Humanitarian

If a vegetarian is someone who eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? I think the Joker told me that one. It fits pretty well I think. This condition of mine is rare. My skin I mean, not the other thing. It's called epi-somthin' hyper-carrot-itis-osis or something. Fish skin in other words, or lizard skin might be closer. I don't have to tell you my folks were surprised when I came out looking like I'd been baked in an oven set to broil, screaming and bleeding from cracks like old asphalt. What did they know? They were just a couple of Haitian immigrants living off my mom's sister. What little I know about my folks I had to hear from my aunt, and she was more than happy to explain to me all the ways they screwed up in life, particularly when it came to me. They were scared at first, seeing me like that. They thought it was an omen, or that I might be cursed. It wasn't until they got the bill for my birth and resulting care that they decided to dump me and hop back over to their home land, free and clear. Well you can just imagine how thrilled old auntie Nadia was to find herself in possession of a screaming orphan and a sky-high doctor bill. I don't know why she didn't just toss me in an orphanage and send the bill to my folks, but I can guess. Given my condition, adoption was out of the question for me and no orphanage wants to take on an 18 year special-needs burden. As for the bill, my folks didn't exactly leave a mailing address and I'm pretty sure my Aunt had a hand in my parents illegal entry into this country which puts her square in the authority's cross-hairs. So we were pretty much stuck for life, a fact she made sure I knew just about every day.

I'm sure you can guess my childhood was pretty rough. All I remember was hurting so bad that I didn't think anything could hurt more, but it could, and it did. My skin made the heat unbearable and it was always splitting and getting infected on its own. Combined with the regular swats, shoves, and slaps my aunt gave me whenever I happened to be in arms reach made me think pain was about the only thing I'd ever feel. We only had a tar-paper shack out in the bayou with no running water and only enough electricity to run a few lights and the TV. You can see why I might not look back fondly on those years. I didn't go to school till I was 8, and only then because the government finally decided to check in on me. You'd think that old bitch would have jumped at the chance to get me out of the house 5 days a week. Too much paperwork to get me in, I guess. Well, school went about as well as you'd expect for a kid who looked like this. I wondered if the other kids knew my auntie because they all started calling me things she said all the time. Lizard boy. Gator kid. Crusty. They called me other names my aunt hadn't thought of too. Like nigger-gator and coon-o-dile. I don't have to tell you it was the white kids who thought of those names. Course it was all the same to me. I'd had 8 years to get used to name calling. I went anyways, stuck to myself and got in the habit of taking the long way home through the swamp. That was about the only place I liked. No people. Cool air. My skin kept most of the bugs from bothering me and I knew to look out for snakes and gators. Sometimes I'd stay out past dark and have to find my way by the moonlight. Auntie didn't care. I could see she was disappointed every time I made it home to darken her doorstep again.

It wasn't until later, I must have been around 13, those white boys started in with the real rough stuff. Pushing me around a circle, throwing me in the swamp, sticking strips of duct tape on me so I'd have to peel it off along with a few patches of skin. Nothing really got to me until that day they followed me into the swamp. I guess one of them had themselves a bright idea to bring along an old metal file. They got around me and held me down while the biggest one took that file to my teeth, turning them into points. Did a shit job of it too. I thought I knew real pain but that was a whole new world of pain. They laughed and laughed while he did it, shouting "Now you're a gator boy! Now you're a real nigger-gator!" and I screamed through the blood that was filling up my mouth. By the time they finished, it was nearly dark and they ran whooping and hollering. My face felt swollen and numb and any movement of my mouth sent shoots of pain through it like a thunderhead. I don't remember getting home but I remember auntie screaming about getting blood on her carpet. It was only after 3 or 4 days that I was able to tell her what happened. She didn't believe me, of course. She claimed I'd done it to myself, trying to get attention like a teenager with a tattoo or a nose ring. That was when the clouds of pain and fear in my mind went from red to black. It was like ink in water. That was when the pain stopped and the hate began. I couldn't eat or drink anything that was too hot or cold or my teeth would ring like alarm bells in my head. I dreaded going back to school. I could hear their laughter as they admired their handy work. I could see the stares of the other kids and the giggles behind cupped hands. Worst of all I could see the reproachful looks of the teachers as they would assume, as my aunt had, that I'd done it in a fit of teenaged rebellion.

