Rehumanized Drew
A Windstalker Story
By K. M. Baginski
Chapter 1
“You can
barely stand,” Sam snickered. “You need to get over being so empathic.
It’s a
cliché.” His voice sounded oddly distant for his proximity, like a dummy whose
ventriloquist was hiding in plain sight.
As they stood
in a convex-walled, oval-shaped room of Sam’s submarine headquarters. Drew
couldn’t wrap his head around what he had to do in order to satisfy his
imminent hunger. His chest felt fizzy, but at the moment he wasn’t so tempted
to eat.
He should do
the world a favor and starve himself. There were others like him, like Drew
himself, sitting at computer stations. They stared at screens with images of
what looked like hieroglyphics. But no two screens looked identical. Each image
was stilled in a different part of the same place. An enclosed space. The cave
at the base of that mountain
Drew heard Sam
mention once.
Drew had
killed before, but it wasn’t an ambition. That was a one-time deal. Survival.
He didn’t hunger for ending anyone else’s life, and couldn’t pretend he did.
“This is a
very different hunger, Andrew,” Sam said. His eyes were warm and reassuring, as
if he had this kind of talk with many young men. It was the kind of cutesy
demeanor an experienced kindergarten teacher would use with a toddler. “And
soon it’ll force its way out of you.”
“Then why
don’t I feel the urge when I look at a human?” Drew asked, determined to
protest. There was no primal need to fulfill. Only guilt. “I still feel like
one.
And I’d have
to kill them. It’s impossible. It’s like I’m staring at a mirrored image of
myself when I focus on them. How can you kill what you used to be, without
conscience?”
“And you think
they’d have a second thought about killing you if you were a cow?” Sam persisted.
He was either hiding something, or wanted to brainwash Drew. Why else would he
answer a question with another question?
“What does
that have to do with anything?” Drew asked. “That’s just the way the food chain
goes, Sam. You know, the natural order of things.”
“My point
exactly.” Sam nodded, “Humans kill lower animals regularly for food because
they are higher up on the food chain. Why is hunting so acceptable for them,
but not for us?”
“Hunting is
respectable because the hunters try to prevent unnecessary animal suffering.”
“But hunters
still kill and eat the animals.”
“Yes.”
“And farmers
even nurse their animals from infancy, only to slaughter them in the end,
correct?”
“It’s still
not the same.”
“How so?”
“I used to be
one.”
“Let’s say a
pig or chicken was suddenly elevated to human. Do you think either would
contemplate the feelings of the other chickens and pigs while it’s starving?”
“That’s an
impossible question to answer.”
“Then I’ll
answer it the simplest way. No.” Sam was losing patience. His eyes rolled and
drifted off to the side before closing.
He took a
breath, then said, “Aside from the hunger you’ll undoubtedly feel, you need to
understand your rank in the food chain.”
A woman with a
crisp-ironed grey skirt and white blouse approached Sam with a printout. He
turned his back to Drew and walked over to a computer monitor. “Human nature is
not as altruistic as you’d like to believe,” he continued. “Every person you
have ever known has used someone else to get something they’ve wanted. A good
grade in school, friends, popularity, acceptance, a job, a raise, love, money,
affection, sex…”
Sam paused to
read something on the screen. “Yes, there’s always an exchange in nature.
Simple survival has no faults. And it’s even more important to understand that
death comes for everyone. Right now, their death sustains your new life. The
sooner you learn to accept that, the less bothered you’ll be.”
Sam’s voice
drifted farther away, and so did Drew surroundings. Sam’s ventriloquist was
leaving. The metallic room was shifting in peripheral corners of Drew’s
eyesight. He turned his head slightly toward the alteration, then back to Sam,
but the entire scene had been erased.
***
He was in a
beige hall now. It was wide, following a circular path—and empty. There were
dark brown doors on his left, each numbered, and evenly spaced. He knew this
hall well, and opened the door numbered 4b. His parents’ old apartment. He held
his breath in the still, quiet hall, touched the doorknob, and pushed the door
open slowly. Drew saw the face of his father immediately. He once wanted to
save him. It was the first thing he ever wanted to do while he was growing up.
A childhood wish made when he still loved the man. That hope, like so many,
died incremental deaths the older he got. He faced his dad, who was lying on
the kitchen floor where he died. He wasn’t moving, the bloodstain still fresh
near his heart. Drew was supposed to be human when he pulled the trigger.
According to Sam, he embodied humanity even then. His father’s death for the
family’s peace, an exchange. Also a fact of life, like the food chain. Drew
backed away, pulling the door shut.
The hall was
no longer quiet. Something stirred in the distance.
When he looked
to his left, he saw a young girl, elementary school age, sitting on the floor,
her legs crisscrossed. Her long, dark, curly hair swayed from one side to the
next as she circled her finger in midair pointing toward the grey tiled floor.
“Shwish. Shul,” she sang slowly, winding her hand faster. “It was a cyclone.”
“What was?”
Drew got lower, ready to kneel to her level. Oddly, he didn’t feel weak from
hunger now.
