Beautiful.
I check my body: The puncture wounds are still leaking and branches have added scratches. I hear outraged shouts, the men are still gathering. Not far upstream is a wood beam bridge. I need distance, and if the pursuit hasn’t started I can ditch the woods, at least for a while. A dog barks, which worries me. How can I throw it off?
Stripping, I enter the stream, scrub off the blood, and rinse my mouth. Back on the grass, I fold the men’s clothes into a rough square and start piling sticks onto them. When I’ve got enough, I wade out with the bundle, flip it over, and watch the stream carry it away. The clothes should have a stronger scent, amplified further by the water, so maybe the dogs will chase them. I scrub the shoes hard before crossing to the opposite side.
The bank is steep and slippery, but I make it. At the bridge, I start jogging to burn distance. Paths lead places, and I could be heading towards a bad one, but naked in the woods I’ll get more torn up and be slow besides.
I hear rapid footsteps and slip behind a tree. A man appears, likely summoned by the others. I crouch, and then launch myself straight at him, shoulder into stomach. Our impact bends the runner in half and shoves me upright. I stagger back a few steps, wrap my arms around the stranger’s thighs, and then slam him onto the ground. The head lands hard, probably on a rock because, after the briefest of pauses, the back of his skull starts vomiting blood. I retreat to watch, but decide time is something I can’t afford so I help things along.
His shirt is bloody, but it fits, and better his scent than mine. Plus, with the pants, the outfit offers some protection. I’ve earned keys, a wallet, and eleven dollars. His phone requires a passcode, so I toss it. The warm corpse tempts, but again, I can’t risk the time. I drag the body off the trail and continue.
Barking has replaced shouts. Time will be short if my raft ruse fails: People I can shake; animals have kept their skills. Ahead, a dim glow suggests buildings, so showing up there would be bad. I stop, close my eyes, deliberate. Then I hear it: the widening sound of an approaching car followed by the fade. A road. To the left.
I weave through the trees. In spite of the clothes, I still add injuries, which I note, remember, and treasure. I discover a wide, sudden hill—likely push-off from a grader—and scramble up. I emerge on a road that’s small, unlit, and blistered with frost heaves. To my right, it curves toward the glow, so I go left, glancing back, hyper-aware.
I skitter into bushes. The pickup truck zips past again. Brights on. Patrolling. After a curve in the road separates us, I continue. Finally, I hear fast tires hum and glimpse a flash of headlights. At the last of the bushes, I crouch, my ragged breaths sawing into the quiet. Trees spread both directions along this maintained, two-lane road, but the dark conceals how far, and without cover, sunup would pin me. How long can I walk or run before collapsing? I’m already fatigued, but I can’t stay for dogs to find. I have to move far and fast, and that requires a car. I start to smooth my hair, then drop my hand and laugh. The old man’s residue is off my face, but my arms are scratched and my shirt has some of the runner’s spatter. What sane driver would fall in love with this hitchhiker?
Soon, I hear the pickup behind me. It turns left, onto the road. Three minutes later it passes in the opposite direction, under the speed limit and still glaring its brights. If they sent just one car to this stretch they must not have nailed which way I went. I have some time.
I spot headlights too low to be the pickup, barreling, highway speed.
I stagger shouting to the roadside, waving one arm wide to accentuate the blood and clutch my chest with the other, silently pleading for a soft-headed son-of-a-bitch. The lights bleach my vision. I hear braking. I try to look helpless as I limp forward. It’s a nice car. This guy must be doing well.
The passenger window glides down. “My God, what happened? Let me call an ambulance.”
Make it seem a done deal. “Can’t wait, take me to a hospital! A fire station with paramedics, anything.”
“Hillsdale’s five minutes away.”
“Hurry.” I get in, sit heavily, swing the door shut. Then I close my eyes, memorizing the creak of the seat as I lean back. I play the sound through my head several times. “Please.”
The car accelerates. I open my eyes. A vehicle approaches, slow, with brights blazing. I smile as they pass. Guys like me always win in the end. We may not deserve it, but we do.
I allow a few minutes to pass for distance. Through the buzz of the driver’s incessant begging for me to hold on, I recognize the song on the radio and commit the melody and lyrics to memory. I try to pin the smells in the car: cooked meat, probably from the plastic take-out shell; fake pine from an air freshener. I shake my head. Before we reach Hillsdale, I need a plan. As I’m considering, the urgent chatter sputters. I swing my gaze. The man has pulled out his phone to alert the police.