I only made it about ten feet through the doors before they spotted me, my hand over my mouth and trying like hell to be see-through. They pushed me outside to get a better look at what they'd done. I remember feeling far away, like someone had turned the volume down on life. Nothing they said or did to me seemed to touch me. But when one of them reached up to pull back my lips I saw my face move and felt the pain as my teeth bit into something warm and soft. My first taste of blood, other than my own I mean. It seemed to light a spark somewhere in me, like a pilot light coming on. A distant scream came and I was running, running for the swamp, my refuge. I could hear more screams and shouts in the distance. They were following me, and that was okay. Get them away from the school. Get them alone. I ran, eyes unfocused and seeing everything at once. Once I had gotten enough distance I stopped and started to circle back, moving quiet this time. I was running on instinct by then. Not thinking but seeing myself think. I felt the heat of the swamp, the sounds of the trees and the life, I felt everything. Most of all I felt them. I got around behind them, they were still shouting out to me. The one I'd bit had torn his shirt to wrap his bleeding finger. He had a hunting knife in his other hand. I moved fast but still silent and took him down in a blitz tackle, grabbing the knife out of his hand. There was a scream before the blood filling his throat turned it into gurgles. The others turned, their faces going from anger to terror in a second. I made it to the next one before anyone could realize what was happening. He stared at me like I'd just asked him a question in some foreign language, even as the knife went through first his cheek and then out his left eye. The other two seemed to reach a compromise with their bodies and started to run. They were clumsy in the thick foliage and I caught up with the first one easily. The knife went into the back of his neck and he dropped like a puppet cut from its strings. By the time he'd stopped twitching the other boy had gotten a good distance. I caught up with him slowly, following the blundering trail he made with ease. I could smell his sweat, or maybe it was his fear. It was like a baking pie to a starving man. You never forget your first time, they say. That was my first hunt. He was screaming for help, but we were pretty deep by that point. No one to hear us but the trees. I was just starting to close the distance when I heard him splash into water. As I mounted the edge of the creek he'd jumped into I could see him thrashing toward the other side, but I also saw what looked like several logs floating toward him on all sides. I knew gators when I saw them and I sat down right there and watched them. Saw them get closer, saw one go under, this one was the biggest I'd ever seen, then the kid was gone for moment. After a few bubbles he exploded out of the water, which had gone a muddy red, screaming and gurgling as the gator started to spin like a football, pulling him under and back up and under. I watched in a daze as it tore more chunks off and the smaller ones got brave enough to try for a few themselves. When they'd finished I don't remember getting up but I'd had an idea. I found each boy and drug them over, tossing them in one at a time, watching the gators pull it apart like chicken wings. It was almost full dark by the time they finished the last one and I just got up and walked off, like someone at a movie when the credits had started to roll. I walked in a daze. I felt like junk-heads must feel after their first hit, or like a color-blind man given true sight for the first time. I wasn't happy, at least not in the way other people say it feels. I felt whole and content for the first time. This was my place.

I walked and walked. Night was on in full and the swamp was alive. Birds called from the trees, crickets sang and frogs grunted. I could hear animals moving around out in the dark, sometimes they sounded bigger than me. The kids used to say this swamp was haunted, full of ghosts. I knew it was night, yet I could see, dimly but clearly. I felt full of energy, nervous and too awake. What I felt was the swamp, the life of the swamp, I knew it somehow. I came to a small pond and went in up to my waist. The water was cool and it felt good on my dry skin. I didn't sleep but I stayed that way, submerged up to my nose, listening to the night sounds of the swamp.

