My Awakening – Part 5

Part 1 Here
Part 2 Here
Part 3 Here
Part 4 Here

Hunt. The word hung in the cold air like fog.

“You mean you’re going to kill something…or somebody?”

“No, WE are going to kill somebody. You had no problem killing that woman back there. This is how we survive. You’ve done it once now, it will become easier”.

I felt sickened. I had just killed someone. Not only had I killed her, I drank her, all of her. And I enjoyed it. Oh God, what have I done?

I looked up at Nate, the branches behind him in the strong moonlight framing his face. He was deadly serious. When I spoke my voice sounded feeble with pleading, “But…but…I didn’t know what I was doing. She was there. The hunger. It overtook me. I didn’t know what I was doing”. I realised I was trying to justify what I had done more to myself than him.

“The hunger will get stronger. You will get stronger”. He paused while he ruminated on what to say next. “This is how we survive. We hunt. We feed. We kill. That is our life – your life now. We can choose to feed from animals but that is not a good choice. It does not sustain us well. There is a food chain and there always has been. The stronger species feed off the weak, is this not correct?”

“You can’t compare the human race to the animal kingdom, we are different, we are more evolved than that!” I was appalled that he could see us like lions hunting gazelle.

“Luca, you say ‘we’ like you’re still human. You aren’t”. He leant forward so that we were face to face. “Were you vegetarian, did you not eat meat? I know you weren’t. You ate slaughtered animals with no compunction because they were lesser creatures. Now humans are lesser creatures. Don’t try and take some sort of moral high ground, you know as well as I that this is how life works. We sustain ourselves by feeding from other living creatures. You did it all the time”.

“This is different and you know it”, I matched his glare with one of my own.

“How?” He spoke softly now.

I tried to think of something clever to say but couldn’t. He was right. We routinely kill and eat other creatures that live, breathe, have babies. I remembered the girl from the bookstore that wore a t-shirt that said ‘meat is murder’, I’d laughed at her naïveté. Meat – animals, were food. Well some at least. I could never imagine eating a puppy but had no problem devouring cow. Now I was a murderer. I had already killed someone and enjoyed every delicious drop of her. I would never have thought myself capable of that.

This hunger is different than anything I’ve ever experienced. This is no grumbling tummy. When I ripped out that girl’s throat every cell in my body ached for her blood. The need was all consuming.

“I can’t just kill someone. I can’t choose someone and condemn them. I don’t have the right, nobody does!” My knees started to weaken and I felt myself crumple. I dropped to my knees with a hard thump. “I can’t do this. Why did you do this to me? Why did you make me into this monster?” The tears that were welling spilled onto my cheeks and splashed into the dirt I knelt in making tiny round pools of mud.

“You can and you will.” He grabbed me by my shoulders and pulled me to my feet. He lifted me until we were eye to eye, so close our noses almost touching. His eyes were now almost glowing. “I chose you for your strength, I know what you’re capable of. I saw what happened to you and I saw what you did.”

Suddenly a chill ran up my back like an ice cold knife blade being traced along my spine.

Oh my god, he knows!

© Cheryl Jenkins 2009

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