I grab the dashboard hard as if I’m falling. “Pull over now, I’m going to throw up!”
Heightened panic and sympathy and maybe disgust, the man swerves to the shoulder. When he shifts into park, I grab the steering wheel with my right hand, and folding my fingers at the second knuckles into a sharp flat fist, I strike the side of his neck, hard. A violet stain, like wine spreading through linen, blooms under his skin. Quickly, immaculately, the man bleeds out from the popped artery. I unbuckle him and drag him out of the passenger side. After rifling the pockets and appropriating his socks and clean shirt, I roll the body down the embankment. I get back in and drive. I need to put as much distance between me and my pursuers as I can. I glance at the gas gauge: Half empty.
I smile.
No, half full.
On the industrial outskirts of Bloomington, I guide the car into a warren of warehouses and cheap apartments. The trunk has nothing worthwhile. I use a takeaway napkin to wipe down the steering wheel, the turn signal, the door handles, the trunk latch, and the keys, which I drop on the sidewalk.
People and cars and the sun start to emerge. Everyone ignores me. Pausing at a corner, I wonder where to go next. I can’t reclaim my old life—by now it’s been divvied up, stolen, impounded.
I’m free to head anywhere.
Anywhere begins at a hole-in-the-wall eatery with barred windows and weepy coffee. I examine my scratches and cuts: scabbing, I can heal; I’m not mindless, so not a zombie.
What, then?
Although I’m not hungry, I order the full breakfast to buy time to think.
A bright red plastic bucket sitting on scuffed faded linoleum—that came first, gradually, as if I were floating over a sand-covered skylight while an unfelt wind brushed the grains away. Something was pressing around my face—a padded hole, like on a massage table. I couldn’t move, my muscles were crunching and relaxing under my skin, internal fists hammering to get out.
The cafe’s sour-lipped matron delivers my meal without ceremony. I slice everything—eggs, bacon, hash-browns, ham—and eat them in rotation to keep each taste vivid, memorable.
The convulsions stopped and hands pulled sharp things out of my body, rolled me sideways. Thought I’d fall, but ended up on my back, looking up at the undersides of a chin and a nose. Rumbling, the ceiling started sliding, then a doorframe, and then the moon and trees. After bouncing over uneven ground, we entered another cabin.
I shred a mouthful of ham; the grain and savoriness remind me of later in the memory. I resist skipping.
Two men, one a young blond, the other old and heavyset, hauled me by the armpits onto a tarp-covered recliner. The room had three old trunks, all closed; rows of wall-mounted shelves with shoes and neatly folded clothes; a chipped pink chest of drawers; three chairs around a chunky wooden table; and a crowded corner with an electric stove, a sink, and a refrigerator, from which the young man took two beers.
The older man accepted a bottle. “He’s quickening too fast. Find Andrew, and tell him to hurry with the juice. Look at that sin-filled bastard’s face. He needs to be gelded now.” After the young one left, the man waddled over. “Hang tight, you’ll soon be blessed with happier thoughts.” He pulled a cloth from his overalls and started wiping me down. The reek of life rolling off that man’s body dug into my nostrils like fat, searing fingers, lit my nerves. I swung my knuckles into both his temples. I probably imagined hearing his cranial arch snap, and slash into his brain, but what a sound! Blood poured out his nose. The body fell onto me. I’d never sunk my teeth into human flesh, but it immediately felt like the most natural and rewarding thing I’ve ever done.
I realize I stopped eating my breakfast, and have been staring into space with a rabid craving. The cook has joined the waitress up front, wiping the counter as an excuse; the two other diners glance away.
I set down my fork and inventory: I have forty dollars in cash, credit cards that will serve as pushpins if I dare use them, an expensive watch, a wedding band, and a shirt several sizes too large. Selling the watch and ring will get me more cash. I need clothes that fit so I don’t stand out. A weapon would be handy. I pay, ask for directions to a pawn shop, and end up halfway presentable.
The state needs a new insurance commissioner. The police found his body and his abandoned car drew a line to this city. I have to leave before either the police or those resurrecting yahoos find me, but I won’t get far on five dollars. Worse, I cut myself shaving this morning and didn’t bleed or heal—apparently, my body requires a very specific diet. I have to act quickly on both fronts.
