First Hunt, part 1 (Under a Crimson Moon part 1)

It’s hard to understand. I doubt any one of you reading this is going to see me, us, as nothing more than cursed people. I don’t blame you. At first I was certain I was cursed. I contemplated a lot of things, and I very much hated myself for what I realised: I liked it. Every month, for a couple of days, I felt alive. And it was nothing like what I had known before. After the first year, I understood what had happened. And with every ounce of understanding I gained, I got control. Why am I writing this text now? Because I want everyone to know the truth. I can read the papers, I can see the cover-ups. I can see how these betray fear and misunderstanding. But now I will come clean, I will let the world know, and after that, the world will still tremble in fear. But this time, they will fear the right thing.

It all started 10 years ago. I was a young boy back then. Of course, you could not have told me that, teenagers like to believe they are anything but young kids. Looking back however, I was an idiot. And like all teenage idiot, I liked alcohol, parties, and doing whatever the hell I wanted. This lead me to this clearing in the woods behind the drive-in with a bunch of people I did not know, drinking whatever we manage to buy from employees who couldn’t care less about laws. So there we were, in the woods, getting drunk, and being stupid. That’s when I saw her. She was cute, she was drunk, and she was practically naked, so I did the only logical thing: I started flirting. That wasn’t accounting for the jock boyfriend who was also a mean drunk.

He started yelling, I started punching. I felt my nose break; I heard his ribs crack when I slugged him with a nearby log. At this point, the party was over, I didn’t care. My face hurt, and I was left alone with all the leftover alcohol from the party. So I kept on drinking. It numbed the pain, my senses, and I decided to sleep. I found a comfortable log, and dozed off. I wasn’t alone in the clearing when I fell asleep. When I woke up there was blood everywhere. No one else was there. My face no longer hurt, I was sure my nose was broke, but I managed to breath without any problems. Couldn’t say that much about the other person that slept here last night, he was missing an arm, among other things.

When the police was called, I was still quite busy throwing up. The report said that a rabid dog or some other animal had come in, saw the free human buffet and went for it. Back then I had just been lucky. I had puked before falling asleep; this most likely kept the animal away. The rest of the exam period was a bit uncomfortable. The big outdoor party planned after prom was moved indoors, everybody was sad, and everyone started avoiding me, as if by surviving, I had been responsible.

Three weeks after school was over, I started feeling restless. Something inside me wanted to go outside, run, climb, move, hunt. Being still grounded for the reckless use of alcohol and other stupidities, I had to sneak out. The moon was full, and it was bright. The light was revealing the true nature of things.

And this is the important part: the moon was just revealing the nature of everything. Trees that were part of the background of every day life became living beings in the night. The sky was no longer obscured by the light of a lying sun, it was dark, the stars were no longer hidden. Everything is different under the light of the moon, and I realized back then that I was changing. It was strange, at first I felt cold, naked, alone. Then I felt my heard pounding, my body became warmer, I felt my skin stretch. I took off my clothes. I did not need the artificial skin they provided; the moon would only tolerate my true skin. Finally, I felt my senses grow stronger. I could hear everything that was around me, I could smell flowers from yards away, and I could see through the night.
What happened next was a great source of torment in my early months. I smelled something, it smelled sweet, tasty, I had to go for it. I ran, the smell becoming stronger, and after reaching a small forest about 2 miles away from home, I caught up with what drew me there. It was a deer. It was sleeping, but I was inexperienced, and loud. Still not adjusted to the changes in my body, to the claws were nails used to be, I mad a lot of noise trying to sneak up. The deer woke up. It started running but what I lacked in subtlety, I made up in speed and force. I caught it, ripped it apart and devoured it. The blood, the flesh, the taste was wonderful. As I brought my fangs deeper in the deer’s flesh, I started remembering. The alcohol, the party, the girl. I was hunting that night, I was already hungry. And when I slept, I ate. The girl that died, the rabid animal, all the sadness. It was my fault.

And I liked it.

I revelled in the destruction, I swallowed the flesh, gnawed at the bones. I devoured the dear like I devoured that poor girl’s arm. Poor girl? I had amusing sentimentality back then. It was the natural order of the thing. I am predator, but back then, I still felt attachment to these preys. And as I looked up from the deer, and stared at the moon, the light slowly becoming pure crimson reminded me of that night, the month before, when I had done my job as predator. Every memory returned. I was made aware of how, after everyone left, I woke up. She was there, half naked, trying to rouse me up. She had managed to remove most of my clothes as I slept. Washing away the fumes of alcohol that were hindering my body, I got up, and then I got in. As this primordial act was taking place, I felt the effects of the moon on my body. The moonlight rushed into me as I was losing myself into her. Her screams of joy turned to screams of pain. She saw who I truly was, and under the moon, I realised that she was just made of meat. She stopped screaming as se saw my jaws slowly wrapping themselves around her arm. She cried; I could smell the salt of her tears. And I ripped her arm off of its socket. Her blood was delicious. It filled me up quite nicely. She tried to crawl away, but I caught her leg. She was crying, pleading with me using these words that sound so empty when you see their true origins. I licked her body, it was now covered in dirt, blood, tears, sweat. I saw her eyes fill with a darkness that was beyond fear. No sound left her mouth anymore, she understood.

I was predator, she was prey. Her neck became my next snack.

I sensed that the night was almost over, I ran home, put my cloths back on and went up the wall and through my window. I took off the cloths again, looked at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t quite sure what I was, but I felt I was no longer just human.

[Yes, I am starting another longer story. And yes, this is what I wanted "Lunarity"to be like, something more visceral, more primal. A story where the character is not one we want to identify with. I also wanted to bring something new to make up for the last few days where I did not post. I will try to post another chapter of Trouble as soon as I can sit down and write it, and I will try to add to this new project of mine. I think it's time I moved away from the ultra short stories, I think I have reached the limit of what I can do in these tiny fragments of a real story. Crimson Moon here is gonna run in parallel with Trouble, but I will try to write Trouble on Saturdays and Crimson on Wednesdays. I may do some other experiments with writing, but I will no longer delude myself in thinking these work as stories.]