#this is a short story set in the 1960s about a mexican american werewolf who takes lsd and tries to kill a serial killer

[a-lesbian-goth]

A Monster’s Trip to Justice

@mymywhataninterestingsight

@magicandheart

@magestaves

@banbutsunoriron

@idontknowanythingandthatsok

I remember the first time the moon changed. I remember how there was a feeling of tranquility after the sun fell. Usually people would feel trapped in concrete walls. But for a wolfman, concrete walls are comfort for a long night in. This was how it was always going to be. I would never hurt any living being, and that was a great comfort for me. I’d been through enough in my life to know what harming a living being could do. I hated the sound of suffering, sometimes I even hated the sound of the world around me. Here is was quiet, no sounds leaked through the thick walls around me. My mentor had brought me to this place.

We’d worked at the lumber yard together, and it’s amazing how you can bond as you cut through a forest everyday. My mentor Cecil Fields, had been a werewolf or more commonly known back then as a wolfman ever since he was 30 years old. And he still looked 30 years old. But to a kid fresh out of high school with starry eyes and rose colored glasses, Cecil Fields was a jaded old man. In fact he was a lot like a Father to me. Funny how you realize so much about someone after they’re gone. And he had brought me to that same basement one night precisely on the full moon. He promised me he wouldn’t hurt me, so I sat in his basement and waited for what he wanted to show me. I was suspicious of the basement, but I trusted him enough to stay put.

I remember how he changed, how his body became deformed and filled with hair. It wasn’t like in the movies, it was quick and painless. He looked like a big black dog standing on it’s hind legs. He stared at me with pure red eyes, and I knew he was still in that mind. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t lose yourself in that form. But of course, my little idiot self screamed their head off and scrambled across the room, falling on my own damned shoe laces and smacking my head against the concrete. I was bleeding like crazy, and was lucky I didn’t die then. I still regret screaming and doing that. I was frozen on the floor, my ears ringing from the echoes of my screams. That was all the time he needed. It was over quickly, and I should have been lucky he didn’t decide just to kill me right there. A swift bite to the arm, quick and as gentle as possible. The bite didn’t tear out my flesh or muscle, but in my terrified state it looked that way. He went to the corner of the room and curled up, satisfied with his work. I waited for the sunrise anxiously, knowing now why I couldn’t open the door. I cried like a little kid, begging him not to kill me. It should have been more obvious than it was, but he explained it all to me when he changed back in the morning.

And I was back with him in the basement, this mentor staring at me from across the room. My first full moon. I was a little too happy about it, knowing how proud Cecil was of me. Knowing that we were bound together, an inseparable pack of two. And I would have loved that, to stay in his guidance forever. But that just wasn’t my luck. Cecil gazed at me like I was his first born child, yet in his proud stare there was sadness, maybe even a little pity.

“ I cursed you, Porfirio.” He muttered, sitting on the concrete ground with a groan. “ What, with eternal life? Never getting old?” I was naive then, just a kid with a starry eyed, dewy dream of never getting old. Typical Peter Pan or some bullshit like that. “ No, you dear boy.” Cecil sighed, staring down at the ground with the face of a tired man. “ Then with what?” “Being alone.” “ But you said-” “ Forget what I said.” “ T-Then-” “ I’m dying.” He held his head in his hands, and for the first time, his face grew red and he burst into tears. “ Cancer, cancer they told me it’s in my back near my spine. There isn’t shit I can do, Porfirio. After all these years there isn’t shit I can do!” He stood, and punched the wall, leaving his first bloodied and a dark stain on the sterile gray. The moon was out now, and our features were changing. I felt the energy going through me like I was caught up in ocean waves, drowning me as I became something greater. The peace I had felt was gone, filled with sorrow and fear of what was to come. The waves of this new power held no meaning, because the image I’d had of the future had shattered into some fragment of a nightmare. And that’s reality would be for a very, very long time…

Now what do I remember of Albert? Well, for starters, his name was pronounced in the pretentious French way where you pronounce it like Al-Bear. Secondly I remember what he did, of course, I doubt anyone could forget that. And thirdly, I remember his face from my childhood; a kid that sat in the back of the class, the smart one that got bullied a lot by his parents and the kids in the schoolyard. I don’t remember if I was one of them, and I wonder still if it would have made a difference.