She flicked
her eyes toward him, but didn’t focus on him, didn’t answer, while her finger
continued to cycle in silence. She was withdrawn, just the way he was as a
child whenever his father’s tone was too harsh. Maybe the answer would be too
traumatic to say aloud. He got the sense she didn’t want to elaborate. Drew
lowered himself to the floor, squatting in the hopes she would speak candidly.
Someone
exhaled in the unseen distance. Drew heard weight shifting from nowhere, as if
cued to enter a play.
“Don’t you
mean who?” said a man, strolling in from the opposite direction. The mystery
man looked middle-aged, and wore a Yankee cap, denim shorts, a white T-shirt,
and sneakers. He smiled and rubbed the head of the sitting girl before
approaching Drew.
“Don’t you
remember anything?” he asked, pointing a finger between himself and the girl.
“You ate us.”
“I–I what?”
Drew took a step back. This man’s clothing was familiar. So was the young girl.
But he didn’t know why. Ate them?
“Well,” the
familiar man said. “We are connected now, whether you want to remember or not.”
The man tucked a hand in his front pocket. “I’m Leo, and that lovely
ten-year-old is Heather.”
Leo’s eyes
drifted over Drew’s shoulder. There was something behind him. “Watch yourself,
now. Being human makes you just as defenseless as we were.”
Drew turned in
the direction of Leo’s gaze.
It all came
back.
***
He was
displaced again. This time, out in the open on an empty city street. He stood
on the blacktop road in daylight. There weren’t any cars in sight. But in the
buildings on each side of him were people staring out at him through the
windows. They didn’t say anything, or make gestures, but he knew they were
aware of him. And now he was aware of them.
“I was so
hungry then.” He whispered a confession. “I didn’t even know what I was doing.”
He saw the
faces of every person whose energy he had depleted completely. Countless men
and women.
The
ten-year-old girl.
The result of
his meaningless life. And the only mark he left on the world.
What was
happening? What was this place? Purgatory.
He wasn’t
always a monster. Killing wasn’t the only thing he was capable of.
He missed his
friend Chelsea. She knew he hadn’t done it intentionally. He thought just of
her name.
He scanned the
faces of the people watching him, turning in a trance-like circle until he
heard another stirring. From about a block ahead came a little girl, skipping
down the road in a white dress. She was shorter than Heather.
“Drew?” she
called, picking up her pace “Come with me. We’ll be safe inside.”
“Why, where
are we?” he said, stretching his hand out for her. As she got closer, he recognized
her angelic face and long, dark hair.
“Someplace
real. They brought you here, but we have to go back.” She was close enough to
whisper. “If they get too close, you’ll let them in. C’mon, let’s hurry!”
She pointed
toward the direction she came from and started to run. He glanced back at the
faces, and they turned away from the windows quickly. He could hear one
shouting “Get him!”
He ran after
the young girl. The doors of those buildings on each side of him opened. He
didn’t watch long enough to see the people rush through it. But he heard their
running steps thundering behind him.
“In here,” the
little girl shouted without glancing back. “Close the door behind you.” She
darted into an entrance, and he could almost feel the people gaining on him. He
ran inside, and turned to see the legs of the throng just steps away.
Reaching for
the door, he thrust all his energy to shut it quickly.
Once the door
was closed, he couldn’t hear anything.
“Oh, my God,”
he gasped, barely able to catch a breath.
“Drew, you
coming?” He turned to see the little girl peeking over the stairwell, one
flight up, her brows furrowed.
He followed
her into what looked like a bedroom. The walls were a dingy tan color, caked
with layers of paint. A pink and purple bike leaned against a radiator, and a
kind of imitation wood medium-density fiberboard TV cart stood only a foot away
from the vanity dresser, placed in the middle of the tiny room. The pretty
little girl sat on the purple bedspread and patted the space next to her. He
knew that gesture well.
“Chelsea?” He
sat next to her, realizing she might have surfaced from his thoughts. He stared
into those familiar eyes, studying the curve of her nose, chin, and cheeks.
“Mm-hmm,” she
nodded. He felt himself smile. When he lifted his hand to touch her face, he
had to stop himself.
“Why are you
so young?” he asked, still amazed. He wanted to hug and kiss her, but their age
difference made it seem…wrong.
“It’s just the
way you like to remember me.” She smiled. “We were closer at this age.”
His eyes felt
heavy, like he was about the tear up.
A new sound
hummed in the distance. He looked toward her bedroom door while the noise
became closer and louder. A steady humming.
He turned back
to Chelsea, but she went out of focus. When he reached out to touch her, he
could still feel her. So he closed his eyes, hoping to reset them both.
The humming
sound was at the forefront of his senses. He felt himself breathing.
When he opened
his eyes again, he was sitting in a moving vehicle.
Copyright
2017 by Kisa Baginski
***
Kisa Baginski is a middle school science teacher and author of the Windstalker Series. Her new novella, Rehumanized Drew (May 7, 2017) is a spinoff from Baginski’s debut novel, Windstalker: Awareness, and follows the plight of a man in his early 20s, Drew Royce. After turning into a “Windstalker”—a Nephilim subspecies who can transform into air/wind in order to feed on human organs for survival—Drew has managed to become human again, which forces him into hiding. Haunted by his disturbing actions as a Windstalker, Drew must decide between causing more harm to the human world or hiding out until death finds him.