On a library computer, I research neighborhoods and bus schedules, narrow the options, and then use half my funds to travel to the northern outskirts. In a dying strip mall’s parking lot, I note an old Dodge Dart with a thick layer of pollen and rain-curled sun-bleached flyers. After dusk I break in, pop the hood, and get it working—just a loose wire. Some idiots stay poor for a reason. I put in two dollar’s worth of gas, wipe it down, and park near a subdivision.
Workers come home, traffic thins, it gets late. I worry I’ve waited too long, but a Buick shows up. Hooray for workaholics! I start up the Dart and fall in behind, tailgating slightly. At a stop sign, I tap the bumper, turn on the hazards, get out.
I watch the man ease out, uncertain. Yeah, I’m underdressed and driving a shitty car. Aren’t you special? “Sorry, my fault. I don’t think I did any damage. You got insurance?”
“Me? Don’t you?” Outrage overtakes suspicion.
I swing my arm up scratching the back of my head. “Used to.”
When the man bends to inspect the bumper, I smash my forearm onto his neck, below the skull. I pop the Buick’s trunk, heave the man inside, punch a throat artery, and recover my backpack from the Dart. As I turn the first corner in the Buick, I see headlights slowing at my abandoned car. Then I’m gone.
I tremble. The proximity of food claws at my self-will, and the effort from lifting a body into the trunk, of even existing, ring against my starved muscles like piano hammers, but I keep my driving steady. Behind a closed dry cleaner’s, I drag the man between the cinderblock wall and a dumpster. Pulling out one of my knives, I cut open the man and begin feeding on organs. The savory warmth fans shivers through my body, brings me back. Sated, I clean my hands, face, and knife under the building’s outdoor faucet, then pocket the cash and wrench off the ring. I toss the wallet onto the passenger seat.
The corpse’s phone rings—his wife will be wondering where he is. Probably no one will find him until this place opens, but even without ID, they’ll identify him fast so close to home.
I need to leave.
I start up the Buick and settle back. This car suits me. I need better clothes. I circle to the south of the city, near where I abandoned the other car, and toss the wallet onto an empty sidewalk, hoping the locals will help a guy out by using those credit cards like good boys and girls. I head west, I drive all night.
Two good days, but this morning my photo is everywhere. A missed fingerprint in the car. Bite wounds matched my dental records, saliva my DNA. The police visited my grave, which gave them more to think about.
Empty grave, cannibalism, serial killing, hysteria, huge reward—everyone knows and will hunt me. Everyone. I keep to the emptiest streets. I’m terrified each passer-by will stretch their eyelids and shout. I make it to an overpass encampment, praying they don’t watch the morning news. I trade my decent clothes for ones I’d burn in better days, a hat to shade my face, and a stained backpack sutured with safety pins.
Outside the city I stick to back roads, walking against traffic to discourage kindly motorists. By early afternoon I’m beat. At a stream, I wash my face and drink. My reflection reveals wan skin and a deathly look. That’s going to draw as much attention as being on the news. I need real food.
An hour later, I’m resting under a tree near a campsite, adding birdsongs and a hidden but audible creek to my accumulated memories. I reminisce about my escape from the city and sear it into my neurons. Half an hour passes, and an overweight teen approaches. At the sound of tires on gravel, he sticks out his thumb, and when the RV passes he continues in my direction. I assess him: longish hair, unripe beard, fleshy face, and a tee shirt broadcasting principled earnestness.
“Hey,” I call hoarsely, “a little help?”
His gaze swings to my pasty, unwell skin. “Holy crap, are you all right?”
“Heatstroke, got out of the sun, but I’m still burning up. I hear running water over there, help me?”
“I have apple juice,” the boy offers, fumbling as he approaches.
“Need to bring my temperature down. Help me to the water.”
The guy shakes off his gear and helps me to my feet. As we work through the tall grass, I let my knees buckle a few times. If it’s too easy he might realize a complete stranger’s leading him away from witnesses, although with that fresh and strong stink of weed, bad judgment may be all he’s got. I collapse again, and when Billy, as he’s introduced himself, tries to pull me up, I swing my fist into his nuts.
Billy doubles over. I climb aboard, wrapping one arm around his neck and grabbing the wrist with my other hand, I squeeze. Billy can’t call out, but he’s big enough to rise. I hook my legs around the boy’s waist. Billy doesn’t last long, and after he passes out I keep up the pressure, letting his brain grind to a halt. I let go when I’m certain that even if a pulse lingers, his mind is putty.
