At first, he didn’t remember anything except for the flash of light. Blinding white sphere, born somewhere beyond the horizon, had leached colour from the world and blotted out his life before it. Engineer remembered nothing beyond it, but somewhere in the depths of his psyche there were still embers of fragmented memories left. These were the remnants of memories so important he couldn’t forget them. Engineer had a family, he lived somewhere nearby and he was happy. Nothing concrete, but so long as he had these memories not all was lost. 

This thought pushed him out of trance he had fallen into after the flash and the shock wave following it had thrown him into the bottom of some dark damp hole. It was hard to tell how long he laid there motionless, without food, water or desire to live. Nevertheless, Engineer opened his eyes and stood up. 

He looked around and blanched in horror. World that only recently had been so warm and welcoming, turned into a gloomy grey ruin.

Mountains of trash towered all around him with clouds of dust and ash swirling all over them. The sky was full of mournful heavy clouds. It was freezing. Everything radiated coldness: ground, sky, ruins and creatures trying to climb them.

Engineer looked at a pair of them, trying and failing to reach the top of a nearby pile of rubble. It was hard to see them clearly through the dust screen, but it didn’t hinder him. Somehow, he knew that these were people. Former people. The strange flash changed them beyond all recognition. Their bodies became stronger and more flexible, but there were scarcely any thoughts left in their minds. Instincts ruled these people now. For example, right now hunger guided their movements. They smelled their prey on the other side of the mound and did their best to find where it hid.

Engineer struggled to understand what these insane creatures were after: humans or other creatures like them, but honestly, did it matter that much? He did not care for squabbles of crazed beasts. Engineer wanted one thing only – to leave this dreadful place as swiftly as he could and restore his memory.

He hoped that his amnesia or the pair’s derangement and similar problems of things he spotted beyond the swirling dust, were temporary.

Engineer was almost sure that whatever plagued him would pass much sooner than the others. After all, he had only lost his memory and not whole sanity like the rest. He could guarantee that everything was going to be fine. It could go no other way!

Alas, this land that played such strange joke upon its people, couldn’t care less for hopes and sureties and guarantees of one of the victims stranded in her trap. It had its own plans for all survivors of the catastrophe.

Engineer found a case of spare glasses in his pocket, but he didn’t put them on. He slowly lowered his hand and not quite sure why, followed after the pair of deranged hunters. He walked carefully, trying not to stumble and occasionally waving his hands to maintain balance. No, he was not dizzy and his limbs obeyed him, but the body felt alien to him and an unnatural sharpness of all his senses made Engineer a stranger in his own body.

Regardless, this feeling did not last long. With every step, his movements grew more confident and sharper senses became more and more familiar. It was easy to get used to something good. Before he even reached the top of the mound, Engineer realized that his new body was in top shape and senses were better than before. He reached into his pocket and threw away the useless glasses. His hearing caught the barely perceptible for normal ear crunch of casing and crack of broken glass. For Engineer, it sounded like a bang of thunder. His ears even accurately revealed which glass exactly broke. He smiled. Engineer still didn’t understand what the flash had done to him, but he was starting to like it.

“Maybe it will pass.” Engineer thought. “Perhaps the flash only temporarily unlocked the hidden depths of human body. I should savour the sensation before it passes!”

Suddenly his sharpened sense of smell piped up. Fresh enthusiasm left as quickly as it came. New smell was heavy, disgusting and…and so attractive! It suddenly came to Engineer that he had been following this scent since the beginning and only now understood that. He was entranced by smell of fresh blood. Engineer was pulled in the same direction as the madmen and for the same reason!

Engineer was afraid. He felt wild, overwhelming mind and will hunger. In an instant, his understanding of the world flipped. There was nothing left for Engineer now, except for hunger – a beast that hid inside the human. This dreadful beast yearned for freedom, clawing at Engineer’s mind, devouring his innards and madly howling using his empty stomach like a trumpet. A murky film covered Engineer’s sight through which, like through a filter, only one colour – red could pass. With only other colour being ashen grey, the filter did not have to work too hard. 

Having found himself on the top of the pile, Engineer gazed upon new sights. Ruins of buildings towered up ahead, so he could not see the line of the horizon and milky white light still glowing beyond it. What he did see was far more important – food.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

In a narrow crevice between two ruins, a hunt was taking place. Two women, shivering from fear, walked backwards, desperately trying to find a way out of this trap. They were not going to escape. Another pair of creatures joined the first two maniacs, their faces of molten wax alight with wild hunger. They looked strange, as if wearing gloves with fingers five times too long. Newcomers behaved as badly as the first two did. They gnashed their rotten teeth and growled as they reached out for the victims. A scene out of bad play made real and all the more terrible for it.

