Excerpt from Monsters

Werecreature

It’s hard to decide what is the most difficult and terrifying part of my pre-frenzy transformations. It might be the physical pain of the transformation: the shortening of my nose, the changing of my teeth, of my limbs, of everything about me. Or it might be the dissociation that comes with a complete change in how I perceive the world; a change in everything from the range and quality of my vision to sense of smell (or its lack). Or perhaps the most difficult and terrifying part is how it feels to have this impulse to slaughter, to violate everything I once held dear.

Actually, I think the worst and most terrifying part of it is the inevitability, the knowledge that no matter how I try to fight it, no matter what I think or feel in the meantime, I will in time slaughter those around me. I will kill, and I will kill again, and I will kill again, until there is nothing and no one left for me to kill.

* * *

Again I transform. Again I find a family to kill. Again I separate one from the pack. I draw him to where I’d set up a wire snare. I’ve hidden a reward just beyond, and when he walks into the target area I yank the snare tight around his neck, then tie it off. The snare is not so loose as to allow him to scrabble free, or to vocalize in anything above a whisper, and not so tight as to kill at once. But any movement he makes draws the wire tighter around his neck. So long as he remains perfectly still, he stays alive.

If you call that living.

I leave him to die, go to fetch another.

* * *

I know that no matter what repugnance I may once have felt toward my current actions, in this moment I will enjoy controlling and killing these others. I will take pleasure in taking away what was theirs. The old me is wearing away and being replaced with something else.

* * *

Cyanide. It’s quick and easy. I have to wear a gas mask, which inhibits my view, but it certainly gets the job done.

* * *

I’m coming to realize that since this monthly transformation to a monstrous form is inevitable, and since I do get something out of it, I may as well enjoy it.

Let’s look at this rationally. My choices are that I can transform and kill, and feel horrified; or I can transform and kill, and enjoy the thrill I’m feeling anyway.

Isn’t the latter the only rational choice?