I remember writing in for a roommate. The typical “person wanted” ad-no stoners, no conservatives, no devil worshippers, I was looking for your average Joe, Jane, and John. Then Albert came, Albert from my home town. That was a weird coincidence, considering our home town was half a country away from the point where we both ended up. I didn’t know he moved, but I remembered that we both had our reasons. Mine was an escape from my abusive parents and from the death of Cecil. For him, something similar to the first reason, maybe even the second. We didn’t talk about it, we know where we came from, there was no reason to know specifics. In fact, I thought I was going to enjoy living with Albert for a while. He seemed nice, and didn’t care when he found out my secrets. I thought he was a good roommate for a long time, until…

It started.

Albert wasn’t the hot rod in the dealer’s lot. He was a beat up Ford MK1. His chin was sunken into his neck, and his skin was the color and texture of a rotten peach. He was awkwardly built and lanky, and to make this guy a real winner, his shoe size couldn’t have been more than 6 and a half. The only feature that stood out were his eyes. They were bright blue, like the picture of the ocean on a postcard. They locked you in, held you there for a long time. Something about them was unsettling, but I could never place my finger on what. I thought it was something wrong with me, like everything else. Like I said, he was a “nice guy”. So I shoved my suspicions about Albert aside and tried my best to get along.

But everything changed when he actually found a girlfriend. Peg was a factory worker and she wasn’t a real looker either. She had features similar to that of a brick wall, and an attitude exactly of that. She smelled like grease even after she showered. I didn’t care about Albert’s love life, because to be honest I was pretty confused about my own at the time. One night I heard Peg screaming in Albert’s room. I thought it was some fetish thing, so I stayed quiet in my room until morning. Her screams still ring in my ears sometimes, because oh god, how could I be so stupid? The next morning, Albert emerged, disheveled but otherwise looking completely proud of himself. But something about him seemed…wrong. As in more wrong than usual.

Half asleep and mulling over a cup of instant coffee, I leaned over the table and watched as Albert went over to make himself a cup. “ So, uh, will I have to make her breakfast later?” “Nope,” he said, his voice joyful and half laughing at my question.

“ I didn’t hear her leave last night,” I said, taking a long sip of my coffee.

“She didn’t.” “ Then, is she-”

“ I killed her, Porfirio.” It didn’t seem real for a few moments, and I felt in many ways disconnected from myself. There was Porfirio, looking like a deer in headlights, eyes blurring with disbelief. His heart had fallen past the pit of his stomach and feet, melting into the floor. And then he asked, “ What?” As if he didn’t already know. You heard the screams, genius. Then he started making connections, and there it was, the elephant sized tiger in the room. Porfirio stood up, almost falling over on the table, and he ran over to Albert’s, room, throwing open the door and almost breaking it off of it’s hinges. And there she was.

Peg was horribly mutilated when Porfirio found her. Her breasts were cut off, and she was cut through the middle with a jagged knife. Her organs spilled out in a bloody mess on the floor. Her eyes were wide open, blood shot with the fear and agony she had gone through in her late life, her mouth still hanging wide in a scream. But I didn’t answer her screams for help and mercy. I, Porfirio, had stayed silent in my room the whole night. My heart wretched and beat, pounding as though it was tired of me and wanted to be free. I didn’t realize how heavy I was breathing. My eyes darted across the floor which was stained in a dark color.  I looked over to where her bottom half, or what was left of her bottom half, was. It was cut apart, and stacked like lincoln logs in the corner of the room. The lower half of the torso almost like a crumbling house with the organs and spine protruding out from it, the skin marred from knife wounds. The legs were leaning on the side of it, cut off from the lower half, the soles of the feet touching and holding it all together. There was no beauty in it, in murder there is no beauty or grace. Murder is not art, and I’m sorry if your fucked up mind ever tells you it is.