I lived out there for most of a year. I ate what I could catch and drank from the water vines you can find all over, a trick I'd learned from watching hunters. I'd sleep during the day, usually in the water so the bugs wouldn't bother me, then at night I'd slather mud over any exposed skin to protect me and mask my scent. At night the swamp became a secret place. Sometimes I'd hear sounds like voices or howls. One night I saw floating lights, like someone with a flash light in the distance. I could see why they thought this place was haunted. It was after one particularly bad night of foraging that I came across the hunters. They had camped out next to their boat and they had a fire going. I was shaking with hunger and I could smell the meat they were cooking. I knew I had to take them one at a time. I waited and waited until one of them got up and left the circle of the fire. He was peeing into the river they had come down when I slit his throat and stifled his cry. I'd heard them talking and had an idea of how to get the next one. I called out to one of them by name. When he came looking for who had said it I grabbed him and pulled him into the river. Now the last one realized what was happening and came with his gun. I had already slipped out of the river a little ways down and circled around behind him before he could get off a single shot. Once they were dead, I helped myself to their food supplies and watched as the gators took the bodies apart in the river. I didn't think about any of it as murder any more than the gators who'd eaten the bodies. This was nature. So I ate my fill and left the rest. Now I had begun looking for hunters. I had found my ideal prey. I lived for months, maybe even years this way. You don't keep time out there. Nothing existed beyond the next day and night. At first I just killed them and took their food or tools if I needed them. It was only when I was particularly hungry and had just killed a lone hunter, who had brought no food, that I decided to try man flesh. I ate first his legs and arms, then picked his torso clean. I'm sure you might be wondering what human meat tastes like. The closest I've found would be pork, although it's a lot saltier and more metallic. A lot of people eat so much garbage their meat gets tainted by chemical preservatives and sodium. That's why most animals, even the ones known to kill humans, won't eat us. I guess you could call it an acquired taste and leave it at that. As I was eating, I felt driven by something, something primal. I only stopped after I cracked his skull to eat part of his brain. It wasn't disgust at the realization of what I'd done that stopped me, only an overwhelming sense of energy. Not only had I taken this man's life, I had eaten it. I know it sounds like utter shit, but I felt like I'd taken on his life. That night I walked in a daze, my head throbbing and my stomach doing somersaults. I felt too hot and scared for the first time.

What happened next must have been a dream, that's the only way I can explain it. I'd waded into a large pond out to my chest, trying to cool down, when I heard the familiar splash of something sliding into the water on the bank. Turning in a daze, I saw ridges and scales drifting toward me. I didn't feel afraid, I just turned to face the gator as it floated toward me, tag wagging behind it in an S shape. For a moment we just looked at each other, the swamp had gone quiet for the first time. This gator was as big as the one I'd seen tear that boy apart, maybe bigger. As I looked at it I started to see it wasn't a gator, the nose was too wide and it was chunkier. This was a crocodile. Must have been the only one for a thousand miles. I'd dropped my knife after eating the hunter so I had no weapon. I could only wonder if this was where I would die. I felt myself drift back, as I had when the boys had chased me into the swamp. The croc lunged with a thrash of its long tail, jaws opening trying to bite down on my torso. I moved on pure instinct, everything was a blur of scales and water. I had gotten around it and had it in a strangle-hold, my arms just barely long enough to reach around its massive neck. I held and choked it as it thrashed and spun in the water. I started to take bites out of the back of its head, my sharpened teeth cutting through the tough skin easily, and spitting blood and chunks of scaly meat as it tried to shake me. When I got a chunk of it stuck in my throat I let go and fell away, the impact dislodging the meat. I had expected it to round on me again but it was trying to run away, heading for the far shore. Blind with rage and amped up on adrenaline, I charged after it, grabbing its tail before it left the water. It fishtailed and tried to bite me but I dove over the snapping jaws and got a hand hold on its snout just as the jaws clamped shut. I pulled it into a powerful hug and pulled its head straight up, sitting down on the ridges of its back. The monster bucked and snorted but it couldn't shake me. Slowly I pulled its snout back and heard the tendons creak in its neck. Once its head was almost directly over its back I let go of the snout and grabbed its torso beneath me, pulling it into another hug. The croc's tendons started popping like rubber bands and I heard several cracks inside its flailing body. There was one final crunch before the croc went limp in my arms and its snorts stopped. I held it for a long time, so stiff with adrenaline that I couldn't relax. When I let it go the head snapped forward like a whip and slammed onto the dirt. I was so out of it I just passed out right there on its back with the moon shining through the trees.

