The worst came when I opened my eyes.  Even though I done this every night for longer than I care to think about, panic still managed to set in. After being stabled for too long my senses came galloping out, rushing through me and bringing my body up to speed with what my brain already knew.

            I was buried alive.

            I clawed at the earth above me, pushing and digging upwards with clumsy movements. Swallowing mouthfuls of dirt I acted out of instinct alone, driven on by the smells above. Rotting wood and garbage never smelled so sweet. They were the glowing neon signs of out of the way highway motels, and I was the tired driver holding on to the wheel just long enough to make it there. When my hands finally gripped something other than dirt I gave myself one last extra push and just like that I was free.

            The crazy thing is that it’s almost worth it, just to experience the first few seconds out of the ground. My senses were already expanding, bringing me the sights, sounds, and smells of everything nearby. And understand that for someone like me, the definition of nearby is a bit more expansive than usual. Cars screeched and horns honked in distant traffic, while closer the murmurs I heard footsteps landing on pavements, the clickety-click of rushed high heels and the heavier padded steps of businessmen rushing to work. I could smell them too, focus on the perfumes and colognes they doused themselves in or go deeper, past all the obnoxious layers until I smelled their distinct fragrances, their sweat, their lust, their fear, their happiness.  

            It made me hungry.

            Slowly I set to work, putting on the barriers that kept me from going insane. I learned early on that walking around the city with all my senses fully intact was dangerous, for me as much as for the rest of the city’s population. So I purposefully deaden them to a point where they wouldn’t be much of a distraction. Have you ever tried making yourself not smell something?  It isn’t easy. But I had a lot of time in my hands.. It took me a while, with the beast working against me, but after a few minutes I couldn’t smell anything but the garbage around me. With that done, I now focused on more important things, like figuring out how many days had gone by.

            Memories don’t come back as quickly as the senses do. I think it’s a fail safe mechanism in our bodies.  First thing that most of us do after waking up is feed, and we don’t need memories for that, just our noses to tell us where the closest bloodstream lies. So I just sat and waited, knowing that sooner or later I would start remembering the last few days. Then I realized that didn’t mean I had to wait in a pile of garbage.

            It’s when I stood that I found the hole in my shirt. A large ugly thing to the right of my chest and just above my ribs. Frowning, I examined the ripped shirt before gingerly touching the skin underneath. And that’s when the train pulling the events of the last few days arrived into the station of my head.

            “Son of a bitch,” I murmured.

            Stepping away from the garbage, I looked around me. I was inside a building, or at least what was left of it. A good chunk of the roof was missing and the walls looked like they would crumble with just an ugly look from me. Worms and soil winked at me from repeated cracks across the floorboards, and broken stairs led to nowhere.  This wasn’t one of my regular spots, the little nooks and crannies spread across the city that I knew of in case I found myself with too little time to make it home.  That bastard had done a really good number on me if it’d forced me to squirrel myself away in an unknown place like this.

            I reached into the pockets of my trench coat but found them empty. This meant I would have to make a quick stop first.

            Outside an icy wind did a good job of keeping everyone inside, leaving the streets deserted except for the occasional car passing me by, their headlights cutting across the darkness for only a brief instant before waves of black once more washed over. The cold didn’t bother me much, in fact, I kinda enjoyed it. I certainly preferred it to the baking, humid weather that would come during the summer. Being awake during only the night helped me avoid the worst of it, but I still wasn’t looking forward to it.

            It’s times like this when I wished I didn’t dislike driving so much. A car would certainly have come in handy right about now. Resigning myself, I started walking across the lonely street and kept an eye for the nearest payphone, having only my thoughts to keep me company. And they made lousy companions.

            The guy was supposed to have been an easy job, just a run of the mill leech that had become a bit too greedy and started drawing too much attention to a certain part of town. Five murdered girls in the same part of the city in a month will bring the cops in, and five murdered girls with their throats torn apart will make them stick around. I passed a newspaper lying in the gutter, two days old, STILL NO CLUES TO THE ST. MARY’S MURDERS the headline read.

            It’s the kind of job that tends to get dumped in my lap quite a bit, although this was the first time in a good while that it happened in the city. Word had gotten out a few months ago that I made this my home (or as much as I make any place my home) and things had quieted down really fast.  I been expecting the call ever since I heard about the third murder, but it looked like those in charged hadn’t been paying much attention. Typical.