I felt a metallic and bitter taste rise on my tongue, and out from my mouth flowed the coffee I drank and bits and pieces of what I had ate the night before. It even took me a few moments to realize that that new fluid solidifying on the floor had come from me.

And behind me,

Albert was laughing.

“ With what you are, and you can’t even stomach this?” He said with some sort of dry, fucked up laugh that I never wanted to hear again. I was a werewolf, dammit, but I wasn’t a killer! My mind was blank as it searched for answers, my mind darting across the carnage. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move, it was as though the moment had locked me into a cage where I would never escape.

When I could move again, I was ten minutes late for work. That fucking asshat had made me ten minutes late. I forget a lot of what Albert told me, but I couldn’t respond so it wasn’t really important. Something about art I think. But any person would know what he did wasn’t art. I went into my room, and thought about it all being some sort of dream. But it wasn’t. I could still hear Albert cleaning up his “masterpiece” in the other room. I slid on the black pants which were a typical quota for where I worked, and I noticed that my legs were still shaking. My hands shook with them. I buttoned my pants with my fumbling hands and slipped on my red shirt. I pushed myself off from the bed and went over to my mirror, taking some hair tonic on my comb and slicking it through my black hair. I was ready to go, but I looked like a deer after it’d been hit by a car and left on the side if the road to die. I figured there was nothing I could do to fix that, and I tried my best to head out into the world and be a functioning being.

That was one of the hardest shifts at the Five and Dime I’d ever done. My eyes kept darting to the clock, watching the black hands tick onto each number, going onto the calendar to see the moon schedules. Full moon next week. Full moon, and what would I do? What could I do? How could I fix this? I said absent minded hellos to the customers, half hearted “have a nice day”s. Occasionally, a “buenos dias” and a “gracias”, and each time one of the abuelas tried to start a conversation, she noticed something was wrong. After I refused to tell her why, she scurried off to make a big lunch or something. Damn, did I want to tell her. I wanted to gush out my feelings, cry and melt onto the counter about how my roommate was a murderer. I wanted confess like I was the murderer. I felt guilty, like a man being convicted of his crimes on death row. My mind kept calling me back to the room, and I sure as hell didn’t know what to do about it. I couldn’t kill Albert, because in my heart I knew that I wouldn’t finish the deed, and he’d find a way to frame me for the murders. I couldn’t tell anyone-if I did, I’d be shot up as soon as I turned on the full moon. It was perfect conditions for Albert, and I cursed my rotten luck. I’d climbed the hill to fall back down it again, and I wondered if that would be how I spent my eternal life now that Cecil was gone…

The answer came to me after Albert had killed so many, I had to stop counting them for my own sanity. Albert was an expert by now, and he was coming up with new “creative” ways to get rid of the bodies. Leaving them in the woods or throwing them into a river, turning them into soaps and sweets he’d share with cronies at his office job. Knowing how to clean the blood, taunting me at work as he went into my Five And Dime and buying supplies to clean his messes. I felt myself being torn apart with every kill, separating like egg whites and yolks for a demonic pastry. I wanted so desperately to do something about it, but I couldn’t. Albert knew it too, Albert mocked me for it. When his eyes locked me in, they were challenging me, daring me to do something about it.

Then it appeared to me one night.

I was in the kitchen, sitting at the table. Our counter space was occupied by a junk tv I bought. I turned it on to drown out the screams, to drown myself in whatever protests were happening. I turned it on after work, sitting to watch the daily news that was never new at all. But that day was an exception. It was turned on to some hippies out in California, a reporter with a pole up their ass along with McCarthy’s head in the mind talking about why these younglings were important.

LSD.

LSD. Sweeping the college campuses and the student protests, they said. Said protesters reported how it opened the mind, how it felt like heaven was right in front of them, how great they felt. An escape from reality.