Salvation! But hunger and desire are hitting me so hard I see spots, and I can’t screw this up. I can’t. I force focus. Stumbling back to the tree, I retrieve my backpack and Billy’s gear. I strip, and then, finally, I tear into thoughtful, stupid Billy, whose arterial spray reveals he was still alive. This trip didn’t end the way you expected, did it, Billy boy? But you know what, you’re on the same journey as everyone else. Just got there faster. Then I bellow a startled laugh. This is what I am—a reverse ghoul! Instead of eating corpses and robbing graves, I’m a corpse eating and robbing the living. I don’t know why that’s so funny, but I collapse in that pool of blood giggling like a stoner.
Sated, I search out the creek. Two girls are tossing flowers into the current and cheering the race. I wait, watching. Finally, a woman’s call draws them away. I slither down to bathe.
Back at the buffet, I inventory: Billy’s wallet has a little money, some traveler’s checks, and a photo of a girl out of Billy’s league, so probably a sister. His pack has four Tupperware containers, which I empty and fill with cut-up liver and lungs. I drag Billy into the bushes not too close to the creek. I wash my hands and feet again, dress, and leave, whistling the radio tune from the first night.
I’m back, bitches.
My notoriety grows.
My freedom shrinks.
After a week of traveling at night, living off Billy’s leftovers, then woodland critters, and now dumpster manna, my least favorite nickname—and my M.O. has spawned several—draws my eye to a newspaper box: The rest of Billy got found, announcing the direction I’d headed. I just stand stupid, feeling like I’m scrambling up an endless hill of gravel, sliding, sinking.
No.
I’ve never been lazy. I can climb up again, I know I can. But not by making careless mistakes and being reactive. I must plan.
Billy’s shifted attention elsewhere, so I work my way back to the city—a place familiar enough to think straight, opportunity-rich, and I’m now hidden behind ragged discards and wild hair across both scalp and face.
My face is whittling into a vulpine sharpness. Unnerving, but makes me even more unrecognizable. I walk right past the police; sometimes they even offer advice. Once, in a crowded plaza, I thought I spied the blond man from the cabin and felt almost anonymous enough to shadow him, learn how he tasted. His flavor I would remember, and savor, throughout eternity.
I’ve been panhandling for cash, cardboard sign full of tragedy, but right now, four am, when even the hootie-hoos have crawled off to sleep, I’m hungry and desperate. Thinking comes hard and I dearly need clarity. Even this misery I treasure, adding it to my archive. I recite it, alongside my other memories.
I spot her: An old woman I’ve seen sliding over sidewalks and around dumpsters and recycling bins. In an alley. Unconscious. Now there’s a life not worth living. I rush over and slit her throat. Someone else would do the same, eventually, or set her on fire, whatever. When my teeth break her gritty, sour rind, my mouth revolts. I pull back and dig the in blade deep, yanking out viscera. Some of it is vinegary and foul and diseased, but I find parts tolerable enough.
Afterward, I look down, horrified: her blood saturates my clothes. I have no way to hide what I’ve done. I run, hoping to escape the city before early risers emerge as the shadows evaporate.
I creep out from the bushes. The sun’s bloody crash into the horizon enthralls me, and between that end of the world and me lies a ranch. Night will arrive before I do. I close my eyes, fix the scene in my brain, and begin walking. I examine my arms: More hair has fallen out, as it has elsewhere, and my skin becomes shinier, scaly, and tough. My lips taste salty and feel numb. My elongating jaws ache. Is that from my diet? If I started eating humans again, would I revert? At least no one could recognize me now.
Twilight ripens to dusk, and I am close to my goal. Then I hear the gasp. Turning, I spy a young girl—ten or eleven. If I can get to her before she screams, she’ll make a delectable r meal. But even as the thought comes, she spins and runs.
"¡Ayúdame, Diego, chupacabra, ven rápido!"
I sprint. Enough distance separates us from the nearest buildings that I could kill her and drag her away before anyone pins where the cries originated. A silhouette appears.
"¡Aquí! Aqui!”
I swerve left as more emerge. As I flee, their voices sound stationary. They’re checking if the girl was harmed. And who wants to run after something that looks like me? I change direction. Why are they out here? Do they have a stake in chasing me? If they work at the ranch, it’ll take them a while to organize. I speed up, knowing I need to travel far tonight.
