Inside the Fire

Chapter 15: Hunger

Wind whistles through the buildings. A high pitched sound winds it's wat with it, buffering the random passersby. The sun has passed it's summer and a few street lights gave turned on to avoid leaving the humans in the dark. Some of the scattered pieces of art have come alive, each one glowing in it's own ethereal way. With the unnatural dusk and the glowing of art, I am unable to enjoy any of it. Hunger is gnawing at my insides and has become impossible to ignore anymore.
Pacing in front of the place I live at, I scratch at my chin. Is this really what I want? Do I want to stay here? I could go anywhere, to any place on this planet, there's the issue of food... it's the same problem here as it would be anywhere! Different places with different views, what difference would it make I'm left to starve? At least here I know someplace that I can get a modicum of nourishment, as treacherous as eating it is proving to be. Adopting pets like the lab had, is out of the question. I can still taste the chemicals that had been pumped into the dog, the puppy. I can't bring myself to harm something that loved so completely, that it was necessary to drive it insane before it would be capable of killing.
Okay, killing people's pets for food is off the table. debilitating cramp overtakes my stumach, I hunch over myself, trying not to notice that I'm eating myself from the inside. This is a dangerous game, I need to eat, but I haven't been paid yet for my "work". No eating pets, no money to buy food, and as hungry as I am, eating humans makes me want to vomit.
People find it hard to see me, so... stealing may be my only option. I could always ask..? No, I need to figure this out for myself. I can't keep manipulating people. Even stealing could end me, I don't think I should do it while looking like a human. I've shape-shifted into a dog before, and returned to my original form. There's no garuntee that I will be able to turn back to a human. But I think I can still turn into a dog again.
No one would bother a roving dog, I could be a working dog. And carrying around groceries wouldn't look odd too. People have their food delivered to them by dog, a human carrying around groceries would look suspicious.
I can feel the dog is still here, wandering in the mental box I'd placed it in. Even trapped, it's content. To the dog, being in my mind gives it the all encompassing feeling that it isn't alone. I want to share it's enthusiasm, it's love for life. An alien feeling, wanting to live for the pleasure of existence. Instead of surviving day to day as I do now. But now isn't the time for such pursuits, I need a way to eat. I want to try eating human food, if I can stumach it, it'll solve my moral dilemma of needing to kill in order to live. Even thinking it puts a sour taste in my mouth, but if I can't control this desire, I don't think I'll ever be able to live comfortably with humans.
If I can live like the dog, no, to even try to live like it, maybe I shouldn't have to struggle. First off, being happy with my existence. I'm outside right now, it's late afternoon, humans are busy at work, sleeping, or having a late meal. So many are discontent, I try not to hone in on that. I focus on the part of their brain that reacts to act of eating, the flare of consciousness as they sleep, and in one particularly vibrant case, a human that sighs with pleasure at the quality of their work. With the sun on my back, my mind tuned in to the positives of human existence, excluding the kinds of experiences that I will never be able to enjoy myself, I take in the late afternoon air. I gulp it in, centering myself, picking out smells I find to be most pleasant.
Vanilla hand cream, floral laundry detergent, fresh cotton clothing. I can smell where people have been and where they've gone. Without tailing the smells, I focus on enjoying them. I try to imagine the lives they lead with just my sense of smell. Had I wanted to, I could pick out a particular person and follow it to all the places they had been, but I remain still. Staying where I am, I take in the atmosphere of the humans that had passed this particular spot on the pavement. I can smell their worries and doubts, those who were anxious to be returning to work. The thicker labored breaths of those who placed comfort above all else, and the slightest hint of metal from biomechanical lungs.
So many of these humans have pieces of themselves that have been replaced with hardware. It's an unspoken tragedy, all of them had lost someone or something and nobody talked about it. How familiar loss is to their existence, and none of them knew it was possible to complain about it. Everyone has suffered a loss, why would theirs matter? I can't help tying the thoughts of the people with the smells on the street. They are restless, lonely and fettered. Like their all in a cage of their own making. I want to know more.
I open my eyes, and take in my surroundings, the city shows no signs of the civil unrest, or of the constant, endless wars that all these humans have survived through. Are we really supposed to be okay with all this death? My body reacts physically to the thought of me dying, but these humans expect it. They've accepted that they will die. If it wasn't the war of their generation, it could be anything else. And after watching their friends die, and their bodies blown to bits, they don't mind it. I search through their minds, trying to find a single human that wasn't waiting to die.
The closest I got, was a school teacher, hoping to live long enough so that they would be able to touch enough lives. They wanted to instill hope into children under their care, a hope for the future that they nolonger housed. Curious, to want something for someone that you no longer possess. What drives them to want that? At that moment, a child looks up from a drawing, a tooth missing but their eyes gleaming, and I can feel the teachers heart soften ever so slightly. The innocence of this child touches the teacher past words that they can describe, and a feeling of fierce protectiveness of that innocence flares at the same moment that their heart warms.
