Ripper: An Indoraptor Story ✓

Colfax

For the first time in four days, the humans let me out of the darkened shed.

And like the parents of an unborn runt, they welcomed me into their sweet little world they amusingly called Colfax.

As suspected, I didn't know what Colfax was.

Nor did I necessarily care.

But the humans seemed to act belonging in this quiet and insignificant town. It was like a second home of theirs, and they treated it kindly like any ordinary hatchling to a nest.

I'd soon learn that Colfax, California was so much smaller than what was previously exaggerated. In fact, it felt far smaller than the entire estate where INGEN tried to sell me. The town was a miniature maze of expanded main streets and cobblestone, but its walkways were as complex as the heart that drives it. The streets were its veins, paved with dark blackened stones that smelled of dried tar and sticky muck, and the people that inhabited it from within reflected the cells of the elderly organ. Small vehicles, I recognized as cars and trucks of plenty, zoomed by the house where the family lived, though despite their noisy exertions the town remained voiceless but undoubtedly alive.

A second large pavement for the vehicles existed a bit further away from the house the humans resided in, roaring at times when the winds were subdued to being muted like mice. Multiple vehicles zoomed past the brown empty desert in a frantic rush of liberation from the toxic heat that poured against their metallic chassis. In turn, I described it as a landmark rather than a pointless human build, a view that meant nothing truly important besides panic and need; yet a representation of my current dominant soul consuming my older internal rage.

To me, being an indoraptor trapped and controlled once again by filthy, blood-sucking humans sounded horrible, if not that then another type of internal torment I cannot say. It was a word that the humans nicknamed deja vu, a term I learned from the older female human who'd visit me when night would fall. If my old self was awake and uncontrolled in the presence of this monstrous human bondage, they would most certainly end up as fresh-kill within a matter of minutes.

But they seemed clever enough to notice the dangers and threats that I posed to them, and regardless focused upon ensuring my survival rather than themselves. Their hospitality was unique and quite amusing no less, and it somewhat encouraged me to do the impossible; spare their very lives.

The day I was freed from the shack it was the little girl and her taller sibling -- named Emma -- who helped untie my restrained legs and help me to my feet. I felt unsteady at first, due to my time on the floor and these newly healed injuries that toiled at the muscle. The wood ached my knees and joints, causing bubbly cracks and groans to shift between the ball and sockets of my own skeleton.

Though throughout the entire time I struggled to move, it was hard to keep ignoring the mere thought of the humans who aided me. For example, I was still very hungry, starving even, and my primal instincts had never been higher. Their meat-scented skin and fleshy aromas wafted into my nostrils at times, causing me to growl or sometimes click my talons together like the chimes of hanging glass, but abiding by their instructions I followed them outside without a problem.

And ignored this primal need.

Strange how such an innocent family decided to support and defend a damaged killing machine, I would wonder to myself. Any other human would realize my colors and appearance and destroy me upon sight. If only they knew the truth, which I wasn't so sure of, they'd think otherwise before sharing custody of me. Or perhaps shoot me dead the first time they ran into an indoraptor.

But I was interested in them to conclude. It was unlike them to do this. I thought they'd know what I am, what I've done, and what I've become.

I thought the whole world knew that I was dead.