It sounded foolproof.

If I went wolf during a trip, I could kill Albert with ease while having no idea what I was doing! And even if I didn’t, it could help me with how I was feeling, help me find a way to kill him. It was perfect. “ Why are you smiling?” Albert asked, staring back at me as he did the dishes.

“ I wanna try it,” I said, pointing at the television screen.

He shot me a suspicious look. “ Why?” “ Why not?” “ You can’t be serious. Those protesters with their liberal bullshit wouldn’t know their head from their asses.” Well, looks like Albert really didn’t fit one of my roommate specifications after all. “ Listen Albert, I just, uh, have a good feeling about it.” I shifted in my chair, and I realized then my smile. Albert asked about out but I didn’t really pay attention to his question. “You’re going to the college today, right?” Albert, much to my disgust, had recently taken an affinity to killing college students. Told me it was something about the vitality and robbing of innocence that got him off.

Albert nodded, “there’s going to be a frat party tonight.”

“I’ll go with you and I’ll get it there!”

Albert thought about this for a minute, shooting me a sideways glance that made an anxious feeling rise into my heart. It didn’t matter if he said no really, but maybe I could prevent another murder if I took the LSD before he killed somebody. A part of me still feared the consequences, but a larger part of me was desolate-it had no fear or much of anything really.  Maybe LSD could fill it with something, but then again that was pure assumption based on this horrible, wonderful plan I had.

I sat in the front seat with Albert as we drove to the college. He’d been hesitant around me the whole day, and for the first time, I started to reconsider my plan. What if Albert was preparing for the moment I was going to trip like I had? What if he sat in his cubicle office job the whole day, answering phones and typing out sheets, all while thinking about all the ways my trip could hurt him and his plans? With the way he looked at me, it wasn’t too far fetched. “ You sure about this whole LSD thing?” Shit. “ Yeah, of course I’m sure,” I responded, staring out the window. I watched people passing by on the street, my sweaty palms against the dashboard, and the quick beating of my heart. I tried to focus on the people outside, and imagining how Albert would kill them. Although, this made me think about what if I were to do it on my trip, so I quickly abandoned the thought.

There was no moment of bravery, there was no moment at all which I realized “I am doing this no matter what because it is right.” No, I was fucking petrified about the consequences, I was resolute that everything could go wrong and that was it. I wasn’t a hero then. I’m still not. I was and am just a wolfman, going through the desert, horribly out of place but with no way to get out of it. I didn’t have Cecil . God, Cecil  would have killed Albert right after Peg. But I didn’t have that courage. If I was trying to be Cecil , I was only a dull reflection of who he was. So I never tried to be Cecil , though at that moment, I wondered what he would do. I wondered how he would have torn Albert apart, gutting him alive as he screamed, just like his victims before him…

I wondered if I could get to that.

The night air hit me like a bat to the stomach. Going into the clammy, hot frat party, it wasn’t hard trying to find drugs. Most of the students were already drunk, high, or tripping or somewhere in between all of it. The place smelled of pheromones and drugs. I watched them for a few moments, sinking into the crowd. I only looked around 18 after all, so me going into the party wasn’t a huge stretch of the imagination. I surveyed them, some of them were kissing and fucking, some of them were looking at themselves as though they’d never looked at themselves, and others were shouting about absolutely nothing at the top of their lungs. The only lights on were stage lights, multicolored and in various random places around the room. Some of them were out,so I decided that people were moving them. The air buzzed with loud radios, announcers playing the latest tunes, people babbling on about pointless advertisements on things the kids could probably never buy, and people reciting the nightly news. I almost felt high just being in the place, taking in the fumes. But eventually, I found one with acid. The transaction was simple, I handed him a roll of money, and I had 5 strips. They were at the bottom of a small brown bottle with the label scratched off. Sketchy, but I didn’t really care what they did. I just wanted to be out of my skin.

