Gabriel Aravena threw the paper down to the floor. Sheila Knight was dead!
He held his hands before him, staring at them as though they were not connected, as though they belonged to someone else. How had all this happened? He never meant to become a monster. But somehow, somewhere along the way, everything got turned around, messed up. Nothing came out the way it was supposed to.
He’d been off the medication for barely a week now. He could feel the changes. And they were beginning to scare him. Sure, his breasts were finally shrinking. His voice had regained its normal pitch. His beard was coming back. But at the same time-the feelings were returning. The… bad feelings. The ones he couldn’t control. He had thought he would like that.
He had been wrong.
He remembered all those times when he was on the medication, when he had thought evil things, when he had fantasized about sex. Cruel sex. Dreamed about taking women by force and pounding and pounding at them until they couldn’t stand it anymore, until they cried out for mercy but didn’t get it, just pain and pain and more pain…
He closed his eyes, ashamed of himself. It had been different when he was on the medication. He had needed to fight against the drug. It was trying to make him into something he wasn’t. But now-now the drug was gone and it was just him and those dreams that he couldn’t control and couldn’t block out of his mind. He could act on them now. He could do anything. If he wanted to.
Did he? Did he want to?
He was not a monster! He did not want to be a monster!
Because he knew where that would lead. To the same disgusting life he’d had before. The sick thoughts that led to the evil deeds. And… that person. The one who had made him a true monster, for once and always. The one who had taken his life and thrown it into the sewers, ruined it for all time. He couldn’t stand that. He just couldn’t stand it.
Aravena pushed himself out of his armchair. He had to do something, had to… distract himself. Even in this seedy little apartment, there had to be something he could do to take his mind off-
He walked to the west wall and glanced out the window. There was a woman on the street. A jogger. She was not as tall as Sheila Knight, not as pretty as Erin Faulkner. But she was pretty enough. And she was alone. Vulnerable. He could follow her, and then when it got darker, he could take her, throw her down and-
God! He dropped to his knees. What was happening to him? Maybe the doctors were right. Maybe he should be locked up. Maybe he should be on those horrible drugs.
He did not want to be a monster. But the urge was so strong. The need was so great. The voices were talking to him, the ones that came from deep, deep inside. The ones that inhabited his brain. He knew he couldn’t resist them forever.
But he had to try. Because he could not go back on the Depo. He couldn’t live like that. But he couldn’t live like this either.
“I do not want to be a monster!” he cried out, pounding at his closed eyes. “I do not want to be a monster!”
But I am.