            It was a block or two after the newspaper that I first realized I was being followed. I kept walking, not giving away that I knew. Sloppy Johnus, real sloppy, I chided myself.  Hunching my shoulders I stuck my hands in my pockets and concentrated on the sounds around me. There were three of them, two behind me keeping their distance and a third on the opposite side of the street, sticking close to the shadows. I lead them around for a while, wondering when they would make the first move, but they seemed to be perfectly content with following me for now. They probably thought I was lost, and I quickened my pace, throwing a few glances to my left and right to keep up the illusion.

            I turned into what I knew was a dead end, and they must have known it too, because they hurried to catch up to me. Their excitement clung to the air now, the sound of their beating hearts filling my ears. The beast rose to the surface, rubbing its bristling fur along the side my spine and purring. It was feeding time and it knew it.

            “You lost man?”

            He had the whole street tough sounding thing going for him, the sort of voice that probably took years of selling drugs and beating the crap out of people to cultivate. I could see it working on most that he ran into. But I could go beyond that and still hear the voice of a kid.

            They were all kids, nineteen or twenty years old at best. Wearing ripped jeans and tattered shirts, they could have belonged to any of the small gangs that did this sort of thing on a nightly basis.  The one that had asked me the question wore a leather jacket, which I guess meant he was the leader. They all had ugly little faces.

            “He looks lost to me,” one of the others spoke up. I could hear a jingling sound after every word he said, and it took me a second to figure out that it was thanks to the metal pierced in his nose, eyebrow, lip and places in his face that I’m sure weren’t intended to drive holes into.

            “That must be a bitch to get through metal detectors.”

            That took them aback. I think they were more used with people cowering or trying to make a break for it.

            Metal face sneered at me. “Hey Ricky, I get dibs on him okay?”

            “What the fuck dude?” the one with the leather jacket, Ricky I figured, said. “Here we are, trying to be good Samaritans, trying to see if you’re lost, and you fuckin’ disrespect us? See what we get for trying to be polite citizens,” he asked, elbowing his friends, who all nodded. “Man, still though, I’m going to be cool. Normally my friend here would have to hurt you for that little remark of yours, you know, to keep his street rep clear and all. But if you just give us your money, we might forgive this. Right guys?” Again, the other two nodded.

            I took a few steps back, deeper into the shadows. “I would, but I don’t have any money.” I withdrew my hands from my pockets and showed them, “see?”

            Ricky shook his head sadly. “Man, I hate fucking liars. Am I standing here, lying to you my good man? Nah, I tell you how things are up front. Give you a chance to make this go away real quick. Instead you look me right in the eyes and tell me you got no money.” He looked me up and down, “I deal with a bunch of different people in my every day business, all sorts really, and I gotta say, experience has taught me that anyone wearing a fancy little thing like that trench coat of yours doesn’t walk around with no money.”

            I gave him a smile and the truth. “It was a gift.”

            I was getting impatient. Being so close to them made the beast pace back and forth, just asking to be let out. If they didn’t make a move soon, I would. I took another step backwards, this time my back hitting the wall.

            I caught the smile on all their faces. They thought they had me cornered. Ricky stepped forward, and the other two followed.

            “A gift huh? Well, that was certainly nice of someone. I bet they won’t mind giving you another one when they find out that you gave yours up so we don’t put you in the hospital. Or worse.”

            I wanted to tell them that just a few days ago I had a hand punch a hole through my chest, so there wasn’t much worse they could do to me.  But I didn’t think it would matter, so I shrugged instead.

            “I’m not giving anything up. You’re more than welcome to try though.”

            They were quick for humans, I’ll give them that. The two lackeys came at me first, one from each side, hopping to grab my arms and hold me still. Might have worked if they didn’t telegraph the attempt by the way the muscles in their arms and legs coiled and tensed before they moved. I reached for the one coming at me to the right and grabbed him, throwing him into his friend. They crashed into one another, and before they could react I was on them, kicking one of the guy’s legs under him and following through by stepping on his knee cap. I barely heard the crunch of bones breaking over the rhythm of their heartbeats. The one with all the metal in his face took a swing at me, but there was little balance to it and even less force. I could have ducked, but instead I took the hit to my face, grinned, and then returned the punch. It put him down on the ground and I knew he wasn’t getting up.          

            The leader was smart, already trying to make a break for it. I bridged the distance between us before he could make it out of the alley and slammed him into the wall, holding him by the shoulders.  He reeked of fear, draped over him like a long, dark veil. Being so close to him brought the beast out in full force, wrestling control away from me. 

