"In The Blood - Chapter 1" by Tansy A. H. Pye

Chapter One

I stayed in that house for a week after the attack. I swam in and out of consciousness. My body twisting and changing. I found things in the house to eat. When I was hungry I ate anything. Some of it I could digest, some of it I vomited straight away. It seems whatever it is I have become it is carnivorous. Only meat stays down.

In that week I eat everything from salami and spam to dog food, I ate bits of the family I found in the yard and two pet guinea pigs I found in one of the children’s bedrooms. I was glad the creature had already killed and eaten the family. I would not like to be responsible now for the death of the children, If I had found them in that week I would have eaten them. I had little control over the hunger then.

All the time my flesh and muscles burned and itched. My bones cracked my skin sloughed off me in huge patches. But though I looked terrible, it didn’t seem to be changing me that much. the skin under the patches is not green and scaled as I feared but fresh and pink. I think I may be a little taller, I’m certainly stronger, but not green not fanged. I’m beginning to think I’m something more like the hulk than a were demon thing.

Things settled down after that. Whatever was happening to me stopped. I looked in the mirror in the bathroom. I can see no physical change, but I am healed. There is no sign of the wound in my side and I’m different. I feel... I don’t know how to describe it, I feel feral. Dangerous and always I feel hungry.

I knew it would be a while before I could trust myself around people and it was only a matter of time before someone came to this remote farm house, before the family were missed. When I thought of people coming to the farm house a part of me craved them, not to be rescued, but to kill them. It terrifies me this hunger. Have I just been driven mad by what happened to me? Maybe I should hand myself in. I need help, I may be dangerously psychotic. But no I think it’s more than that. I think I’m not human anymore. I can’t explain it, I just sort of know it.

I decide to return to the camper van. There is nothing left of Michael. I’m grateful for that. The van is a mess, but not irreparable. I fix it up as best I can. it’s not pretty, but it’s light tight and it’s home. But all too soon I have eaten everything meat we had in our supplies. Our money is still here though. If I thought I could trust my self not to eat the butcher I could go into town and buy some meat. But I’m not so sure I can trust myself yet, so for now I’ll try hunting.

The hunger is terrible, it controls me. There are animals in the woods. I can hear them, more than that, I can feel them. Their trails almost glow in the moonlight. small trails of rats and rabbits, larger trails of foxes, badgers and deer. It’s deer I want. Big enough to sustain me for a while. I follow the deer trail. As I get closer to the animals I get more feral. There is a shift in my physique. My vision shifts into the infra red. Everything seems brighter and tinged with green. The deer are in the open. On the edge of a field. I move along the tree line, using the dark woods for cover. I choose my prey; a pregnant doe, she will be slower than the rest. I wait till the last moment to break cover, the deer scatter across the field. But I am focused on the doe. I grab her and use my weight to bear her to the ground. I’m not an animal. even as I ravenously eat the warm flesh of the deer I am aware of myself. But not disgusted, the meat is too good and slaking the hunger is too important.

I want my life back. I want to be able to walk around in towns again. I want to see my family. What am I going to tell people about Michael? What am I going to tell his Mum? I’m no doctor, but I know I’m not entirely human anymore. I chased and ran down a deer. That’s something I couldn’t do before. That’s not normal. I used to get out of breath jogging down the road, I must have sprinted 200 meters after that deer and I wasn’t out of breath, more than that. Oh God. I just realised something I wasn’t breathing at all. All through the hunt I didn’t breathe. I am breathing now, I breathe when I am thinking about it .

"Hello? La la la. Do re me far so la tee doe!" I can still speak then. "Doe a deer a female deer!" I sing loudly and tunelessly laughing. "Ray a drop of golden sun!" Sun. The sun. I haven’t seen it since that night in the farm house. Oh God what am I?