I returned to the car successfully, the bottle in my pocket. I felt proud of myself, sitting in the back seat of the car, laying down with my head against the back of the window. I heard footsteps approaching the car, and I turned my head to see Albert walking a college girl towards the car. She had unkempt brown hair, and wore a flowing dress of some thin material. She got into the side of the car, and by the way she was stumbling, I could tell she was drunk out of her mind. Albert’s tie was undone a little, and he had a look of excitement on his face. Watching that disgusting, putrid piece of filth stumble with the girl towards the car made me want to vomit.

I heard the car doors open, and slam shut. The girl in the front seat smelled like she had taken a bath in a whiskey keg, and she chuckled. “ Who’s the Puerto Rican in the back?” She asked, her voice slurring. I didn’t bother correcting her and telling her I was Mexican. It wouldn’t make a difference. She mattered, yet she didn’t matter at all. She was a human life, a woman who deserved to become someone great. She could have the cure for cancer in that brain of her’s, and humanity deserved to have that. She didn’t deserve to get killed by Albert, snuffed out too soon. Her family didn’t deserve to mourn her and never find the body. She didn’t matter because I had no right to know anything about her, and she had no right to know anything about me. I could have told her to run, tell her Albert was a murderer, but that wouldn’t do any good. She’d run out of the car, inform everyone at the party, and Albert would deny it. If the police came, there wouldn’t be enough evidence linking him to anything, and he’d be let go. Then he’d tell the world about my existence, and I would die. Albert would kill more people. So I couldn’t do anything, except sit there, and hope the little pieces of paper in that bottle would end this whole mess… “ Don’t mind him,” Albert said, smiling to the full extent which his sunk chin could allow. I wondered if the girl could even tell how ugly Albert was. I despised how he talked about me. It reminded me of how my Mother would tell the women in her church group about all the things I’d done wrong, when I’d done absolutely nothing. I was a good child and she fucking knew it. My Dad just filled my body with scars for no reason other than he liked to have that power over me. Albert liked to have that power over me. He liked knowing I was a wolfman, and he liked knowing that to keep me quiet. He liked knowing that anything I said to the girl would do nothing. He liked having me powerless.

But not for long.

By Jesus, not for long.

A few minutes into the drive, I opened the bottle with the strips. I shook it until two fell into my palm, and I was surprised by the color. They were bright, neon colors like pink and green. I wondered if I hadn’t been handed something else by the college junkie, but then I realized it didn’t really matter. I popped two on my tongue, and counted three more left in the bottle. I was tempted to take them all in one go, but I didn’t want to wake up dead. Being dead wasn’t too bad in the situation, hell, maybe that’s how they’d catch Albert; but I wanted to know that Albert would be dead. I wanted him dead and gone. I wanted to know that he wouldn’t hurt anyone anymore, even this girl in the front seat. Maybe her life wouldn’t go anywhere, and she’d wish she was dead just like me. But there was still a chance it wouldn’t. And that chance, was worth it.

I closed my eyes and felt the strips dissolving, and I let myself go calm, knowing that this was only chance one. I had three more left. Three more…

I felt my skin grow more receptive to the air around me, the staunchness of the car. My senses became more aware of the insides of the car, and I felt like I could feel everything in myself. I felt like I could feel my brain firing off, my stomach processing my dinner. It felt like my life had ended, and I’d risen again, learning the layout of this new, beautiful body. I opened my eyes and looked at my arms, and my vision took me by surprise. Everything felt sharp, clear, as though I’d been seeing through a fog my whole life and it had recently cleared up. I laughed, and the sound echoed as though I was in a cave-no, the basement. Cecil. I laughed, and things started to change. They grew different colors-the leather came to have flecks of green, light blue, and in amazement I sat up and touched it. Albert and the person had began to talk again, and their voices became echoed was well, distorting as my thoughts seemed to talk, sounding out all around me. It was as though I was back in the party, only the party was myself. My thoughts moved at a lightning fast pace, marathoning in a circle around me. The place I was in felt new, it felt refreshed through this clear lense of colors that were so perfect. I wanted more. I moved my arms and felt the muscles within them contracting to commit to my movement, I felt in control. God, I was finally in control. For my whole life others had controlled me, my Father, Albert, with the exception of Cecil. God, Cecil, you should have seen this! I felt a flooding sense of joy and comfort come over me, nothing was wrong.