What happened next was what made me think it had to be a dream. I woke up and it was still full dark. The croc lay silent and still beneath me and I felt a presence around me. I sat up and around me stood a circle of hunched figures. At first I thought they were alligators that had somehow learned to stand of two feet. Their heads were like alligators, but their jaws hung open and limp at their chests. Inside each gaping maw I saw two glowing eyes, like an animal's eyes when the light catches it. They carried long sticks in hands which looked to be claws. I was calm enough to realize they were really men wearing alligator heads and skins, on their hands they had fashioned false claws from what looked like bones and teeth. They stared at me in silence, not even breathing. One of them stepped forward, the largest one, wearing countless necklaces of teeth and bones like trophies. He motioned for me to follow and I did. It all seemed natural, as if it had been planned. I turned back to see the others gathering around the dead croc and lifting it. We walked and walked for what seemed like forever before the trees parted to show a vast clearing with a fire that seemed to burn with green flames. There were others waiting for us and when I came into view they all hooted and howled like wild animals. They were all wearing animal skins and bones and all were black like me. It was like I'd stumbled into Africa by mistake. Their eyes were wide and the pupils seemed to fill them completely. I'd seen crack heads with the same look. They all barked and snapped at each other like wolves in a pack. They dragged the dead croc to the fire and had me sit in front of it as their leader pulled out a stone dagger. He cut into the beast and fished around until he came out with a massive heart, still dripping blood. An attendant came over quickly with a wooden bowl and caught the dripping blood. When it had filled to the brim he brought it to me to drink. I drank without thinking, I remember it was thick and metallic tasting with a strange shock to it, like it had been carbonated. The bowl was passed to the others who drank it hungrily. The leader knelt and offered me the heart, still dripping and wet. I took it and looked at it, still warm, as the blood had been. I thought about how that heart had pushed blood through a body which had tried to kill me. That the blood it had pushed was moving through the mouth and jaws which had tried to tear me apart. Now I held it in my hands and my own was still pumping within me. It had tried to kill me, now it was dead and I lived. I drove my face into the warm muscle, biting and snapping, filling my mouth with its soft meat. The strange men all hooted and cried out in unison.

After the heart had been eaten, the leader lead me to the croc's head as a few other pried the skull open, revealing the brain, small as an apple. He peeled back the wrinkles and revealed a small gland which he plucked with deft fingers. He held it to me and I took it, naturally putting it in my mouth, not to eat, but to chew. They led me over to a hut where an older man sat with my knife. Where he found it I don't know. The gland I had been chewing didn't send me further away but drew me closer to the world, so close I could feel everything, the air moving into my nose, rubbing against the insides of my sinuses, the dirt shifting beneath my feet like stones. Sounds became too loud, even my own heartbeat was like thunder. It looked as though the sun had risen and stood noon high, illuminating everything. I could smell my own nose, the moss on the trees, the sweat of the men around me. That was when they started to cut me.

I only remember flashes after that. Pain. Blood. Standing by the fire, feeling the smoke against my open cuts. Running with the strange men through the swamp, barking and howling like animals. I woke up and the sun was going down, or coming up, I wasn't sure. As I sat up, remembering the dream I felt the pain all over my body. All down my arms, chest, legs, and head in lines and spirals. There seemed to be something hard packed into them before they closed. The blood had dried and was starting to flake off like rust. I thought I might have gotten the cuts running through the swamp like a madman, that mud might have been crammed into the openings. But the patterns they made, well, that was harder to explain. Later, one of the guys in the freak show told me about a tribe in Africa called the Chambri who believed humans evolved from crocodiles who had come on land and learned to walk. They had this ritual, a coming of age for the boys in the tribe. They'd take the kid into a hut and make hundreds of these little cuts all over his body. He'd have to tough it out if he wanted to be a man. They figured if you could deal with that much pain when you were young, the pain later in life would seem like nothing. I think there's something to that. They don't do that anymore. We don't have a right of passage anymore, separating the boys from the men. You had to earn manhood back then, bleed for it. Now they just kick you out the door at 18 and hope for the best. Anyways, once they had all these cuts they'd pack them with clay and tree oil to raise them up so they looked like the ridges on a crocodile. That's the only explanation I've heard that comes close to what I went through and it still makes no goddamn sense.

After that night I felt different. Confident and complete. Everything looked different. I felt like I'd been asleep for weeks and woke up in a different world. I went hunting that night, catching a trio of gator hunters swinging a spotlight along a narrow river. I flipped their boat easily and pulled one of them away, leaving the other two for the alligators. In retrospect, that was the mistake that drove me out of my swamp. One of those guys must have survived somehow and made it back to tell them what he'd seen. That a giant half-man half-gator had attacked and killed his friends. Well I went on hunting for months, unaware of the heat coming my way. It wasn't until I came across a hunting party, this one was the biggest so far, but that wasn't all. These looked different. They wore uniforms, had assault rifles, and looked dead serious. The hunters I'd taken had all been sportsman out for a good time with friends. These men were hunting something, they had authority, and they were scared. I didn't attack them, only watched as they patrolled the swamp in boats and on foot. I could hear them talking into radios, talking about some target and that no one had any sightings to report. I realized I couldn't stay here anymore. More would come and the more I took down the more attention it would attract and the cycle would escalate until they took me out. It was time to go out into the world.

