The Resurrection: Part 2

There is a section of time I can't recall after I saw the boy's face. I know I ate some kind of animal, because I remember seeing the red of fresh blood on my hands. I know my animal self resumed his daily walk to and from the zoo. I don't know how long it took for me to come back, but it couldn't have been too long, because I heard the screams soon after, but I'm getting ahead of myself again.

Once I came back, I spent some time observing the beast from way back. I watched its behavior; what drew its attention, what didn't, and how it moved. I tried little ways of influencing it at first. I would make it lift a hand or stop or start walking. I would make it turn and use the head to look at my surroundings.

I felt completely outside of myself at times, at others I felt like I was living in a body someone else controlled. I tried to speak, but lungs with no air make no sound. My body had been out of the habit of breathing for so long that they had filled with a black, viscous fluid that must have been blood that entered my esophagus as I fed. I know this was there because it came up in a thin stream when I tried to breath. I didn't try that again for a long time, but that's another story.

The animal me had taken us back to our house one evening when I heard the screams. They we're muffled, as all sounds are now, but I knew they were close.

I was in the upstairs bedroom that the animal tended to stay in at night, roaming the room since we did not sleep anymore. My animal self began to walk toward the noise knowing that there would be fresh blood to corrupt, tear, and consume. I knew its intentions, and was able to, at the last minute, throw our hand forward and slam the bedroom door shut. The beast ran into the door as it slammed shut and the blood rage took over so that I was driven further back into us. He beat and clawed at the door, and then crumpled into a heap by it when our knee gave out. He lay there slowly chewing the wood of the door with our exposed teeth.

I was finally back within us enough again to do more than just observe his actions, and I tried to open the door. Parts of my memory had returned, but parts were still blank. I knew that the thing in front of me was called a door, and I knew that it could be opened. I just didn't know how to do it.

It seems like such a small thing now that I am much more myself -or at least as much of myself as I will ever be- but at the time, figuring how to open that door was a puzzle. I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was so frustrating I thought about jumping out of the upstairs window beside me. It took me ages to figure out that I was opening the door with the wrong hand- the hand missing a thumb. I've now trained myself to use the other hand for almost everything, but it took a lot of practice.

When I was finally able to turn the handle enough to open the door, it lurched off the hinges and partly fell to the floor, almost taking me with it. I recaptured my balance and walked to the window- trying to keep the beast in-check so that I would not kill again. The danger I was potentially in never dawned on me.

I walked to the downstairs window and looked out. There was a woman with long brown hair standing next to a man with tan skin. They were deep in some secret talk. Behind them, a man with short-cropped blonde hair with a bow and arrow strapped to his back walked. He was coming down the path to a nearby house that he had just emerged from.

As he approached the two, they moved away from each other a bit, but not before he gave her a squeeze on her shoulder which stirred something deep within me that was not the beast, and so faint that it was barely perceivable. The three grouped up and the blonde man spoke to the tan man and long haired woman, and then they both moved toward the house- my house.

They were but a footstep away when a green 4x4 turned a corner honking its horn and pulled up to the house. The long haired lady, the tan man, and the blonde haired man turned and started to speak to the pretty young girl with short brown hair behind the wheel of the car and the young Asian man beside her.

I desperately wanted to listen to the conversation, but at the same time the beast wanted to run outside and tear, bite, and devour. To try to calm the beast I had to grip the window frame with my hand do tightly that my nails dug into the wood, causing two of my blackened fingernails to stick in the wood. Only the darkness of the house and the distraction of the visitors outside prevented me from being seen. At this time I was free of the knowledge of what humans do to my kind if they catch them. I also felt a connection to the visitors, like I could trust them. I was much more concerned with quelling the beast and finding out what they were doing here.

I listened intently, fighting to hear against the rot in my ears. Most was just a muffled staccato of sounds, some deep and some higher. As they continued to talk I could tell from watching their mouths as I listed to the sounds that the deep tones were the men and the higher were the females.

I tried to understand what they were saying. I could tell they were upset. The long haired woman especially looked distraught. The two men said something to the women, and then the Asian man got out of the car and walked up to the two other men. Then all three disappeared to the side of the house. I knew I had to go that way because the back door -the one I have been leaving the house through- was wide open. I knew it was my only means of escape. Part of me also hoped I would run into them, that they would know me. That they would tell me who I was and what was happening to me.

I entered the kitchen where the back door was located. The contrast of the light to the darkness of the room made the outside look like a bright white void. I exited the door and stepped outside

The light blinded me for a second. If the three men had discovered me at that moment, I know now that I would be a dead… man. At the time I was blissfully unaware of such things. I noticed my hand felt different. I looked down and saw through the blinded haze that the fingernails that had been buried in the window frame had pulled off when I removed my hand. Dark viscous ooze dripped from my hand to the boards of the stairs below. I moved down the stairs and walked toward where the men had disappeared.

They were around the corner from me when I was stopped dead still by the sound of their voices. I stopped to listen. At the time, what they said had made no sense, but now I have replayed it in my mind enough that I have pieced the words together.

"We found a trail of blood in the woods and a hat nearby. There were signs of a struggle, but no body. We think the hat is Carl's"

I did not know the significance of their words at that moment. All that I knew was that they then left, and something told me I needed to follow. I set one foot in front of the other as I started following the car as it left, back toward the path I had walked for what feels like a million times. I was going back towards the woods, back toward the zoo for one last time.