I place a hand on my chest, over my heart, as if I were holding it. To feel the way the teacher does, I want that. I want something to want to protect with that verbosity. With a oneness that I rarely experience, my body agrees. Having something to protect is... a natural sensation. I sigh in relief, so I'm not all that evil, I am allowed to have more homely desires.
All I have to protect, is my one human friend, nothing about myself is something that I desire to hold dear. But Fai, after going through what she had, although common in this world, I think protecting her would help. What it is that she'll need protecting from, I don't know. I can be in that category of things to help her avoid. There isn't a chance that I'll avoid her though, I desire company too much, I am too selfish to drop her.
Even though human's smell exquisitely disgusting, It's getting harder to care. They bleed don't they? They are alive and have some type of nourishment? But they have plans, thoughts, and desires past what their bodies need. I think on the teacher again, their fierce love for the children. How can I take that from them? The animals are fine with being confined within me, but if I were to kill an unwilling human, my mind would be purgatory. I need to find some way to eat, someway to protect humans from me, most of all Fai.
I know that I do not love her, I've barely formed any kind of attachment to her, but she is here, and she is available. Would she choose to remain my friend if she ever knew what I was? She'd never believe me, unless I showed myself to her.
Ah, so exquisite is the pain in my muscles, I feel as though I'm about to burst out of this facade. All over my body my muscles twitch uncomfortably. I'm too scared to lose this form, life would become exponentially more difficult if I were to no longer look human.
"Yes it would."
I start, the stranger in glasses twirls his cane, a content smile on his face.
"Why did you come back?" I ask, "Dont you have somewhere to be?"
His eyebrows raise above what I know now are empty sockets.
"Time runs differently when you travel, I haven't seen you in years, how much time has passed for you?"
Looking at him, I can remember, I saw him at the library this afternoon.
"This afternoon?" He muses, "I'm not normally this imprecise..."
"Imprecise? Will you stop making comments that me ask more questions." I hiss, already frustrated. "All you do is talk and comment on what I'm thinking!"
"Stop. Doing. That." I move my hands as I speak and he freezes.
He touches his lips and smiles.
"Do you have nothing to say?" I ask angrily.
The stranger shrugs, and chuckles noiselessly. That's, unusual. I start to walk away from the home, and he follows after me silently, his throat muscles move as though he's humming. I don't know where I'm going, I won't go into my room with him following me. I don't know if I can trust him around my friend.
The dog thing... I'll need a vest? Will I be able to get enough food? Even in dog form, I don't know if I'll look enough like a dog. When I'd been the cat, I had been much larger and so much more savage looking. It stands to reason that I'd deal with a similar issue if I'm a dog. This would be so much easier if this region had wild life, and Tom didn't pay enough attention to his history to be of any help in locating an area where I could get some fresh food.
A hand falls on my shoulder, holding me in place, the stranger gestures to the side, pointing in a direction. I look the way he points, and shrug of his hand.
"Why?"
He frowns at me, and points in the direction again. Can he not talk? Impossible, he's been talking my ears off all day. He folds his arms, looking at me pointedly.
"What?" I ask.
He mimes sighing and grabs my arm to drag me I the direction.
"Le-" He puts his other hand over mouth, and lifts me with his other arm.
I try to struggle against him, I don't have time for his weird games! I'm so hungry that he smells good to eat. Wait, unlike regular humabs... he doesn't smell... awful? Could I maybe... eat him..? I'd shake the thoughts free from my head if I could break free of his iron grasp, I'm not a cannible! How could I think about eating him? Even still, my mouth is watering at how unrepulsive he smells.
The humans walking around us ignore us completely, no one finds it weird that some grown human man is carrying off a teenager. If I didn't already know that he isn't human, I'd think he'd get tired of carrying me. Eventually, he drops me in front of the square put filled with ashes. He wipes my saliva off his hand with exasperation and points down into the ash.
"You are something else!" I yell at him.
He folds his arms, his eyebrows lower with a rueful smirk. "Don't give me that look," I shut my eyes and rub at them,
"Fine, you win, what do you want to show me."
The stranger steps off into the ash and gestures for me to follow, I do cautiously. His rueful smile warms, and he turns from me and starts drawing symbols into the ash. He begins in the center, drawing them out in a circular spiral, all of them are interconnected. If I hadn't watched him write them, I'd have assumed that it was all a bunch of random scribbles, interlocking together but he'd written them such purpose, what do they mean?
Next to the mass of symbols he writes in the human language, 'are you going to let me speak now?'
Let him speak? He's not talking because I asked him to? No, I can feel the truth that bile at the back of my throat, he can't speak because I told him not to.