Freak Show

I found train tracks on the outskirts and followed them until a freighter came by and I jumped it to the next town. I killed a hobo for his clothes, he was too dirty to eat. I had to try and remember what it was like in the world, what rules I was expected to follow. I needed clothes, money, and a place to live. I drifted for a while. Killing for food or money. It was in a train yard somewhere north that I met the freak show. It was run by a fellow named Dr. Peter Demit who toured the country displaying his human oddities. They had stopped there on their way to their next show and just about fell over when I walked up to em. They weren't scared of me, they way everyone else was, they looked at me the way you might look at a star athlete or a famous celebrity. They marveled over my filed teeth and patterns of scars. They looked at my skin like it was a talent I'd been born with, instead of a curse. I told em I'd run away from home when I was a kid and just drifted around since, looking for work. They bought it easily enough and wanted me to meet the Doc right away. Dr. Demit was exactly the kind of person you'd expect to run a traveling freak show. Part hippie, part used car salesman and all smile. He looked at me the same way they did, only it was dollar signs behind his eyes. I was fine with the arrangement. I didn't really care about money back then and it gave me something to do. Most of the freaks accepted me right off, and most of them were born with whatever got em in the show. We shared a troubled past and it gave us something to stand together on. The only ones who didn't care for me were a few of the freaks who weren't born freaks. The ones who chose to be freaks, who made themselves into a show because they wanted attention. One of them in particular called himself the Lizard Man. He was a short bald guy who'd had scales tattooed all over his body, even his damn eyelids. He had his teeth filed to points, by a professional of course, and had his tongue split to make it forked. He even had these ridiculous hoops he'd stretched his ears around, like a goddamn key chain. I couldn't believe it. Here was a guy who'd been born a regular kid and not only chose to but payed to be made into a freak like me. He didn't seem to like the idea of another reptile on the show floor stealing his lime light and he made it clear to me we wouldn't be friends. I guess I could see why he might resent me. He clearly spent a lot of time, money, and pain to be made into a sideshow, while I was lucky enough to be born with most of it and have the rest of it involuntarily given to me for the pathetically low price of absolutely goddamned nothing. Maybe now you can appreciate the kind of self-control it took to not chew this guy's ridiculous bifurcated tongue out of his screaming face. I only had to take him to task once though. After a night of heavy drinking, he'd decided to see just who the real Lizard Man was. I picked him up by his scrawny, tattooed neck and hung him by his asinine ear hoops on the coat rack by the door. I let him hang there and scream until I finished my drinks and he had just about passed out, tears soaking his tattooed cheeks and blood running down the sides of his neck. He looked up at me and as soon as his eyes showed the slightest hint of anger, I clamped my teeth shut about half an inch from his nose with a loud clack. The piss running down his leg was the deciding vote on the matter.

Looking back, I wish I could have stayed in the swamp and never come back to the world of men. Maybe its nostalgia, I don't know. I learned to drink and smoke, about money and the things it could get me. I learned about status and power, the empty power people can only use on each other. Doing shows also reminded me of why I ran into that swamp in the first place. People staring, laughing, talking about you like you weren't there. Of course there were bars between us now and I'd put myself out as a spectacle, but that didn't change the way it felt. All the old hate came back like a leak in a boat. The Doc wanted to call me the Alligator Man, but I thought it might be too close to what the people had been looking for back at the swamp, and besides I remembered the crocodile I'd killed and eaten in that dream and thought crocodile fit better. He added the Killer part of my name to give me a dangerous edge and to scare the kiddies. So that was when I became Killer Croc. After doing shows and feeling the old hate seep back, I started hunting again. After we'd rolled up for the night, I'd sneak out into the world of men and hunt. The homeless and street walkers were the easy targets. I knew not to grab anyone people might miss. Anyone too pretty or too well off was off limits. As Joker once told me, if you kill the people society expects to die, no one panics. Drunks, insomniacs, gangbangers, drug addicts. One time I bagged a gangbanger who was trying to rape some woman, like a goddamned hero saving the day. I ate them all. It was like an addiction. Something about it compelled me, satisfied the anger that had come back. I guess eating a person is the ultimate domination. It was something only real monsters did. It was what made them scary. Not the killing or stalking, but that they ate you. I guess it's the same fear people have of rape. It's not the pain or the attack, it's the domination, the fact that you're satisfying them, that they're feeding off you.

