The Rush

  It started small, that I know for sure. Whether it was a teacher telling me off, or another kid insulting me, I couldn’t tell you. What I’m certain of is that when I thought of hurting them, I felt good. More than good. It was like mana from heaven and ambrosia from the gods, all wrapped up in one neat package from my heart. It rolled around in there, sending out little pulses through my body. The hate mixed with it and made something beautiful.

  I called it the Rush.

  I had thought, back then, if thinking about hurting people feels this good, what if I actually did? But I didn’t. Not for a while, anyway. I just cultivated it, letting it grow and spread its way through my mind until I wasn’t sure what I ever did without it. It was too good to be true, like a superpower or something. I mean, it wasn’t, but it made me feel invincible. It gave me security when my parents fought. It gave me pleasure when the other kids beat me. It made the world bearable. For a time. But it always wanted more, more than just thoughts; it wanted actions. Actions that would change everything.

  It had been a chilly day, a perfect excuse to wear a jacket with many pockets, some hidden, and no one would think anything strange of me wearing them. Gloves covered my hands, a bit thin for the weather, but excellent for my plan. It was all perfect. The week, or was it a month, before that day, I had gone to a pawn shop with some pocket money and expensive jewelry. I didn’t need to worry; my mother had too much to notice any change. I left with a knife, a beautifully crafted thing, to my amateur eyes. A nice rubber handle, perfect for gripping tightly, and a blade that shone in the sunlight and curved back like a dancer. It would do nicely.

  On that chilly day, a knife was hidden in my jacket and a plan well-formed in my mind; I went to school. It was, funnily enough, a safer time, back then, despite the rampant bullying. There were no IDs, no bag checks, no fear of a gun-wielding child storming the building, and no fear of mutants bursting in. That meant that there was no suspicion of me, as I trudged into the school with the other teenagers, all hating each other as the teachers turned a blind eye. That blind eye was good, exploitable. The eye of the needle that I would slip through, like a knife through flesh.

  I wormed my way through the day, attracting as little attention as possible, per usual, and feeling the Rush flow through me. With every second that the end got closer, the stronger it pulsed, until all I could hear was the blood in my ears, and all I saw was red. Any other day, I might have been dreading the school’s end. Any other day, I wouldn’t have had a knife and a Rush.

  In the last period of the day, I had to stop myself from grabbing at the knife, too many times to count. I could hear it, like a siren’s call, beckoning me to draw it and finally reach the finale of my Rush. But I didn’t. It wasn’t time. Not yet, anyway. And so I sat, and I waited for the bell to ring. When it did, I waited to be surrounded by kids who thought themselves tough; I waited for them to pull me to the side of the building, and then I struck.

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  They were all a bit too close to me, enough that all I had to do was drop my weight on one of them, and they all crashed to the ground. Only four of them, but that would be more than enough. I pulled up my hood, took out my knife, and smiled.

  The little cluster of boys stared up in horror as I began, with my blood rushing through my body and my knife gripped painfully tight in my hand. I stabbed down into the closest one, an indiscriminate, probing move, to see what I could do and how it would feel. It bit into his thigh, going deep, blood seeping out from around it. He screamed as a banshee would, or perhaps an abandoned baby, a harsh cry of sheer agony echoing from his lips in the empty lot.

  To prevent their escape, I pulled the dagger out, quick as I could, digging it through the flesh on its way out, before stabbing it into the arm of the next one. It cut through arteries and muscle, all the way to the open air behind it. This one’s screams were even more pained than the other boy’s, with more fear mixed in to spice it up. I saw the other two, the ringleader and the muscle, moving to get up, to run away and call for help. To prevent that, a stab went into each as well, more pain than they had probably felt in their short little lives, where they were the bigshots of the castle. Well, I held them now, and they had nothing that could hurt me. Meanwhile, I could hurt them as much as I wanted.

  I started with the leader, who had always prized his face. At least, I assumed so, from his screams when I began to cut. They had begun as pleads, but quickly faded to whimpering babbles as blood sprayed and skin tore. Finally, with a great heave, I had flayed his face off. By that point, he was either unconscious or dead, not that I cared. The Rush was rewarding me, a great golden pulse filling my being like nothing I had ever felt before. There was, and still is, absolutely nothing that can compare to that glorious feeling.

  Oddly enough, however, I felt like something was missing. Some piece of the whole thing, that would’ve topped it all off. Then, I looked at the flesh in my hand, the blood dripping from my knife, and a realization popped into my head. I licked the blade, the taste like copper filling my mouth, so wrong yet so right. Then, I lifted the face above my mouth, and slowly lowered it, before taking a bite. A quick turn of my head, a dreadfully amazing ripping sound, and a new taste entered my mouth. Something that very few other humans had tasted before. The flesh of their fellow man. I would describe it, but that would take away some of the uniqueness of the sensation. The other three, trapped as they were by pain and injury, could only stare in horror at what I had done.

  Then I began to glow, a golden light emanating from my skin. The strongest glow came from my heart, the origin of my Rush. As the divine pleasure flowed through me, I glowed, and my Rush went from my mind to my body, a real force.

  With every bite of flesh, I grow stronger. Soon enough, no one will be able to stop me. Not the cops, not those stupid heroes, and especially not those Freaks! They call me a maniac, a scourge against humanity! WELL, I WILL EAT YOU ALL! And when everyone is dead, we’ll see who’s laughing.