C5. “I want it again, but violent, more violent” – Courtney Love, 1994

I ripped the camera from the wall and put my face up to it. I was shaking. Fear. Adrenaline. Withdrawal. “You motherfuckers are sick! You fucking killed them1 You killed all of them! That’s the fucking melting shit, the fucking Grey Plague. This isn’t a god damn clinical trial this is a fucking massacre. You sick motherfuckers! I am going to upload all of this and watch you fucking burn.” I tried to access the computer, but I had been locked out. I could barely type through the shaking so I threw it against the wall. I slammed my body against the wall and threw my fists at the floor. Every few seconds I looked at my injection site waiting for it to kick in. I knew I was dead. I picked up the camera and smashed it on the ground, then the bed and then the bag and then everything else. I saw the broken shards of the camera on the ground and watched as my hand flash towards the broken shards. I didn’t know why. I guess I still don’t.

I shivered and stared at the death sentence that went in my arm. I saw the hole start to shift and move and every few seconds I swear it started to turn grey, but it never truly did. I was still sitting in the corner, shaking, and staring when the door opened and a man walked in wearing a biohazard suit flanked by a security guard in what appeared to be full riot gear. He was holding a clipboard labeled “Brunsen, J.”

“Mr. Brunsen. We’ve been waiting a long time for you. You represent decades of work sir. Years working on the deadliest thing we’ve ever encountered. Lives have been lost, careers have been made, and you sir, are going to be the crowning achievement. I want you to know that we don’t take what we do lightly. You have within you the potential to save humanity. You’re going to be a hero John. Our first...what the hell, NO! No God, no!”

The doctor was upset because a shard of camera glass was sticking out of the throat of his accompanying security guard. The Guard was now unsuccessfully waving his arms and trying to pry me and my shard of glass away from him and his neck. The glass had gotten slippery since my hand was so bloody. Some of the blood was mine, some was his, but regardless of who it once belonged to, it was now everywhere. He had some sort of neck protector on, and the glass had gotten partially stuck in it. I tore at the piece of glass trying to pry it out using the other side as a lever. When it finally popped out the blood squirted the doctor in the plastic shielding over his face. This was a bit of a shock for him and rousted him from his reduced state.

I still don’t know when it happens or why it happens. It’s definitely worse when I’m emotional. I’m in control during it, most of the time at least. Like I have some idea of what is happening. I don’t always blackout, but I lose bits and pieces. I can’t really remember when I make the decision though. Whatever you want to call it. When I start hurting people. Dr. Conners would later tell me it wasn’t a symbiote because I didn’t gain anything from its presence. It wasn’t really a parasite or virus because it didn’t use me for anything, and it didn’t replicate inside me. Was it even still there? Did it live inside me? Did it even live? Back then it was like smooth muscle. By myself I can’t control it any more than I can control the beating of my own heart. I didn’t know any of this then. Then I was only trying to survive.

I remember the events. I remember stabbing the security guard in the throat. It felt good. It always feels good.

I’d like it to stop.

Just not right now.

I want to be clear, it’s not like I’m some superhero or anything either. No super reflexes, no super strength, no super speed. Honestly most people just aren’t willing to deal with this level of aggression. When you are walking down the street and you pass someone, you just don’t expect them to spontaneously full on, balls-to-the-wall attempt to murder the ever-living fuck out of you on a whim. The security guard wasn’t ready. The guy in the biohazard suit certainly wasn’t ready.

With the security guard flailing on the ground, I saw his nightstick had come out of his belt loop and I reached for it. When I pulled it off the ground, it didn’t feel right. It felt clumsy. I’d need something different in the future, but beggars can’t be choosers. The doctor was trying to get out of the room but the panic level was high and his hand, bloody from the guard’s throat, couldn’t turn the knob. I charged, grabbed him by his collar, and spun him around to face me like I’d seen on hockeyfights websites. I hit the doctor across the face as hard as I could with the nightstick. I saw the plastic front shatter in his suit and his eye socket follow. Honestly, the suit was giving me troubles though. I needed to feel closer. I needed a boost. I ripped his hood off with him still screaming. I screamed back, raw, guttural, barbaric screams, my anxiety sweats peppering him in the face. The funny thing is that he must’ve thought he would get sick from me and tried to cover his mouth and nose. Like it fucking mattered then. He clawed at me so I ripped his fingers back against his hand as hard as I could. He put a hand over my face. Bad idea. I bit so hard I ripped right through his suit. I could taste the marrow in his finger bones. He buckled to his knees and gave me enough opening to feed him another blow with the nightstick, this one across his temple. It probably killed him, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I hit him until shards of his skull began flying off his brainpan like sawdust off freshly cut lumber. I kept swinging until I was hitting a human-head shaped purple grape split open at the seams. The fun was out of it. My arm hurt. It seemed like the right time to stop.

The “Oh my God, what have I done?” moment came way later. Between my garbled neurons, seeing Pearl’s friends turned into human soup, killing a couple of guys, and realizing I wasn’t immediately dying myself, I had a lot going on. The room camera was down which meant they couldn’t see me, but I couldn’t see them either. I decided that no matter what was happening it was a primo time to leave. I couldn’t well walk out in an assless nightgown, and I didn’t figure the next guy in the room would be too happy with the state of things. The biohazard suit was trashed, but the guard’s suit was black enough that the blood stains weren’t too noticeable after I used the Doc’s sleeve to wipe them off. It had only been about a minute since they walked in the door. I stripped the guard as fast as I can and donned his suit. He had a security badge attached at the hip which I figured would come in handy. I was shaking as I walked out into the hallway. My hand was bleeding through the glove I was wearing so I tucked it into my pants.