At my camp, I grab Billy’s backpack, and run toward the rising moon—that flour-white head ground smooth by distance, that stolen ghostly light, that lovely ‘face’ covered in dark impact bruises and features as deformed as my own. Each week my memory grows richer. Walking to catch my wind, I snap off a candelilla stem and roll it between my fingers, relishing the waxy texture, the zigzag bumps of denuded nodes. Absorbed, I almost ran straight into the man.
Startled, I twist sideways. A trigger clicks, followed by a rattling explosion. A Taser. I run, stumbling in the poor light. I hear voices, English without a foreign accent—a different group.
To my right, another figure approaches, and I swerve again. I glimpse flat, moonlit glints where eyes should be. Night-vision goggles. I won’t be able to shake them, but I can secure a weapon and a pair of goggles, reduce their numbers. I pull out two knives, wield them, and lunge toward the nearest. Before I’ve taken three steps, someone to my left shoots, jolting my body, rendering it useless.
They—four in all—carry me bound and gagged, shut me in a trunk, and drive. Are they bounty hunters? More than likely they’re my resurrectionist friends. How did they find me? I guess a trail of chewed people and mutilated livestock isn’t subtle. I shift, feeling for the trunk latch. This must be an older model—no inside release. I investigate the rest of the space, but it’s empty of any useful jacks or crowbars. I worm to a back corner, work off a brake light panel, and rip out the wires. If cops pull us over, I can kick up a racket. I’ll go down, but I’ll drag them with me.
Between chewing the gag tape and abrading it against the trunk’s rough carpet I’ve freed my mouth, but I remain silent, waiting. The men inside this austere wooden meeting hall peer at me with disgust and judgment, but I’m not memorizing them—instead, I focus on the pressure of men’s fingers holding me upright; the remaining duct tape’s weight on my skin; the nerves in my scraped cheeks and lips shimmering, like rapid popping bubbles of foam, with pain; the severe pine coffin resting on wide worn floorboards. Finally, an old, pinched-faced son-of-a-bitch steps forward.
“Daniel, we rebirthed you to aid us in serving our Lord and Savior, and by doing so might have helped you atone for your past. Instead, you have turned from this chance and chosen abomination. You have abandoned God’s image for a demon’s body. Therefore, we offer you a moment to ask for His mercy before we turn you over to His judgment.”
I laugh. “You want to know a secret?”
“You are not qualified to address—”
“I died. I know what’s beyond. None of you do—just guesswork and hope. Well, from my lips to your ear—”
No one stops us.
“He has foregone mercy. Seal him—”
I shout as the two men drag me to the coffin: “Forget Heaven and Hell. That’s the surprise: no sight, no smell, no touch, not even darkness or distance. Just thought. And how hard do any of you look at things? Taste them? Feel them? Memories fade, but thanks to you I’ve gathered tons. I took nothing for granted. Nothing for—”
The lid slams down, and I hear them fasten a strap, followed by the finality of nails.
“You hypocritical bastards are going to kill me?”
“The Lord forbids murder. We will return you to the earth and let Him decide your fate.”
“Bound and buried! You don’t trust your God to make the right choice, do you? Cowardly, self-righteous little bastards.”
The leader is full of opinions about that, but I stop arguing and begin shaving my breaths so I don’t exhaust precious oxygen on trash. When carried, I focus on the sway, the breaks in rhythm when one stumbles. I listen to the shovelfuls thud softer and fainter, like shingles of snow sliding off roofs.
I run through my experiences like a rosary, determined to remember every single sensation, including this second dying. Eventually the coffin’s interior flashes sparks of color. Between sensory deprivation and fading oxygen, my brain is starting to misfire. A gentle hill appears, topped by a giant white palace. Veins of gold run through the basalt outer wall and coil across a gap, forming gates.
I grin. I beat them after all. With their normal deaths, they will never see this—only me! We all die, and this is all there is of Heaven, and I alone will carry it into eternity.
The quakes of my laughter set off explosions of yellows and reds as trees sprout and begin squeezing music through the pores in their leaves. As I mount diamond-cobbled steps, naked shaven angels fly from the city to greet me, and Jesus—the one in paintings—opens the gates and spreads welcoming arms with palms that bleed sweet, nourishing entrails.
Beautiful! Wonderful!
The End