like chant. It increased in intensity and I soon fully recovered from my soporific state. What I saw made me shudder, and my blood stopped cold.

I was in what I perceived to be a cavernous grotto, around which the murmuring chants resounded and echoed. I was on some sort of table or alter, made of stones carved out with intricate, alien designs. I looked around me -- there were throngs of frightful figures with grotesque masks standing around me. The masks -- distorted, contorted, grotesque -- a pallid mockery of the human face.

The same Greek, Dionysian masks. A frightful realization, like a cold wave, came over me. They were all wearing clothing of animals skin -- crudely cut and adorned with all sorts of ghastly ornaments.

One of them approaches me -- he was wearing a different kind of mask, but in the same Greek style -- with protruding, ram-like horns.

From somewhere far-off I heard shrieks. Shrill, high-pitched. I shuddered when I realized they sounded like children’s shrieks.

The figure approached me. By then, I realized I was lying on the alter naked, and bound with ropes.

The shrieks got louder and louder. Yes; children, without a doubt.

The figure drew a dagger: he held it over me. I gasped and cried a little.

“Why are you afraid?” The demon-thing said. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore. You’re one of us -- one of the strong. You don’t have to hide or suppress your emotions or desires any longer. You let go of all the anger and pain. We’re here with you..”

Behind him, I saw two small, fragile figures being led by one of the cultists, who had them tied in ropes. As they got nearer, I recognized them. They were the two children who went missing.

One of them -- the girl -- was led onto the altar beside me. My fetters were cut by the first figure. The other cultist had the girl in his clutches, holding her in place. She had fair hair, blue-eyes, and cheeks stained in lustery tears -- she reminded me of my sister.

She was naked: her chest was badly bruised: she had been beaten severely, I thought, and a mild paroxysm of delight sparked through me. I felt ashamed; but that quickly faded. There was no need for shame now, and forevermore; there was no need to deny natural urges. All the hate and pain which had been festering inside for so long, begging and breaking for a release, finally had it’s freedom.

The masked man handed me the dagger.. I smiled. I felt an unbelievable surge of delight in my chest, like an immense weight had been lifted. I took the blade. The child’s screams had reached a fever-pitch.

My body shuddered in joy. The thrill was vaguely sexual: that pre-orgasmic delight, the ecstatic paroxysm of pleasure before the climax.

The two masked men backed off, leaving me with her. I grabbed her. She shuddered and screeched. I felt delight in overpowering her, feeling her weak and frail against me; scrawny and faggy against me. She reminded me vaguely of myself.

I forced her onto the altar and climbed on top of her. My weight pressed her down, bearing down on her chest, no doubt suffocating her; she gasped and choked; I lifted the blade up -- as I did, the chanting got louder, faster. I brought the blade down. The blood gouted out in a wonderful fountain from the gash in her neck. Her face was puffy and red, and lips frothy; she gargled, but there was no hope. She bled out under me.

I felt powerful. The chanting had reached a zenith, then died down.

I had overcome the restraints binding me; I felt free. Her murder was the final strike which unfettered me from the slavish repression in which I had been raised -- in the “civilized world”.

Cheers of approval rose from the crowd.

I felt light, weightless -- like a feather floating on a mild summer evening.

Someone came up to me, clapped me on the back and said, “Welcome. We are so very glad to have you here.”

And so he was right: for could I longer bear the heaviness of my sense of sin, when now I felt so unrestrained and natural.

The boys’ neck had been slit, too, when I busy with the girl. His blood has been collected into a bowl and augmented with some weird herbs and vails.They passed me the bowl

“Drink,” they said.

Gulping down the viscous liquid, I gagged, but that soon passed. I felt oddly at ease after.

“The blood is immortality,” they told me; “as long as you revitalize yourself with it, you’ll live forever.”

For once, I felt like I belonged. Among this cult, this new home and family. We travelled, changed towns, locations, with a rotating coterie of consistent members. The enjoyment soon fell to attrition, and I felt hollow. Then, I thought of what for so long had fettered my subconscious, what torment drove me to what lengths: and the person who was the cause of it all.

I hovered over the sleeping figure -- it was almost deja vu -- seeing her slumbering silently again. I grinned a bitter grin.

I leapt at her with my bear hands, digging into her neck. She awoke to an eruption of searing agony tearing through her whole body. I choked, I ripped, I rent, I tore. Then she was nothing but a gory, grisly mess; and I felt empty.

Don’t get me wrong -- the pleasure was there. A few seconds of pure bliss. But then… that long lasting satisfaction I thought I’d sustain faded.

But life is a long, lonely journey. I doubt that carnal delights can offer any permanent release; I doubt whether revenge will ever leave anyone satisfied or better off, it is all ephemeral; and I doubt whether misery will ever stop abounding every corner of the globe, and I doubt it will cease producing anger, degeneracy and hate and crime. I think we -- as a universal species, in our cosmic situation -- are trapped in a cage of our own making. 