Inferno

It was way early in the morning for joggers to come out and way late in the night for drunks to roam around. He woke up as if all the air was suddenly pumped back into his lungs. He gasped and sat up, breathing heavily as if he had not been unconscious but been running, a lot. He saw himself, all covered in mud but still buck naked. This wasn’t his first time and he knew it wasn’t the last. He had learned to handle these kind of situations. It was hard initially to go back to the house walking around naked and not get spotted but he knew how to hide now. He sat up and started pacing towards his house which was still about 10 miles to go. He had around two hours till the sun comes up and people wake up. Street lights on either side of the road weren’t helping in the whole hiding thing. He started to pace up, almost running. Since this started he had ridiculous stamina to work with, so he knew he won’t be tired after running 10 miles. Train of thoughts led him to where it all started.

He, Derek was just like any other straight A student one can ever meet. Nerdy but kind of cute and no real interest in sports of any kind, but his physical features told otherwise. He was always the tallest in his class, always had a well-shaped, well-built body like a quarterback would normally have. When asked how, he always use to say heredity. All during his education, his coaches tried their best to persuade him into sports but he just wasn’t into it. He liked studying. He used to go to the sloped roof of his house and study for hours at a stretch. Overall, he was a wonderful boy.

Love for education inspired him to become a teacher and that too for middle school because he thought that was when you can motivate students to study and not waste their time on other activities. He was very regular teacher who loved his students and his students loved him. Everything was going really well until that night happened.

It was a hot summer night and moon was at full but due to some reason there was mist in the air. He was coming back from out of town from a friend’s house. It was school tomorrow so he didn’t wanted to be late, so he was driving faster than he normally would. It was late and there won’t be any traffic, Derek thought to himself. Just after passing the 15 mile milestone he saw a shadow creeping on the road very fast from the left side. He acted quick and pushed the brakes as hard as he could. Distance between the shadow, which was now standing still in the middle of the road and his car was less than he anticipated and the way the car was going, he was sure it would his the person behind that shadow. Derek slightly rotated the steering towards right. He knew it was a mistake right from the moment he realized that the car wouldn’t be able to balance the shift properly. The car toppled, turned twice, knocked the person over, turned over three times further and finally clashed into a tree.

Derek regained consciousness after a while. His head was bleeding and hurting badly and his arm seemed to be broken but everything else seemed to be alright. He suddenly remembered the other person, the one he had smashed across. He somehow managed to crawl his way out of the car and started sliding towards branch of the tree to help himself get up. He now realized his leg had been broken too but weirdly, it wasn’t hurting. He limped back to the place he saw the shadow and found something which can only be described as what was a human body before being squashed like tomato. When the car was turning over, it seemed to have landed directly on this person’s head. Looking at his clothes and body, or whatever was left of his Derek deduced that it was a guy, probably a hitchhiker or a drifter.

He sat down then and there with his heart beating so fast he thought it might just jump out of his mouth. He had just killed a guy. He never killed anything, he was the least violent person but now he had just killed someone. Someone who had family, friends and a life but now was just a pile of minced meat.

Suddenly, he felt something, something that he had never felt. He felt his temperature rising, he felt his blood starting to boil. He was sweating a lot. He looked around, the mist had cleared a bit and there was his car smashed into a tree. He was heating up to the point that his sweat had actually started to evaporate. Derek suddenly felt his bone in the broken leg break further. He let out a huge cry due to the unbearable pain. Same thing happened with his other leg. The pain was more than he could ever imagine. Suddenly all other bones started breaking too. His eyes had turned red and he was just sitting there crying in pain as each bone in his body broke, rejoined and broke again. It was far too painful for him to understand what was happening. He took a look at his hands which had turned into paws. He felt himself growing and shrinking at the same time. The pain was unbearable.

Derek passed out due to all the pain and woke up a few minutes late. He was breathing heavily, but the pain had gone. His vision was still blurry as he started to get up. He felt himself get up and suddenly realized he wasn’t as tall as he used to be. His head was only at half the height where it used to be. He looked on his body and let out another cry, this time due to shock not pain. He turned into a dog or a wolf of some kind. He had read stories about it, watched movies but never thought it could happen to him too.

Weirdly, as opposed to all the stories and the movies it was still him. It was as if Derek’s brain was put inside a wolf’s body. He had his thoughts but couldn’t speak them. Every time he opened his mouth he could just let out a howl. The only difference was his instinct had changed. His gut was just telling him to run, so he ran, faster than he ever could have thought. He leapt across fences or any boundaries. Suddenly, he came to a stop.

He saw a deer trying to drink water from the lake. He sat down in an attacking position. Derek didn’t want to hurt the deer but he felt his animal instinct taking over him, he just wanted it to stop so he could just go home and go to school tomorrow. He wanted to forget it as if it were a dream. The animal inside of him made him jump and landed right next to the deer drinking water. The punched his paw deep into his neck and scratched it to the point his nails reached his spine. He let another blow, this time directly to the spine and the deer thumped to the ground. Blood started pouring out of his neck which made the animal inside of Derek wanted it more.

Derek’s brain was actually trying to stop it but couldn’t do anything. He opened his mouth as wide as he could and ripped most of the deer’s skin off. He scratched hard again directly into the flesh. The scratch was deep enough to as show his heart, which was still beating although feebly. Derek knew he couldn’t stop anything so he gave in. He saw himself mauling a deer down to his bones. Everything that happened after it was a blur.

He woke up the next morning while it was still dark outside his house on the flowerbed. He was naked and covered in remains of his flowers and mud. He felt feverish but somehow he managed to get inside his house and he passed out again.

Woke up an hour later feeling better. So, he took a shower and got ready to work. He knew what he had done last done, he knew of the things he was going to do in the nights to come and he knew he couldn’t do anything about it. The animal was a part of him now. His instinct was Derek’s instinct. The animal was, in all sense, Derek himself.