I forgot about Albert in more wonderful world.

He was so far away, and I was so close, so intimate with the world around me.

I was in heaven.

When the car stopped, I was very aware of it. I got out of the car, and onto the sidewalk. The world was fluid around me, as though each part was fragmented into many pieces like a stained glass mirror, only the pieces of glass were moving as though there was one great force pulling them. I walked up the stairs to the apartment, Albert was ahead of me and so was the girl. They became closer as though I had put a pair of binoculars upon them, and far away as though there was a football field of distance. The stairs grew bigger and smaller, and I paused on a few of them, thinking that if I moved, I would lose my footing and fall off the edge. The images then separated, one image layered with a rotating translucent version of the other. So I was back in the apartment, and I found myself completely in love with the tiles. I fell to the floor and watched them. They were changing to different colors, different patterns which moved like a river on the floor. And I touched these patterns, and found that when I came closer to them they faded. My thoughts had somehow gotten lost into a greater loop that was beyond myself, and I had forgotten about killing Albert. I was pounding my hands onto the moving patterns, the texture of the tile so sleek and glossy beneath my hands. And new voices joined my trekking thoughts, asking me in both English and Spanish about things I hadn’t thought about before. I felt so happy, so happy that tears slipped down my face, feeling so hot yet comforting. “ Beautiful,” I said, my voice joining the continuous echo.

Around me, shapes began to rise, I had lost all sense of time although I know it was slipping by like the patterns around me. Shapes rose and went to the ceiling which flowed like an expanding and shrinking river, rose up to touch the ceiling and fall back onto the fluid tile. The pure, free joy came over me and surrounded me as I laid down on my back near the table. I had almost forgotten there as I watching the towers rise and fall. I fell in love with it too, stroking the sides like a soft animal. The spires swirled into the air then swirl back down, rise up from me, then swirl back down. It was mad, glorious, I loved it. Warm hands were touching me, all warm hands were pulling me down into the floor, warm hands that loved me. There was a great sense of everything being resolved, including Albert. Everything was okay. Heaven. Heaven was where LSD had brought me, a new bright world where I was free from anything and everything. A place where I could hear everything and nothing. It was beautiful.

Then, I found myself closing my eyes, feeling the great weight possessing them. I closed my eyes, and the world quickly went black.

When I woke up, I knew I was back in reality. The LSD had worn off, except for a large feeling in my chest. I sat up, hoping it would go away, and something thumped on the floor next to me. It was then I realized my shirt was covered in wet blood, and on the side of me with eyes wide open was the girl.

I’d failed.

I’d fucking failed.

Like the rest of Albert’s victims, she was cut in half. The torso now lay on the ground beside me, pale as a sheet with her skin sunken inwards. Only this time, I noticed that she was clean cut, as though someone had taken out the organs inside her. I let out a scream and curses.

“ Porfirio? More like, Poor Fear Rio.” Albert laughed at his own fucking stupid joke, which didn’t at all alter the total panic I felt from the girl’s dead body and my own failure. “You killed her, you know. You killed her in that form of yours!”

“ ¡Calláte, hijo de la chingada!” I spat bitterly, my words coming out in sharp, fearful breaths. I looked down at my hands, feeling dizzy and unable to catch my breath. He was a lot worse than an hijo de la chingada, but at that moment those were the only words my mind child find. I suddenly missed the LSD trip, because it felt better than reality-hell, it felt more real than reality. I was resolute that I didn’t kill her. It was impossible. I knew I was on the ground the whole time, and Albert was too fucking stupid to even make it look like I killed her. Although I knew this was true, it added onto the sudden hatred I had for myself. The feeling of failure and self betrayal. I felt like vomiting as I looked over to the dull eyes of the girl, and I pulled my legs to my chest and put my face down into my knees. I couldn’t even ask Albert if I had turned to my wolf form during the entire thing, because I was panicking to much to think of anything but the dull eyes, no longer watery from her drunkenness. Both living and dead, they seared themselves into my brain, and all the revelations I came to during the acid trip had disappeared. I felt exactly where I had started-

Powerless.

