A Confession of an Abnormal Fugitive

I am writing this from a dishonorably acquired phone, so apologies in advance for my moral impurities. I recently lost everything again, as I am ever so slightly on the run from U.S. law enforcement for a murder I never committed. I guess I just want to clear the air. I will try to make this the most honest account I can, but I will detail inhuman concepts that are limited  by human languages to properly express it. I can assuredly write that the general public will never hear of my criminal case, and I highly doubt that the donut-munching suits care about anything I want to say, due to the fact that the foundation of the existence of my kind is laid by the sinew, muscle, and blood of the innocent.

I figure some of you may pause at that statement, but I make no attempt to hide that I am not human. I was never human. There are no deceptions or turns in this confession like some cliché horror where the protagonist reveals to the audience or uncovers a dark truth of their inhuman nature at the end of their story. My fundamental mistake, which compelled me to write, is believing there is any place for me in civil society other than that of a monster that preys upon the evolutionary drowned, trodden kan kō (thinking prey—aka humans). 

The nature of my being is not something I like to discuss too much. So far, I will discuss my fundamentals in regard to helping humans understand my current plight. The reason for posting it here on this subreddit is simply that I want the majority of the people who graze at this testament to shun it as fiction. This is, admittedly, a selfish desire I have, as I don’t fully trust humans with too much information for self-preservation reasons. Nonetheless, I will discuss my nature if it is relevant.

Unlike normal members of society, my earliest memories are not of a childhood being raised by guardians. Instead, they are animalistic “urges” of being a predatory stalker in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. I’m not sure urge is the best word for this, as my memory of those animalistic days are fairly spotty, but I have a gut feeling about what occurred during my earliest years. I actually don’t know exactly how old I am, as wild beasts, I’d say, have an appropriate fondness for arithmetic. But if I had to guess, I am at least tens of winters and summers old—so somewhere between 20 and 90 years. The reason for this vagueness is that before I acquired a human understanding of the world, neither I nor my other uncivilized kin had any need for timekeeping, fancy philosophy, or the comfort food of a 12-piece McNuggets. We are ageless, and we are the creatures that give kan-kō nightmares.

However, I do remember the day I usurped a human understanding of the world. In the summer of 2020, I heard the cry of an injured hiker while I was hunting in a modified black bear form, with maybe two rows of teeth. He was calling for aid on a shiny black box (a phone, I think) because there was a small tickle of blood coming from his ankle. I’m not sure how he got injured, and to be brutally honest, I did not pay much attention to the scene, as my animalistic instincts drove me to maul this meek, injured, immobile prey. I fundamentally can't understand what the hiker thought or felt when I emerged from the foliage not to render aid but to render him into mere calories! He was such an easy hunt that, in my beastly confidence, I simply pinned him to the ground and started feasting upon his guts and liver while he was still alive. I can’t comprehend the pain and terror I caused this man, and there can be no true forgiveness for my actions. There is something in ancient Greek religion that says the soul of a man is nestled in the liver, but I guess in his case, it is now nestled in my stomach, as I did not merely steal his life, his flesh, and his memory but his soul as well! All rendered and broken into pieces! That day keeps me up at night as I siphon his cursed understanding of morality. How I would gladly trade it all back! Regardless, this murder is not why I am writing this, but to explain that all members of my species are guilty of being cannibalistic murderers if they are gallivanting in the gilded glamour of human civility.

My stomach, filled with vice, brought no joy as tears and blood seeped into my stomach for the innocence I have lost. I sat there for a while, contemplating what I had done and what I needed to do now. My former avian friends cried pathetically to me for a piece, but their feral chirps were echoes of a past I cannot return to. Staying here will eventually result in death, as my inherited knowledge of man forewarns me not to underestimate the powers of humanity. I slowly wandered out of that Sierra Nevada garden, taking an imperfect form of an Adamite man. I cried for myself as I pondered if my actions were an abomination to the Creator, as I am punished to wander the earth with a human mind until the time of the Lightbringer comes again. My only reconciliation to my immortal damnation is that of an echo of a repeating line from the hiker’s favorite movie.

“Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind” - Boondock Saints 1999

As I crept down the mountainside, some humans found my scratched and unclad body. In a rush, they called for help and ordered me to wait. Instead of tearing them into pieces, I waited, for I felt no animosity, but the thought crossed my mind. I simply sat there, away from them, and avoided eye contact. After a heart-pounding wait, the officers eventually came and luckily mistook me for a lost homeless crackhead, given my unusual speech pattern, scabs, and my fragmented knowledge of human facial expressions. I insisted to the officers that I did not need medical attention but needed shelter, as I had lost everything. The cops did not want a prolonged argument with a naked crackhead, so they contacted a social worker, who provided me access to shelter and clothes.

