A/N: This has gone from a spur-of-the-moment crack-fic idea to a thing that's completely out of control.
Chapter 14: Bonds
I woke up on the damp bathroom floor, still in my clothes and sitting just as I'd had when I fell asleep. The first feeling I got was one of confused recollection, quickly replaced by a hollow sensation in my stomach as I remembered what I'd done the night before.
I wouldn't think about it. Just remembering hurt like someone was digging his fingers into my chest, but something more was hiding underneath. It took me a moment to realize what it was - could I really be lonely? I hadn't talked to anyone in two days, except the man who I... no. I hadn't really spoken to anyone in those two days, not really felt like I was the same at some level.
Even the connection I'd felt with the people on the streets now seemed to have been fueled more by a feeling of superiority than actual empathy. I could feel it wearing on me, the feeling of complete detachment from anyone in the city. They were all human. No one else existed here I could share anything with. But I had to try.
If I continued to cultivate my removal from other people's lives, killing people would only get easier. If I felt detached from them, like I didn't share any basal emotions or needs with them, they wouldn't feel like living beings when I killed them. I'd refused to look at the man's body, but I'd punched him right through the chest. A morbid slideshow of pictures ran through my head when I dared to think about things like that - people everywhere, in bars, on the streets, in their own homes, and I knew I'd end up killing them all if I removed myself from their existence
Some of the images burned into my mind; a girl about my own age, her limbs at grotesque angles and her neck broken, letting her head roll backwards like some kind of broken doll; a small child, like the boy I'd met yesterday, lying on the ground, and the only thing I knew was that he was dead; and the image of the man from yesterday, his face flashing in my mind like a warning light, accompanied by a feeling of painfully strong dread.
I'd need to find someone, and I didn't have time to think at all. Slamming the door open, I ran down the hallway and out through the lobby, not even pausing to look at the clerk at all. I reflexively followed the path I'd taken yesterday, far clearer in my memory than I'd ever wanted it to be. I stopped to think at the exact same park bench I'd sat on yesterday, the feeling of déja vu only quenched by the differences in my knowledge between yesterday and now. Before, I'd been sure I could just take it all, now when I'd figured everything out; now, I was still numbed at what had happened to shatter that hope, and I knew that I hadn't known enough.
I just had to get up, find something or someone to reconnect me to humanity and act on it, without completely destroying it all again. I decided to enter the nightclub I'd been outside yesterday - there was no point in pulling myself even further away from what had happened than necessary. The bouncer was a joke - he didn't stop to look closer at me or even ask for money or an ID after just one smile. The club's interior was almost solid black, with none of the Halloween-like gimmicks that popular culture had had me imagining.
Quite a lot of people were sitting in the burgundy leather bar chairs or in the black couches in the adjoining, smaller room, but most people were on the dancefloor, a slow-moving, pulsating mass of humans that emitted a warmth that almost made me gag to suppress the burning in my throat. The bar was too close to the dancefloor to be safe at all, and the bartender was probably looking for suspicious behavior.
Had I already started thinking this way, surveying a hunting ground before striking? I wasn't even hungry... no, I just didn't need blood. I'd always be hungry, and I'd have to reconcile myself with that. I didn't need anything more to hinder my existence. Walking into the adjoining room, I carefully sat down in one of the couches, not too far nor too close from the group of girls about my age or so chatting on the far side of the room, about three of them looking nervous and out-of-place in their black clothes and thick makeup - obviously newcomers.
The girl the furthest away from me was about thirteen feet away, easy to reach in a casual leap. No. I definitely hadn't thought this way before. Now, it just came as a reflex. Too far, too hard to reach. Too close, they get suspicious. Those two sentences seemed to be embedded in my subconscious. I really was a predator now.
And maybe, just maybe, I could get one more predator by my side tonight.
It felt drastic, but I was incapable of pinpointing just why I was having qualms about it. I smiled a bit, not even scared by the situation and that I was probably about to damn someone to the same hunger as me, and got ready to act normal.