I took and shower to wash the blood off, relied on the sun to dry my hair, and got on my uniform to go to the Five And Dime. Before I forgot, I rummaged through my clothes from the night before to get the medicine bottle with the LSD. I put it on the top of my dresser, and stared at it as I prepped myself for work. My hands went slowly on the tie, and suddenly the girl’s eyes came back into my mind. I pulled it tighter, and tighter, and tighter-

Until my eyes focused on the LSD again.

I released my grip on the tie, coughing a bit and feeling the all too familiar wave of nausea creep up from my stomach. “ I won’t fail again,” I promised myself and the bottle. “ Two more tabs of it, and I’ll kill him. I won’t fail again.” Fear was surrounding me, closing me up in the darkness like a trash bag smothering my body. Trash bags were Albert’s signature when he threw someone into the river. I had failed. I had robbed her family a chance of having a daughter. I had robbed her of a chance to live her life, whether that be for the better or for the worse. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, still don’t, but at that moment I felt like I killed her. Maybe I couldn’t kill Albert, whether that be on acid or not. I was a coward, I knew that much. I had defied all the bravery that I had ever seen in Cecil, I spat on his legacy when I was supposed to carry it on. A headache throbbed in my skull, an alarm to fire off that I needed to go to work.

It was like I’d witnessed Peg’s death for a second time, only this time I had a plan. Everything I did felt dull and mechanical, rehearsed over and over. Any stamina that I’d gained from working and escaping the apartment was gone, drained by the dead girl’s eyes that stared down on me. I tried to think about my trip, remember what I’d seen and what I heard that had made me happy. It was all gone, gone…

I popped two strips in my mouth, the same as the last time. I closed my eyes for a few moments, then found relief in my senses sharpening. And it all came back to me, coming in like an old friend. The hurried thoughts, the voices, and the spires of color, the patterns like stained glass reaching into the sky as they touched the ceiling moving like a river of color.  I looked at my arms, expanding and retracting, full of color and light. It was then I felt myself rising, I was going somewhere else. I was floating along the air, I had become a different being. Around me the world had changed, I was no longer in a bed, I was no longer anywhere that I recognized.

This new world was full of the geometric patterns which I looked at with great awe, patterns that rose endlessly into a sky where they gathered and swirled together. Below me was a sensation like heaters blowing around me, then I felt myself changing, changing into my wolf form. Had I forgotten the full moon, or was it the drugs? This thought was lost in the echoing voices and thoughts that all seemed to pass by fluidly, like the blue and green surface where I stood. And when I looked up from where I stood, I saw a being absorbed by these colors, a familiar form almost like a mirror image of the form I had taken on. Only this image was not me. From it I gathered a familiar sense, as though I had found-

“ Cecil!” My voice became loud like a scream, echoing and remaining through the trail. I was so small in comparison to this wide, majestic place where I now was. It wavered, the images folding onto themselves and creating new ones, the world around me beautifully distorted save the being before me. The rapture of seeing Cecil was so immense, and I heard his voice again. Cecil, whom I had watched fade away in the hospital, whom’s coffin I lifted and left behind, Cecil, Cecil my mentor, my spiritual Father, whom I had mourned. Engulfed in the beautiful and unclear world, where we were both a part of something much larger.

“Do what is right,” Cecil told me, his words then getting lost. “ Kill Albert. Do not forget.” “Cecil!” I cried again in amazement, rushing towards him in the energy that I was.

“ You are strong. You are a part of something much greater, Porfirio. You are worthy. You are whole, and you are loved. What you are going through is a muddy stone in a river, a river of what your eternity shall be.” “ I get it,” I cried, my voice shaking through the world. “ I get it!”

