When my eyes open, my mouth tastes like raw meat and blood. I wipe my mouth and my sleeve is left with streaks of red on it. "Uh?" I say as I sit up. The world comes into focus as I blink out the exhaustion and there are three corpses in the blood-spattered room. Taiga, her mother, and that other guy, Kuhl. "Huh? Wha...?"
"Oh, you're awake." Sticks says, standing over me.
"What happened? W-why is everyone dead?" I snap to attention and leap up. Kuhl has a few more chunks missing from his body than I remembered. Taiga's had an eye scooped out and her throat torn open and she lays splayed in the floor. And her mother... her clothes and her body are torn open and there are bloody craters all around her torso. "Why the FUCK is everyone dead?"
"Hey, remember how I said that you really didn't want to let the charm run out of energy?"
"You said it would fail!"
"No, I said it would get hungry. Well, here it is. It's fed. Congratulations, you passed the test in the worst way possible. F for 'Fucking poor performance'." He stretches. "Jesus! Who do you think you are?"
I storm out after him. "Does Jesus even exist here? And why do you think you have the right to tell me who to kill and why? I don't remember agreeing to a god-damn thing."
He puts his hand to his masked head as he walks outside. "You don't have a choice. It's like you don't pay attention to ANYTHING I say. And no, Jesus isn't called that here, so stop talking about him." There's a new-ish station wagon parked in front of the house that wasn't there before. He opens the passenger door for me and motions me in before sliding over the hood. I stare at him. I go back inside. He slides back over the hood a second time and comes after me. "Hey, HEY! The fuck do you think you-"
I turn to reveal my sawed-off shotgun levelled at his head. "I'm doing whatever the fuck I want."
He glared at me, then he groaned loudly and threw his hands up and walked away.
Sticks got the point. There was a hanging bench on the porch, and he sat there and watched as I found a shovel and forced myself to fight through the torment. The mother and daughter were buried in a shallow grave. I wouldn't have accepted anything less. I hoped for more, but I had limited energy and time. The other guy... I left him there because I didn't give a shit even before I was exhausted.
"You know, they wouldn't have done the same for you." He said when he realized what I was doing. I ignored him. A while went by. He spoke up again. "This is dangerous. Someone could see you." I kept ignoring him.
He didn't say anything in the hours afterwards. He just watched me as he lazily swung, his feet kicked up on one of the armrests and his head laying on the other. Observing me. Looking down on me. Probably smiling at me having nowhere to go but wherever he takes me. Happy that I'm his. Happy that I can't even say it's his fault. Happy that I done it to myself because I'm such a sack of shit that I ruin everything that ever makes me happy.
I was lucky once again. Sticks had intervened on my behalf and kept them from calling the police once I went berserk. At least, that's what he told me. Whatever really happened, I guessed that his lack of urgency was for a reason. I was covered in gore and left great tracks along the ground as I worked but he knew nothing particularly bad would happen.
I pat the mound of dirt down with the head of the shovel. It's well into the afternoon by now.
"Thanks for not being a nuisance." I say loudly. Sticks rolls his eyes. I can't tell, but that's what he did.
He stands up and reaches his arms up to stretch. "Guess you're done."
"So what's next?" I ask, dead inside.
He looks around theatrically to make sure the gesture is seen despite the mask. "Now we take you to your new home. You had an interesting way of doing it but you did pass the test."
"Please don't say it like that."
He slides over the hood one last time before starting the car. I drop into the passenger seat. "What? That's what you did." He explains as we start to rattle down the gravel trail.
"The necklace did it. You didn't tell me it would start fucking with my mind." I complain. I've already figured out that the necklace is why I wanted to eat the deer, and my disguise is still intact because I done it. I try to relax and slump into the car seat but I'm tightly-wound.
"Dude, it's not my fault you didn't listen." He states. "And even then, it was hungry and you didn't feed it, did you think it was just going to accept that? Come on." He cranes his neck and looks out the back as he turns around and starts driving down the country road this house sits off of. "You gotta have an open mind, my guy. You don't know shit, you can't do shit. You gotta learn to go with the flow."
I put my head in my hands. Why didn't I realize something was up sooner? How did I forget what he warned me about? What is wrong with me?
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"Hey, don't be too hard on yourself about it." He speaks up and knocks me on the shoulder.
"Huh?"
He waves his arms around as he pulls onto a paved street and accelerates. "It doesn't matter how nice you behave and how polite you act. You're not one of them. These things, these 'civilized people', they ain't ever going to accept you for who you are. You wouldn't have been able to keep up the act forever. Maybe a few weeks, a few months, a decade... they would have turned on you eventually."
I stare at him. I hate him but... I don't feel like I'm talking to the same guy from yesterday. "That's not what I'm confused about. Why the change of tone?"
He shrugs. "I figured you'd be like the last guy. He would have loved to create unlimited, risk-free carnage. You ain't, you're different. That's not bad, by the way..." He pauses. "It's not at all. Probably shouldn't have assumed that's what you wanted. Oh well, a lesson for next time."
I grunt and retract into my seat. The fabric is mildly uncomfortable, but just as hunger is the best sauce, exhaustion and pain are the way to appreciate sitting down. The forest has been so deathly still that the sound of the engine revving is as loud as an explosion to my ears. "Where are we going?" I ask.