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It was quiet. I was in a corridor. I started down it, going what I thought was the way I came. Was I really going to try to walk out the front door? I started walking the opposite direction then remembered the cameras. Too obvious. I continued back towards what I thought was the way I came hoping for some other path.

I passed two other “doctors” in bio-hazard suits in the hallway and nodded politely. They looked hurried and didn’t respond. I heard them say the word “survivor”. I guess I was a hit around here. I walked past a door that I recognized from the cameras. It made me sad. I gazed into the window briefly as I walked by. The room was full being fumigated, was full of gas, because of the body. Because of whatever was in those bags. I didn’t look in any of the other rooms. I knew they’d all be the same. I was boiling inside. All those people dead. They lied to us. They tricked us. They waved a carrot that we couldn’t say no to cause we were poor addicts and they were rich and we both knew it.

When I saw the next pair of biohazard suit enclosed doctors walking down the hall and I thought of Pearl and her friends and I realized we probably weren’t the first, that “lives had been lost” and “careers had been made” I just gave in. I couldn’t just walk out here. Just as they passed, I turned and ripped at the top of the suit of the closest one. The hood popped off and exposed the head of a very confused and somewhat shocked human male. He seemed like a nice guy. Wrong place, wrong time though. I grabbed him by the collar and used every ounce of strength that I had to throw his head into the adjacent peep hole window. I was happy when I realized it was a guy. Could I hurt a woman the same way? I hoped not. I hoped I wouldn’t. Right now, it didn’t matter. Right now, I just wanted to put a head through a window. I thought it would feel good, and you know what? I was right, it did. I heard the window crack, and I felt his skull dent and the soft matter compress against the hard glass and it felt fucking great. I could literally feel the cells in his brain dying and every time one of them popped it felt like the Queen of Sheba herself was humming on my cock. Each individual moment of violence was crystallized, powdered, and then snorted somewhere into the infinite recesses of my brain where it turned on so many pleasure centers that I was almost sparkling with glee. It was short lasting though. He was dead on impact. The other suit was cowering against the wall. I pounced on it, vibrating with violent intent.

I’d never know them, but we shared a moment.

I was coughing. They kept pulling their suit back down over their face. Were they scared of my coughing? It didn’t matter. I realized I could help them keep their hood on. I could help them tighten it. I wrapped my hands around their throat and I squeezed. I squeezed. Behind the mask there was a person. I could feel them dying. I felt their struggles, their panic. I watched the faceless mask twist and turn. The waves of fear and dread pulsated out of them and into me and it was like I was being hit with a summer breeze. Waves of pleasure, waves of joy, waves of bliss. I could feel the life fading from them and every ripple made my skin pulse with excitement. When they stopped moving it felt like the world stopped turning. My high was coming down. The high snapped away immediately when the fumigant came spilling out of the room next door. It was painful, like swallowing fire. I was forced to run. Sirens went off. Alarms went off. I had made a mistake. Front door wasn’t going to be an option now.

I started sprinting. I ran past three guys dressed like me. They motioned for me to follow, but I just motioned the opposite and hoped none of them would actually do it and the chaos would keep people focused on the problem. I knew that if the message was “find the lone guard running around putting people’s heads through windows,” I was fucked. If the message was anything else I had a chance. I rushed around, past faceless biohazard suits, past burly men in black outfits, past nurses screaming. I saw the last remnants of a melted corpse sizzling in the hallway. I heard screaming behind me after I jumped over it, only to see a man in scrubs stumble over the corpse and begin sizzling himself. By the time he tried to take his third step his femur snapped under his weight from the damage, and he fell to the ground holding a burning stump spewing blood in misty spurts. I turned the corner and saw a sign then a red arrow pointing towards Exit.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and it ripped me to the ground. I felt blows rain down on my chest and shoulders. He wasn’t trying to kill me, but it hurt like hell and I screamed in pain. Through the blows, I looked up and saw a man dressed as I was thrashing me with a black stick. He stopped and I saw him reach for handcuffs. I got to my knees and leapt towards the sizzling man down the hallway. I scrambled towards his corpse slipping through the blood. The security guard watched me quizzically as I buried my hand in the still sizzling wound of the dying man and ripped out an off-colored blackish piece of him.

The guard ran at me and I aimlessly chucked the piece of human meat at him. It hit him firmly in the chest but fell harmlessly to the ground bouncing off his clothes. He made a big overhand swing with his club, but I dodged underneath it and did the only thing I could think of, I fell to the ground and tried to grab his ankles. He fell on top of me and began turning me into a pretzel, tearing at each of my joints like he was fit to rip my arm off. His hands dug into my flesh like vice grips. I felt him twisting at my joints, forcing them to give way. I screamed in pain and aimlessly waved my hands, desperately searching for his legs. I focused on wiping whatever was on my hand on bare skin. I am sure that at this point he thought he had won. But when his grip loosened, I looked backwards to confirm what I already knew. He was rotting from the legs up. The alarms were so loud, that I couldn’t hear his screams through his helmet, but I was sure they were there. I looked at my hands. I was fine. I limped towards the exit door.

A middle-aged woman, tall, and with long blonde hair emerged from the stairway door beside me. She was winded. She had been chasing me.

“Wait!” she said.

I glared at her. I hoped that she could tell that the mixture of burning black human flesh and blood covering me meant “wait” was no longer an option.

I burst through the exit door into daylight and began stripping off my stolen guard’s uniform leaving only the pants to cover my assless patient’s gown. I ran as hard and as fast as my body would carry me. I hadn’t paid much attention walking into the building, but the industrial areas around me offered little in the way of recourse. I hopped a fence and stared back, always expecting to see an army chasing after me. I ran as far as I could, further than I ever had before. I finally settled inside an empty culvert.

Then I cried.