Cecil neared me, his presence filling me with the paternal warmth and guidance it had offered me in the past. Gone was the image where he wasted away, gone was the weight of his coffin in my hand, gone, all gone. He was there, holding me, filling me with a purpose that I had forgotten. Filling me with faith, the hope, the love of myself that had gotten lost, that I never fully discovered. It felt like the gate to everything had been unlocked, and here I was, inside of it all, a part of it all. I may not be brave, yes. But that was alright. I was brave in the eyes of others, and bravery did not matter. I was myself, I was a part of something greater. I was a part of a loving world. And it was time for me to destroy something for that whole.

Instead of fading to darkness this time, I faded back into reality. When the effects were gone, there I was, lying on my bed. I got out of my bed and went to find Albert, fear coming over me like the waves of something that I felt when becoming a wolfman. I decided quickly on how to do it if it was not already done. I didn’t know if I’d killed him already or not.

          My thoughts were answered when I heard someone screaming in the next room, a man this time. Albert usually didn’t do double kills, but since he was, this was all more of a reason for it to happen tonight. I was running quickly, and only then I realized-

I had been in the form of the wolfman. I ran on my hind legs, feeling my paws running against the floor. I jumped on the door, knocking it down. I saw Albert, the man on the bed tied to it as Albert laced him with cuts that weren’t deep enough to kill him. He turned to me, and I saw the surprise widen his horrible eyes.

Surprise.

And horror.

Like the girl.

I bit into his stomach, taking a mouthful of his torso. I tasted his blood, felt his organs between my jaws, and tossed them aside when I felt the waves reversing. It didn’t matter. I kept him pinned beneath my weight as I changed back, and wrapped my hands around his throat. He tried to fight me off, but he was weak from my bite and his arms felt like rag dolls as they tried to push me away. I saw his face turn bright red as I squeezed his neck as tightly as I could, I saw it turn redder, then violet, then blue-and dead. His eyes lulled back in his head, and I continued squeezing, my grip as tight as it could go. Even though I knew he was dead, I threw his body off of the bed and watched it fall onto the floor with a thud. I went onto the floor, launching into obscenities, and I cut my hand as I pried the knife from his dead hands. He’s managed to cut me a few times, but he had failed once I had torn into his stomach. The truth possessed me, and I couldn’t stop. He was dead, but some part of me told me he was still living. I took the knife from his hands, and stabbed it, I continued stabbing it into his head until it split open, the brain flowing out like a smashed pumpkin. Then, a great sense of tranquility came over me.

I stopped, my breaths shaking my body, and I dropped the knife.

I looked at the victim on the bed, surprised, looking at me with fear. “Stupid,” I said to myself, although I was bound to break that habit sometime. I took the knife, and cut the rope at the boy’s foot. He seemed horrified, watching me in shock. He didn’t thank me, he just laid on the bed, filled with fear. I dropped the knife on the ground, and it clattered onto the floor. “ It is done.”

I left the room, my feet feeling heavy as the rush had faded. I’d done it. I’d fucking done it. I succeeded. I went back into my room, a great sense of relief and tranquility coming over me. And that was it. I turned to my mirror above my dresser, and saw myself, covered in blood. Covered in small nicks. Then, I saw the reflection of the pill bottle.

One tab left.

Why the hell not? Some part of me still felt disgusted in myself, felt wrong, although what I had done was the right thing. I may have killed him, but I prevented the death of future victims. I needed to be away from it again. I needed one last time to get myself away, one little reward for this thing that I had done. Maybe I’d even see Cecil again, and he’d congratulate me on my good work. Albert was my first killing, and my last.

My hands fumbled on the white lid, and I nearly dropped the brown bottle.

I let the small, green tablet spill out onto my shaking hand.

Shaking? I laid back on my bed, feeling relief and tiredness. This wouldn’t last long.

I slipped the tab onto my tongue,

And I went to heaven one last time.