"Do you know who I am?" He must, if I have the ability to silence him, if I'm the one that called him.he must know me from before. "Please, tell me." I beg.
"I do." He says, only confirming my direct question.
"Who am I to you?"
He puts a finger to his lips in a hushing gesture and shakes his head back and forth. So he won't tell me that.
"So you have to do whatever I tell you, but you don't have to answer my questions?" Seems direct questions are the only way to get him to answer, and I'm apprehensive about letting him speak freely again.
"Yes." He nods.
"That sounds frustrating." I guess.
He shrugs and I remember something he said, that it was his fault. I've already taken his freedom, at one point, he has to do anything I ask him... It would only be insult to injury if I didn't let him speak. It's the right thing to do, and I brace myself to be exhausted and angry again.
"You may speak." I say.
He smiles,
"Thank you, now to answer your more vague questions." He spreads his arms wide, "This is a nexus point."
"With all the trapped souls here, their quite literally ripping hole into the fabric of this reality, so normally you'd need the Dark Forest, but here, only a quick universe tearing hole is necessary."
He stands and looks at his tangled web of symbol.
"That will tear a hole in this reality?" I ask, eyeing is warily.
"It's not as bad as it sound." He scratches under his chin in a familiar motion, "Realities are good at paying themselves back together, otherwise this world would have torn itself into several disjointed timeliness every year they hold a decade war."
"Is war what loosens the reality?" I stare at the raised placc with the words inscribed in it.
"No, it is souls. We're standing in a graveyard, without a proper burial, the souls are trapped in this ash."
It dawns on me,
"These are human ashes?"
He nods.
The area is massive, not only that, I'm sinking into the ash as I stand on it, how deep is this? Horror fills me, sending chills down my spine.
"We need to get off of them!" I can feel my heart starting to hammer, I can almost feel the hands of the dead rising to drag me under. It's getting hard to breath.
"Jared!" The stranger yells at men I look at him with wide frightened eyes. "They can't hurt you" he tells me ternly, he takes both my shoulders in his hands.
"They are dead, you are not," His eye sockets stare into mine, "You are not dead, Jared."
"Why?" I ask, I can feel myself shaking, "Why am I not dead?"
He purses his lips,
"I don't know," he answers honestly, "But I won't let you die again, I swear it."
My eyes sting and my face crumples, yes, I don't want to die. And I think... I think I believe him when he tells me that he won't let me.
"Then did you? Did you let me die the first time."
His face falls, these are words I can sense he'd feared I would ask, and I receive my answer without him speaking a word.
So many emotions, where did they all begin? I remember when I was able to sift through every one of my thoughts with clarity and now I know nothing but chaos. This must be the consequence of killing living things, my first memories of having these visceral torments was after I'd killed the bunny. We gain emotion as we kill, the irony isn't lost on me. In my first life, I'd killed so many, but every death after the first had never stopped me from doing it again.
It's not his fault, he might blame himself for my death, but I can't. My shoulders slump forward with the weight of my conscience. I should have stayed dead.
"You don't have to believe me," He pulls me from my revere, "But I am glad that your not dead."
I sigh,
"I know you're able to say that because I am different this time. I am a good example of Nature vs Nurture." I stop. "My Nature tells me to kill and that it feels good. What has changed from the first time? It has to be the people I've been around."
He's thoughtful,
"You weren't around humans the first time you were a child, like you are now. They could have had a different effect on your upbringing. Our world is very cruel to the weak, and our race is particularly vulnerable when we're born."
"Like humans?" I guess, remembering how feeble I'd been, it'd taken killing the bunny to get truly fast, the dog to get canines for shredding, the cat to sharpen my claws. "We're born without anything special?"
"Right again." He smiles, conflicted emotions etching lines into his face. Worry, pride, fear, hope, more worry. "The questions your asking now, are the right ones, but you might regret the information ithey will lead to."
What he says reminds me of a time Tom had paused during a field trip to a museum while an archaic automaton in a glass box promised to tell him his fortune.
"That is a vague sugestion." I pull away from him warily. "I'll wait on the answers then."
Relief washes the conflict from his face, his smile warm,
"Being vague has worked so far. I haven't stepped on any landmines," he frowns, "Yet."
We're still standing in a square pond sized human ash tray, I'm not comfortable standing on people, but I'm noticing that if I want something, this strange male will give it to me.
"Where does this lead?" I ask.
He walks over to it, and crouches over it,
"To a place with animal's that have a little less iron in their diet." He grimaces, "Everything here must taste awful."
"Bunny isn't bad..." Now that he mentions it, I did have some mild indigestion after the bunny. "Does it lead home?"
"Oh Goddesses no!" His eyebrows touch his hairline, "You would be killed, immediately."