            I never seen myself when I get overpowered by the need to feed, but I been told that it’s like two different people sharing the same face. With the beast in control, I saw things differently now. The color drained away from the world, the bricks of the wall bleeding out their dark shade of brown and leaving only the grayish white color of a corpse. The same happened with everything else around me, all except Ricky. He glowed a sickly yellow, the hue flowing out of his body and floating in the air. A part of it reached up towards my face and pressed softly against my lips. There are many ways to satisfy the hunger, and while it’s true that the most common and easiest is using blood, it’s not the only way. I leaned closer, dipping my face into the yellowish color and parted my lips, siphoning off the fear. I’m not sure if it was me or the beast that lapped it all up as it scorched down my throat.

            The bullets punched me in the back like the fists of a prized fighter. They seared into my body and cut a path through my insides and exited out of my chest. I lost count of how many bullets they were, only knowing that there were enough that I should have been dead already. I flinched, not because of the pain, which strangely there was very little of, but because of the roar of the gun. I never heard a hand cannon sound louder, and my mind started to create visions of massive guns that had to be held in two hands, long tunneled barrels with no end in sight. The burning gunpowder pushed itself down my nose and chocked my lungs, more and more of it filling the air with every pull of a trigger.

            Click. Boom. Splat.

            And just like that it was over. Pushing myself off Ricky I shook my head fiercely, repressing the shudder that pleaded to be allowed to move through my body.  I didn’t bother to turn around and look for the shooter, he wouldn’t be there. Just like there wouldn’t be any open wounds if I looked down my chest.  Turning my attention to the slumped body of Ricky, I wondered how old he’d been when he was shot. Must have been at a really young age if it’d made such an impact on him.

            The satisfied purring of the beast told me it had its share and released the hold it had over my body, slowly returning to sleep back into the deeper portion of my self. The color in the world began to return and I stood still, watching as the little yellow color left in Ricky’s unconscious body slowly disappeared. I couldn’t even smell it anymore.

            A groan brought me back to reality. Behind me one of the two guys I took down before Ricky was coming too. He was trying to stand up, but his busted knee wouldn’t let him, and he stumbled back down to the floor. I walked towards him and shook my head when I saw him reaching behind his back.

            “Wouldn’t do that if I was you. Knives and guns don’t really work that well on me.”

            I met his defiant glare with a calm look, until the thugs hand slowly moved back to the front, where I could see it. I nodded. “What’s your name?” I asked.

            I didn’t think I was going to get an answer, but finally the kid answered. “Mark.” The way he spat it out, it made the name sound like some kind of obscenity. Directed at me no doubt.

            “You’re not going to remember any of this Mark.” I said softly, staring into his eyes.

            “Yes I am, “he said, “I’m going to remember this, and so is Ricky, and so is James. And we’ll find you. You better leave the damn city, because we’ll torch the place down if we have to.”

            I sighed. “If you remember any of this Mark, you’re putting your head on the chopping block. When your friends all come to, convince them that this was a gang attack.” I motioned to Ricky. “He’ll be easy to convince if you get him as soon as he comes to. That just leaves your other friend. The one with all the piercings.”

            “Fuck you.”

            I sat in silence and studied him.  I would have said he reminded me of me at his age, head strong, defiant, and too stupid for his own good, but even I like to think if I’d been in the same situation, I would have done things differently.

            “Last chance Mark.”

            His hand reached behind his back again, but it never got there. I broken his neck by then.

            Standing, I told myself that I gave him a fair chance. I couldn’t afford distractions, and a gang with a hard on for me definitely ranked as a distraction. Don’t know if they could actually have followed through with his threat, but it’s a chance I couldn’t take.

            Next was metal face. It’s harder to kill a man that isn’t reaching for an instrument to hurt you, but I did it anyhow. It’s not like it would have been my first time. That only left Ricky.

            “Sorry kid, but the truth is, you wouldn’t have lasted much longer.” My words mingled with the soft crack of his neck.

            I had experienced his fear, and I knew it was just too great. You can’t be afraid of something that has a good chance of happening to you. And he was the leader of a gang, if one of his enemies didn’t do him in, it would have been from the inside, someone wanting to take his spot.

            I put the alley and any thoughts of it to the back of me, hands back in my pocket. I had a job to do. The faint trace of gunpowder followed me for a few more blocks, before disappearing out of my mind.