I should have been happy to stay with the freaks and travel, hunting on the side. But something about being in the world of men infected me with their ambition. I wanted more. My chance came when a few unsavory types came to see the freak show, looking for potential. They represented the African Disciples, a black street gang that claimed the town we'd stopped in as their own. They were looking for someone scary to serve as a deterrent and enforcer for their gang. They hit the jackpot with me. After the show they asked me to come back with them to meet their boss. Ol' Lizard man must have over heard and thought it was a rival freak show trying to buy me off. He insisted he go along to make sure Dr. Dimmirt was properly represented. They drove us downtown and took us up to a penthouse where armed men in suits stood at all the doors. The boss was a guy named Damien "Blood" Stone, a stocky black man in a tailored suit and gold rings. He looked at me appraisingly, said I was one scary looking mother fucker. I smiled, showing him my pointed teeth. Lizard man seemed nervous, realizing this wasn't a rival freak show I'd been called to. Boss Blood explained he wanted an enforcer to inspire fear in his enemies and loyalty from his troops. He wanted a monster to keep on a leash and that he would reward that monster handsomely for such a service. I agreed, looking at the lavish office the man enjoyed. This was how to live in the world of men.

They took us down to a lounge were members of the gang hung out and he introduced me, Lizard Man still waited close by, more nervous than ever. Some of the gang bangers looked at me with shock, others with contempt. I think being seen next to a self-made freak like Lizard Man made me look like I'd chosen to be this way because I wanted to be scary, or that it was some weird kink. I knew an easy way to correct that. When the boss said I'd have to prove myself in order to join up I nodded and asked Lizard Man to show them why they called him that. When he bared his neatly filed teeth and stuck out his split tongue, I grabbed it and ripped it out of his mouth, pulling veins and muscle strands behind it like ribbons. As he started to scream and vomit blood I took the tongue in my fist and jammed it into his throat. He scratched at his engorged neck, leaving deep gashes as he staggered, eyes bulging. After he fell to the floor there was a deep silence, even the boss couldn't believe it. Suddenly everyone jumped to their feet, hooting and shouting praise. Impressing criminals was easy. They only responded to two things. Ruthlessness and boldness. I had proven I had both in spades. When word got around, I had become exactly the kind of monster Boss Blood wanted on his payroll.

I went everywhere with the boss after that. He gave me a pager and all new clothes. I had all the money and drugs I could want. But as I followed the Boss to gang meetings and drug deals, I started getting bored. After my initiation, my reputation was unquestioned, so all I had to do was stand near the boss and look intimidating. I started to feel the leash he kept me on. When he'd eat at fancy restaurants, I'd have to wait outside. Unless he wanted everyone in the room scared out of their minds, he'd leave me outside. It was fine at first but the human ambition I'd been infected with made it more and more grating. That was when I found the underground fighting circles. I started going there once or twice a week under my freak show name, Killer Croc. It let me get my frustrations out and gave me a bit more money to spend as well. It also taught me how to fight. Even though I'd killed plenty of people, I only knew how to stalk and take em down. Being face to face and throwing punches is different. I learned by watching, by training, and by taking on anyone who stepped in the ring with me. That was enough for a while, but I found my thirst for power and killing had gotten a lot deeper. The African Disciples had only one rival gang in town, the Puerto Ricans who called themselves the 5th Street Lords. After another boring day on the boss' leash, I decided to go hunting again. This time I'd be hunting on behalf of the African Disciples.

