POV Main

I was living with Dee for some time. I felt settled. I knew I was walking on, more and more, on shady side of things. I drew in my mind some red lines I shouldn’t cross and so far I didn’t cross them.

I was thinking a lot about human nature, as I felt distancing myself more and more from usual lifestyle. Dee was bloodthirsty, flesh-devouring creature. I was taking advantage of that, as he seemed to be fated to team up with me. If I was helper of bloodthirsty, demonic creature, what was I? Was I human still. I was, I told myself.

What kind of human I was? You know this truth about humanity? There is no gain without pain. One can get gain and different one can get pain. There cannot be sunny valley without shady side. As if in fear street movie series, citizens of sunny valley had benefits from devil, and shady side citizens were currency to pay.

I wanted to take advantage of that truth. Humanity already created a lot of really dark places. Me or Dee, even if we went on a rampage, we wouldn’t create so much misery, pain and darkness in our lifetime, as was already created all around the world each day.

If you look at humanity as an ecosystem, there are trees with flowers on top of them, grasses in the middle, roots and mushrooms in the soil beneath. And soil itself is part sand and part dissipated corpses of that what was before. And as in every stable ecosystem every part of it is needed and irreplaceable. What part of humanity ecosystem I was becoming?

Mushrooms obviously. I was eating on corpses, had some symbiotic relationships with plants, trees, trading nitrogen for carbs. Where could mushrooms live and grow? In some dark, shady places, where there was lot of freshly deceased biomaterial. In middle ages that would by life near graveyard. Today there was more options. I could live under roots of big tree with mutual benefit relations. Or by places where lot of killing was done. Because humanity is constantly killing and bullying part of itself off. But let’s not talk about it now. Just you must know, if you are a human being, that you have inevitable some darkness in you, even if you are flower from tops of ecosystem.

It is hard to explain what I was doing in my head. I was choosing to became something different, with different perspective. I needed this change to survive. Otherwise I would break mentally. I don’t know if you could understand me now. Maybe if you were under similar pressure it would be easier, but also it means that you were unlucky. Because it was catastrophe, to look on world from different perspective. If I were to survive that catastrophe I would need to find my own point of view. Perhaps even sacrifice some of my own humanity.

That was my conclusion, I would sacrifice part of my humanity if needed, if it wouldn’t cross my red lines. I couldn’t see any other option.

It was important for my life consistency that I could word it loudly. I was becoming something different, psychically different human being, and I agreed to myself for limited change. It was very important for my decision making. I thought that I was mentally prepared for what was about to come. Ok, let’s end this inner self exhibition topic.

Luckily, few days before meeting I had deal with homeless drunk. We met at 18:00 at the park. He was with some other guy. We went to the green area near train line. That was half wild area, but people walking the dogs and joggers trampled some path. I found some bushes that looked enough out of the way to mask our deal. We went there.

I repeated talk about what I would do and how one needed to behave during blood draining. I had my stuff in backpack, so it didn’t took long to start.

The guy was sitting on some stump during draining. His companion was keeping his back straight. I had Dee by me in this bag which let us be in constant contact. I drained 250 milliliters of blood. It took around twenty minutes. Dee said that he could do some changes to the stats page after.

I told him that I took less blood than blood donors usually give, so he could have control visit in two weeks, if he wanted. I paid him that very generous sum. I gave him some chocolate bars and almost forced him to start eating one. He was quite happy as far as I could tell. I was ready to leave.

-= Could you wait? – Asked his companion. – I can donate blood too for the same money.

I looked at him. He was another one to which his own blood wasn’t so important. I had some more draining stuff. I was ready for different scenarios. One of them was if they would attack me for my money. I would try to kill them, if that happened and use their blood and flesh for Dee’s benefit.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

-= Ok, but one sixth of money goes for your friend who took you with him.

-= One ninth and we have a deal. – He smiled. - We would drink together anyway, he said to his companion. One sixth will be for any new guy if we had one, ok?

-= Why not. But after this donation I don’t need more blood for at least week. You can ask me in after a week, if I would be able to take some more. You should find me at park’s gym. And I would most likely need some blood from you, as for control samples. Sorry, but if I won’t get money from my promotor’s cathedra at university, I won’t be able to afford for much.

It was bullshit. I just wanted them to feel special and stop them from talking to others about deal.

This second guy was little shaky after draining. I used his almost fainting moment to touch his hand with Dee. After few minutes he felt all right enough to leave him. I thanked them professionally and went home. I felt that they were in a hurry to a liquor shop.

At home I let Dee enjoy two blood rituals. I worked hard to provide him fresh flesh of different animals. I was even able to get bucket of pig’s blood once. I bought some animals from zoological shops and used for rituals. These were small animals. My bathroom was decorated with different hospital like, anti-epidemic curtains. I wanted it to be easy to clear. If there were some leftovers after rituals, I took them out in a very early morning and bury or left on some barren places.

I knew that I would need to change locations, but was low on money to buy something good.

There was huge difference with resources craving to each level of Dee growth.

After rituals Dee showed me my new stats page.

Name

Nameless

Daevo

Equilibrium indicator

Efficiency status

Compared worth

Muscle

96%

90%

13 (13)

Body integrity

92%

100%

11 (11)

Nervous system

94%

99%

14 (15)

Metabolism rate

94%

97%

Will resonance

13%

20%

Flow bending

12%

20%

Dee said that numbers showed my ability compared to some ideal 10,10,10 person. Muscles were for strength and movement speed combined. Compared body integrity I could treat as heath points. I needed to remember that it was not a game and head shot could kill me in one go. Compared worth of nervous system had to do with perception and my reaction speed.

I had some questions as I didn’t get to 100% body stats and had compared worth over 10. Dee said that he was trying to compare to average person, who, as it seemed, didn’t care for body much. We talked things through. Numbers in the parenthesis was showing maximum of accessible worth and numbers without were meant for current situation due to tiredness or other factors.

Dee was on the verge on another growing spread. He could feel that. We decided, that we will wait with it till after meeting. We could force it with few rituals packed in one day, but there was no guarantee, that there would be no some kind of backlash. We wanted to get as much knowledge before and proceed in comfortable conditions.

When we considered positive scripts of the meeting, that might be the outcome. We could get some important knowledge there.

Otherwise, there was neutral and most likely outcome, that meeting would change nothing.

There were few negative possible outcomes. Stronger stone-eggs could be hostile against weaker ones. There could be trap of some kind during meeting. Or meeting of so many stone-eggs could start some chain reaction, which would in turn hurt hosts.

I felt that Dee was my friend at this point. My plans against negative outcomes of meeting was consulted with him.

We had little time but we prepared against worse outcomes. It was part of my mental change, that I expected, that bad things could happened. I reacted, as if some of bad things would happened. And it didn’t make me calm that I took some precautions. It made me feel as I was on edge.