"Some millionaire's forest manor. You'll love it. It's got lots of room, and a pool too." He explains as he pulls us out and down the gravel road to civilization. "It's funny," he continues semi-absentmindedly. "I don't actually know why a bunch of rich old men are bankrolling us. I think the 'true believer' bit is a routine and they want to be the rulers of the post-industrial order. Well, don't worry about it being cryptid central. Most of the people who hang out there are normal. Normal for this world, at least." He pauses to turn onto a paved road before looking at me expectantly. "Not that it matters, the forest is just fine with the arrangement and it's great for us, you know. Plenty of girls in bathing suits. Hey, if you're tired, feel free to fall asleep. I'm going to keep talking or maybe turn up the radio but I won't get offended if you don't care. Bet you'll like meeting the Father, though, he's interesting."
Please shut the fuck up. "Turn up the radio, Sticks."
"Sticks?" He says out loud. "Oh... oh! Yeah, don't mind those, they make the deer less likely to freak out when they see me, among... other things. I do have a real name, though." I wave at him ineffectually. "Ah, to hell with you. I'll turn up the radio, alright. They've got an entire station dedicated to just you these days. Want to see how accurate they are?"
I grumble and he does it anyways.
I fucking hate talk radio. Out here, they were one of the main forms of car-based entertainment for a long time and they have enough momentum that they still exist even though my life post-dates them. The problem is, being able to talk for 8 hours a day five days a week means either saying nothing or saying total nonsense. No one has 40 hours of worthwhile thoughts a week, unless you're on a level above and beyond normal men (read: your audience).
Every hour, this radio broadcast would check in with their LEO contacts to get the news on the hunt. Every hour, the news was "we ain't found shit, here's where he may be so if you're there watch out". In between bouts of nothing, they filled airwave-time with call-ins from experts. Apparently, serial killers are such a big deal that any random asshole can make it onto a national broadcast by having a certificate and an opinion. It doesn't even have to be a relevant certificate. A con artist was on, and he had a "degree in xenobiology" from the Academy of Cryptozoology, an organization that Sticks said was a scam university as if that wasn't obvious, and he tried to sell rebranded nonlethal self-defense tools as "anti-Sasquatch", books on Sasquatch-focused demonology, breast size enhancement powder since apparently Sasquatches don't like big titties, and my personal favorite, actual fucking magical charms. Even the presenters weren't sold on that one, but no one really had any leg to stand on to say it was fake. After all, the last time a "Sasquatch" was known to have been seen, the people currently in high school hadn't been born yet and the government had said it was some guy before stealing his body.
"ain't Sasquatches from Washington or something?" I ask.
"No, Cascadia." Sticks replies. "And we've had a couple sightings of Sasquatches around these parts."
"Washington is IN Cascadia."
"Really? Man." He muses. I also seem to recall that Sasquatches ain't real, but then again, I thought that dimensional horrors weren't real and now look at me - I am one.
Dr. Teta had a PhD in Feminist Literature. She had a model that all of my actions fit neatly into. I was not really an isolated incident, but the product of a noxious societal attitude about masculinity that resulted in its most pure expression being wanton murder and rape done for pure sadism. She had a book out on the topic and everything. She wanted the audience to understand that this WOULD happen again, and again, and again, because it was the tip of the iceberg in a nationwide cultural degeneration trend. To her credit, the speaker interjected to point out that normal deer males do not do anything like what I do, and that my heinous acts were more likely due to brain problems than watching too many patriarchy-reinforcing movies.
Then the good doctor got mad at the implication that a "person with special needs" could have shot eight people because he was naturally predisposed to violence for biological reasons. It was just an isolated incident and not representative of any broader socio-psychological trends.
I figured that, by the time the third "isolated incident" was committed by the same guy, maybe it was time to worry about killing him and not about re-educating males into a sexually egalitarian culture. "Good news, you're no longer a systemic problem," Sticks commented. If I wasn't covered in my friend's blood I would have laughed with him.
The last chucklefuck we heard about was a television preacher with a massive airwave congregation. He screamed fire and brimstone as he prattled about how society had turned away from God and that I was divine punishment for the sins of liberalism and all those damn species rights. Appalachian priests seemed to look on modern ideas like "the plague of homosexuality and whoring" the same way as the ones I knew, which was probably the exact reason why this one had such an audience. It got downright creepy when he began raving about how society had to give up the "despoiled" to the avatar of God to be ravaged, slaughtered, and consumed but I supposed a prey animal would have a different attitude than a predator like myself.
It was really funny when some random citizen called in and asked him to keep talking about how the "demon" would dispose of the heathens and atheists while moaning sensually. The televangelist got so mad I almost didn't want to get out of the car. However, we had pulled into an upscale gated community, and in the far back, we had come to a gothic manor three stories tall and covered in sharp points and gargoyles.
I have a modicum of energy left after hours of sitting in torpor, and I prepare to get up, but Sticks passes the long driveway and goes to an alcove in the treelines. Around that corner lies a castle of even blacker stone and even taller spires. THAT is our destination. Sticks stops the car right before the front door and then gets out. He throws out his arms as he turns and looks at me. "Welcome to Your Parent's House!" He loudly exclaims as he stands between me and the imposing thing and its innumerable hard edges.