I knew where they liked to hang out and where the leaders of the gang worked. It was an old housing project they'd turned into a fortress. I took a few pills to get amped up, chained the only exits shut, cut the power, and started the killing spree with just a knife and the old predatory rush I used to get back in the swamp. I made my way through the building floor by floor, catching some by surprise, others I had to chase down. A few got some good shots in but I couldn't feel it through the rancor. By the time I'd come bursting into the leader's room I was soaked with blood and wild-eyed with adrenalin. That rican took one look at me and jumped out of the window of his 14th story apartment. Still a bit dazed, I grabbed a duffel bag and started stuffing it with drugs and cash. In the end the body count had been 33 men, 4 women, and 1 minor. As I walked back through the halls, double-checking my work, my pager went off.

Back at Boss Blood's office, still dripping Puerto Rican blood, I gave him the spoils of my outing. No one said anything for a long time. He finally sent me out so he could think about what to do. I thought I would be praised as a hero, but I saw fear in the stocky man's eyes. I started to see weakness. When he called me back in, there were others with him, his lieutenants, and no one smiled. He started out by praising my success, accomplishing more than any single member had ever done before. Then he started in with the bullshit. He told me it was too savage, too visible. He'd be lucky if he could keep the cops from hauling in every member of the African Disciples over that blood bath I'd pulled. He said we were criminals but we weren't monsters. We kill when we have to make a point. He started going on about staying under the radar and picking your battles, that because I was his monster, my attack would make him look bad, trying to tell me he still held my leash and that I don't bite unless he gives the word. All that tread lightly bullshit should have been easy for me to grasp, since I'd found out the same when I was chased out of my swamp. But I was young and badly infected with the ways of men. All I heard was that he was scared by what I'd done and that he didn't have the balls to pull anything like that himself. Now his leash had become shackles and I did what any wild animal would do.

The next night I told him I wanted to speak with him and he let me into his office. I told him what I wanted, that I wanted the gang, I wanted the top position, and that I would eat his heart to prove I deserved it. Well he was quite upset by this news, as you might understand, and tried to call his guards. I let him. By the time they got there I had pried his ribs back and held his still twitching heart in my hand. They looked like kids playing a frozen statue game. I told them the good news as I casually ate the fresh heart like an apple. I was the boss now, they work for me, and things would be different. The reaction went one of three ways throughout the gang. They hated it, but were too terrified to challenge me. They loved it and saw it as an opportunity for more power. Or they got the hell out of town and never looked back.

From then on we did things my way. The number one rule was fear. Our brutality would be our power. Murder was encouraged, the bloodier and more personal the better. Disagreements within were handled with death-matches, which kept the troops in line. We quickly became the dominant gang in the city. Our tactics were far more brutal and terrifying than any gang that came before us. But I was young, as I said. I thought brutality could solve anything. Well it wasn't long before the police, who had once willingly aided the gang, now decided we had become a menace to society. I'd heard rumors that the other gangs helped to feed that choice for them and even helped them take us out. While I drank expensive champagne in hot tubs, our hang-outs were getting raided. My boys fought tooth and nail, I'll give em that, but they were out gunned. The noose was tightening and I didn't want to see it. The day they came for me, the few bangers who stayed looked like kids in a warzone. I think the only thing they were more scared of than the cops busting in our doors was what I'd do to them if they tried to run. The first wave broke through the penthouse doors and my boys put up a good fight. With the first wave dead and the remaining bangers dying I knew this would be it for me. I pried open the skull of one of the cops and picked through his brain, finding the tiny gland I'd remembered from the croc. As I chewed it I charged the next wave and became a blur of bullets, faces and blood. I don't remember any of it. The next thing I knew I was running through the streets, police sirens blaring somewhere. As I realized what had happened, I noticed an open sewer cap and hopped in. I followed those pipes and sluiceways until I came to the river just outside of town. I'd made it out. Now that the gland had worn off, I was stiff all over and the bullet wounds had started to hurt again. I just sat against that old pipe and went to sleep.

Well after that I wasn't sure what to do with myself. I hopped on a train like the old days and just rode the rails for a while. I felt ashamed of myself, not for losing the power I'd taken, but for wanting it in the first place. I felt like no matter where I went, I'd always end up running. Then I started hearing things about a place called Gotham. I was hearing that the local mafias and gangs were jumping ship because of someone who called himself the Batman. My interest was piqued. Here was a place to start fresh, to make my mark. And more importantly, here was someone worth hunting. A monster among monsters. The Batman was the top of the food chain in Gotham, and I thought I could change that. That brought me out of my depression and into Gotham City.