I spent weeks just trying to adapt to my new living conditions among humans. I found humans take strange offense if they don’t receive constant eye contact, so I have to painfully look at them, forsaking all tactical awareness! Humans care irrationally more about pronunciation and voice, to the point that they automatically sort each other into categories by mere tones instead of actually listening to what their kin say. For example, humans subconsciously and quickly root out gays, idiots, foreigners, geniuses, morally good and evil people by their voice alone. This is partially just for me to rant, but also to say that my voice alone automatically places me into the category of idiot or foreigner—though that is the same category to many in this country. I never got a proper hold on mimicking proper vocals, but perhaps it is justified for humans to mistreat me given my nature.

Finding work without documents and being generally unnerving made finding work very difficult in my first few years. I mostly just loitered at the White Horse Strip Mall as one of the many vagrants, which, in my squalor, allowed for easy infiltration of the homeless population. I mostly stuck to myself, as the other unkempt individuals were useless to me.

My primary food source was the Burger King in the White Horse Strip Mall, which allowed easy access to burgers after closing. Despite my human mind, I still maintained my ability to change my arms into thin bowstrings to drink my bovine-ish prey from the cracks in the doors. I include this factoid about myself to remind readers that, despite my human mind, I still possess all my wild “utilitarian” functions. I could steal money at night, but I felt it was wrong, since I do not need to harm others. That was my moral praxis at the time as a cannibalistic burger thief.

One April day, during my observation of humans, I smelled a whiff of a familiar hint of heated lithium vapors. There, getting out of a presumably stolen Ferrari was another of my kind. My kin inherited our own language and the ability to sense each other as a gift from our Creator. Even if I had never met one of my kind, we instantly locked eyes like distant friends meeting again. I remember the conversation verbatim.

He walked with a smirk on his face while heading in my general direction. Curious, I simply held my territory on my meager sleeping bag that I used to fake sleep.

He queried in a typical southern accent, “Why do I see a king nestling amongst society's uh—lumpenproletariat, to put it nicely? Why are you not living like a king in your own private manor?”

I responded in a ragged, uneven voice, “I just want to live a moral life and see the wonders of this world.”

He gave out a hearty laugh. “We have a saint, don’t we? With that voice! The only wonders you will see are the bottom of the dumpster, no insult intended. I am the last person to encourage immorality, at least true immorality. Look, I am not going to push your moral buttons now. I happen to own that fine establishment over there.”

He gestured with his left human-shaped claw to the Burger King.

“I tell you what. Why don’t you work for me and earn some legitimate money? And if it is not too much of a hassle, I can schedule you a private speech therapist. After all, we warrior kings look after each other. That is what separates us from the pettiness of all kō (prey).”

In obvious joy, I answered, “Of course I will work for you. How do I start this?”

My response is not out of naivety as our kind has been ingrained to not seek conflict and aid fellow kin of this world.

The stranger chuckled, “You don’t need to worry about that. Let me introduce you to the team yonder there. I will set everything up for you. Richard [Redacted], by the way.”

That is simply how I got my first job in retail at a greasy and accursed fast food joint. I will just skim most of my time to bury the trauma of customers complaining about missed food items. Look, I don’t control what happens in the jungle of the kitchen, and I am surprised that you human retail workers are not currently taking up arms for a luddite revolt against your retail overlord. I guess I was kinda lucky, as Richard gave me an apartment free of rent, and he personally taught me to sculpt my body to make it more appealing to humans. The process to mend flesh in a complicated manner was slow for me, but that's fine since both Richard and I knew not to radically change my face in a single night, which would attract unwanted attention.

During my months of working at Burger King, I met Angel. I call her Angel as she brought the best out of me despite it not being her true name. I am not sure how or what she saw in me, but we eventually started dating and seeing each other after work. Unfortunately, I don’t want to talk too much about her, as memories of her are painful. I noticed as I grew more acquainted with Angel, Richard became more withdrawn. I thought it was just some petty jealousy, but it was something worse.            

The walls of my life were swept away from me on one red evening. It was a normal workday at Burger King while Angel had the day off. While I was leaving, I got her favorite chicken fingers as I wanted a gift for her. We were at a state where it became an informal agreement between the both of us to see each other after work, since both of us didn’t have anything better to do. I sent her a text message that I was stopping by her place while I was getting on the bus, but I received no response during my ride. That was no issue, as she might be busy with the herculean task of watching a Survivor re-run, I thought at the time. Eventually, the bus dropped me off at a stop near Angel’s place. Unbeknownst to me, this was also another kind of stop for me.