I chuckle at his reaction,
"What, I didn't leave on good terms?"
He snickers softly in response,
"If you call killing their beloved puppet sovereign and disappearing without standing trail to be torn to pieces by all the tribe leaders...." He scratches under his chin, "Then yes, you would technically be right."
"Wha- why-?"
"Do you want to eat or keep grilling me for answers until you die of starvation?"
More hard questions, about me, specifically. Does he think that if he tells me more about my old personality and goals, that I'll turn back into who I was before? The muscles on his chin clench ever so slightly, he'd read my mind again, but had chosen not to answer.
"I appreciated that," I'm sure he'll understand my vagueness, "How does it work? Do I dribble some blood on it?"
He shakes his head,
"No, blood magic is forbidden to us, it's permanent, and binding. There are also those that would be able to smell our blood, if it were spilt out here in the open." And looking me dead in the eye, "You don't want that."
Forbidden. Permanent. Working with blood.
"Are there ways to hide the scent." I state, "Like tying it to gateways?"
"A place with high traffic would help to hide the smell, but it would never fade completely, as long as the host body lives." After mulling over some information in his head, he nods to himself. "When our blood is removed from us, and unlike other living things from the different worlds, it doesn't die. If you were to live forever, wherever your blood falls, it would live to."
"Bleeding on something-"
"In." He corrects.
"In? How does bleeding onto the symbol count as in?"
The stranger shakes his head,
"Bleeding on the center of the rings would be bleeding inside of it. Because it's not a circle at all, it is a spherical spiral that twists in and out of itself..."
His hand pauses in the air, "All you need to know, I suppose, is that although it looks flat, it isn't."
"Very descriptive." I put my hands on hips and look at the scrawl.
Even though I'm being condescending, I know he he could tell that wasn't following what he was saying and he simplified it for me. "So how does it work if blood doesn't activate it?"
He nods in approval,
"It is self sustaining for the most part, there's power in the words themselves, the abandoned hopes, dreams and potential of the dead help a great deal." With a disinfected flick of his foot, he kicks a small dust cloud up.
"Do they still have those..?"
"No" He clarifies, "It's their potential, even though they are dead, their ash holds the potential they had when they were alive. It wouldn't take much for plants to grow in here, if this planet still had naturally occurring fauna within a few hundred miles of this place." He sounds sad, a world without naturally occurring plants upsets him?
"Without plants, there won't be growth. They were the first responsibility humans had, and now," he hunches over the ashes, his face remorseful, "Humanity has moved on from needing to care for anything."
"I'm depressed enough," I sigh, "None of this matters to me, it shouldn't matter to you."
"Why does it?" I ask.
"It reminds me of me," he straightens up, "I am the plants."
"Are you trying to guilt trip me?" I wave a hand in dismissal, "Don't answer that, I don't care."
I shake my head, moving back to the scrawl in the ash,
"Since you plan on opening, something, with this, how do you do it?"
He walks around the circle thoughtfully,
"You read the words and you have to be careful not to mix them up, any deviation from the written word will leave you split." He clears his throat, "Literally."
What a horrifying way to go...
"I obviously can't read it, will you?"
He smiles,
"It's funny, you keep reminding me how different you are, it's refreshing." He stops his circling next to me and raises a hand, "Now, since I'm the one opening it this way, I'm the only one that can open it for a return journey."
"Doing this every time you're hungry could become tedious, I'll teach you our language so you'll be able to do this whenever you want to."
Thick black smoke poures out of his sockets, his hand twitches slightly, with his lips moving fast and speaking words that have no meaning to me. The symbols in the spiral start to spin, first remaining in place, then slowly undulating with the spiral. As they twist and dance around each other, they never move from their path. From their trajectory, they should be spreading outward, but the symbols remain in the line they were originally drawn on to.
"There." He removes his hand, the symbols continue to undulating and twirl.
They still appear to be written in the ashes, if not for their activity, I'd think he had done nothing special. I go to place my hand onto the sweeping mass, but it sinks into the ground. The ashes where the symbols are have a texture like water, but thicker. My hand and wrist have the sensation of being wet while inside, but apon removing them, I can see that they are dry.
"All I need to do, is enter?" I ask.
I can see in my peripheral that he's nodding in ascent. This is going to take a some trust on my part, but this erksome stranger hasn't caused me harm yet. I don't think he can harm me, but imprisonment isn't harming. My stomach twists painfully and I reach with hunger. Gritting my teeth I take a few breaths to calm myself, I don't have other options that will be feeding me anytime soon.
"Be careful, this opens laterally on the other side." He cautions.
Lateral? I shake my head, everything he says give me more questions to ask. Standing up from my kneeling position, I brace myself. Okay, laterally then, and fall through this hole in reality, horizontally.