Four hunters, Engineer noticed, were reaching for only one of the women. The reason became clear once Engineer looked closer. That woman was injured. Left shoulder, side and thigh were covered in blood.

Heady stench of blood hit Engineer’s nostrils. He barely held back the mad desire to launch himself there, push away the rest and sink his teeth into the victim’s throat. One thing stopped him – cold calculation. Trying to wrestle the prey from four competitors could be fatal. It would be much easier to attack the second woman.

Engineer didn’t pause to consider the insanity of his thoughts. More than that, as soon they occurred to him, they became some sort of life’s rules. No, Engineer hadn’t lost his mind. He was sure. He simply became different. How? Right it now it did not concern him. The only thing he cared about was quenching his hunger.

Engineer launched himself from the pile, growling menacingly and waving his fists. At first he was running straight for the second woman, but suddenly a ‘filter’ covered his eyes and he stopped next the bleeding woman. The four hunters had already started their gory feast even though the woman was still alive. Pain shock did not let her scream; she could only thrash in agony, her eyes white from fright and pain.

Engineer met the victim’s eyes and froze. No, he was not stopped by what he momentarily had read in the human’s gaze. Such sentimental minutia was beyond him now. A second of pause was brought by something else. Engineer frowned, trying to remember, but nothing came so he abandoned the useless venture. While he was thinking, his competitors could eat the best parts.

Feeling a newcomer behind his back, one of the ‘wax ones’ turned around and lashed out with an open palm at Engineer. Elongated and tipped with sharp hook-like claws fingers of grimy hands were not fingers of oversized gloves. These were natural fingers of a deformed hand belonging to the strange creature. Doubtfully he was born like such a freak. Likely the flash was as responsible for it as it was for Engineer’s transformation.

“That means other people also must have some sort of changes!”

For a second forgetting about his hunger, Engineer glanced at his arms and then grouped his shoulders and face. Aside from unnatural paleness of skin, everything felt normal.

The second ‘wax one’ also raised his hand in a strange greeting and Engineer suddenly felt weak. He made a couple of steps forward, and then stumbled clumsily on the rubble.

He could not explain what had happened and yet he understood that he feared neither ‘waxed ones’ nor their strange power because he yielded it himself and much better than these twisted freaks.

When his opponents returned to their feast, Engineer rose from the ground and stepped forward. He wasn’t angry and he didn’t plan to start some silly fight. Engineer simply came and took what was his and nobody stopped him. Madmen, whining like beaten dogs, crawled to the sides whereas waxed ones bent in a macabre bow and stepped away leaving the best meat to Engineer.

As he filled his stomach, Engineer started thinking more productively, but the new basic rules did not change. From this point on, everything that once was aberrant became the new norm. This did not mesh with ideas of normal human behaviour, but Engineer spat on such notions.

“A person is free to set their own boundaries and norms. For special people, there must be special norms. I am special now, no doubts about it. It does not matter how or why I came to be like this. What is important is that I am a new man, a member of a new breed of humanity. The fact that normal humans are merely food for me now does not contradict it. Strong always devour the weak. Literally now.”

One of the madmen tried to crawl on all fours to left overs, but Engineer noticed its approach and carelessly kicked the creature. It whined and jumped away, disturbing an object lying next to bones. Engineer looked at it and grew interested. It was as if he had seen this thing sometime long ago, in a past life. Engineer lifted the trinket and wiped the dust off it. 

It was a small compact, crafted to look like an oyster shell. Most likely, it had fallen out the victim’s pocket. Engineer opened it and on the inside, just as he expected, there was a mirror. He glanced at his reflection and understood suddenly, why this thing looked so familiar to him. It did not belong to him, but he knew the woman to whom it did. Engineer had made it himself.

Engineer brought the mirror closer to his face and stared dumbly at his reflection. Horrible discovery should have touched him, somehow: disgust, fury, shame…anything! Engineer felt nothing. No human emotion boiled in his soul. 

“Human? Emotions?” Engineer finally realised what he saw in the mirror. “In such a monster?”

He dropped the compact on the ground and stepped on it, crushing it beneath his heel. In this moment he did not know what awaited him in the future, what sort of world he would have to inhabit or if he would even live to see the coming days. However, one thing was certain – there was no turning back. All his thoughts about a new human breed turned out to be empty fantasies.

The flash did not create any new breed. Only mutilated the old one.

Engineer glanced at the bones and left over flesh of his first meal.

“And whom it couldn’t mutilate – killed.”

Engineer looked at the spot where another woman sat before the bloody feast. She was no longer there. Good. He could not remember her, but Engineer suspected that in the past life he had known her too. To devour her would have been, perhaps, too much.

Even for a monster like him.