As I approached her house, I smelled thin traces of iron and lithium. I rushed to the front door and frantically grasped at the doorknob. As I held the cold doorknob, I just wanted to flee. I knew what happened, but I just did not want to see the familiar horror. I felt that if I did not even attempt to help Angel after all she did for me, then I could not possibly reconcile with my inhumanity. With a deep breath, I opened the door; it was unlocked. This was another invitation.

As I swung the door open, a foul, pungent smell of murder violated my nose. I tried to grapple it off of me, but the smell was my jailer, dragging me to its source. It led me to her. She—or I should say, her parts—her remains were spread across the kitchen like the discarded scraps of a wild kill left for meek scavengers. There, standing at the center of the dark red mess, stood Richard, smiling with feline eyes. I wanted to dig my claws into his flesh and feel his organs sunder under my bestial blades, but I knew he outclassed me in every definition of what it means to be a killer. He could resculpt his body in a second, while it took me minutes to attempt to merely mimic his corrupted form. While I assessed the horror and thought of a tactical response, he elongated his neck toward me until his neck hovered around me like a Luciferian snake. I should have dodged, but I admit that I was in shock despite my previous bravado about tactical thinking.

Richard's voice cried with a laughter of a thousand razors.

“You are here! Great! Are you hungry? I just made a fine meal for the both of us! Her life will no longer contribute to nature’s agony!”

I wished I could say no! That I could not feel the hunger, for I am no monster! But I can’t escape my nature. The gore, the smell, the rage tormented my soul intrinsically.

In a clear rage, I proclaimed, “Why have you done this!? Why…!?”

Richard's voice changed to that of a disappointed human parent.

“I did this to harden you, boy, as you will destroy yourself if you continue on this path. You will inevitably outlive her, for our kind don’t go meekly into the abyss. After she dies, what then? Are you going to get a new companion? Then what happens when that one dies, and the hundreds of companions after them? In the end, you will only feel the emptiness of the void.”

In his left hand, he offered me Angel’s liver.

“Embrace your nature, our struggle, and your hunger. We are the lesser evil in this world compared to them. You already know of the true monsters I speak of.”

He was right. You kan-kō inflict such misery upon this world that immediate extinction of your kind would be merciful and utterly justified compared to the dark forces crawling from Sol’s oblivion of light to torture us all. But I don’t know. It still feels wrong to knowingly murder innocent people and to fucking eat her!

I yelled back, “Fuck off!”

Richard chuckled, “Do the fiery depths of the humans’ hell care if you killed one or thousands? It makes no difference, for we will all burn the same down there if the humans are right.”

Instead of attempting to stop Richard from eating the rest, I just left, as I had no desire to converse with this demon, and I knew using force or words was futile. I bring this up as it gnaws at me that I did not do anything to stop his gluttony. I did not even call the police, as that would only lead to a dozen unprepared cops to their deaths as they fruitlessly attempted to apprehend a being beyond their comprehension and firearms.

I still don't know much about humans, but I know sticking around town will lead to my death. My blood whispers to me in pulses that the humans will cover up the crime scene, as it has all the markings of a supernatural attack with the mess and traces of lithium. Since I matched all basic behaviors of my species, I doubt the US government is even interested in questioning me. In my days in hiding, my suspicions were proven time to time correct as I smelled liquid metal carried by human hunters. There will be no quarter given to me, and I understand their fear and anger toward me. If I simply stayed away from Angel, she would still be alive. This is all my fault. I can’t escape from my sins or my nature.

I guess I am just writing this to give myself time to think about my situation.

I want justice.

I want to break every bone in Richard's body and yank his organs out of him until his face contorts into the shape of the hiker’s face in mortal terror. But can I wait decades to even have a fair chance to taste that elusive nectar of revenge?

Should I be a cliché redeemed monster and try to protect humans from things beyond their current understanding?

What if I just end up hurting more humans by my mere presence?

Fuck, I don’t know what to do.

Maybe Richard is right, and I am just a beast. Maybe I should bring true terror to the kan-kō hunters. They have forgotten their place on the food pyramid!

I want to howl for a glorious death fighting against the forces of Agony!

But why can’t things be as simple as before? Just fuck all this shit and this world.

I am now smelling a vehicle carrying liquid death and a small hint of epinephrine.

They are coming here. To me.

Shit. I need to post this now.