Cruel and Unusual - serialised novel EXCLUSIVE to Steemit Part 47

For the full list of episodes, please see this post: Episode List
And Then, 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42
43 44 45 46

Images below from Google and Pixabay

Please read the start of the story using the links above. I promise, it’s well-worth the time to check it all out. At least then, this excerpt will make more sense

Almost before he had chance to swallow, the other gland was popped into his mouth and bitten. Again, his eyelids drooped and his eyes rolled back to show their whites. Jack’s body had ingested the secretions of the first gland and he had given more to be ingested, his body made full use of the hormones.

A hit of pure adrenalin, swallowed in such a manner, would do nothing to a normal human as the hormone has to be delivered through the bloodstream. Jack, however, was no ‘normal human’. His body leeched the adrenalin into his bloodstream and put it to work immediately.

Jack’s body vibrated. He felt that he had boundless energy and was aware of everything around him, even down to the rats peeping out from under the furthest table in the darkest shadows of his laboratory.

Jack forced himself to stand still and he concentrated.

He pushed the power he could feel coursing through his very blood vessels out along his veins and sinews, out to his extremities, his fingers and his toes. Then he allowed the power to flow back in the same way water would flow back and forth if in a test tube, tipped at one end, then tipped at the other.

The pure and savage energy he was in control of made Jack feel as though he were immortal. He felt invulnerable, untouchable!

Then he could feel something else, something that was beginning at his scalp, what he had begun to think of as his early warning system, which told if there was another Wolf close by. He began to prepare himself for confrontation until he realised that the Wolf he could sense was none other than his own Wolf-self.

He damned his oversight in neglecting to bring a mirror so that he could watch his transformation. He looked around but found nothing that could reflect his image to his satisfaction. Then he thought to go out to bathe in the Moon’s luminescence but thought better of that notion. Instead, he went out through the back entrance to his laboratory, into the sewers.

He did not care about the smell. Though it was clearer somehow, he could ignore it easily. He was concentrating on the effect the Adrenal Glands were having on his body and his mind.

Jack emerged into the brightness of the moonlight and was stopped dead by the pureness of the scene before him. It was the ordinary streets in the ordinary town but his eyes took in far more than ordinary detail.

The moon’s light bathed his eyes and made them able, somehow, to see these changes, the subtle alterations from ordinary to extraordinary.

It bathed his body and made it powerful, strong beyond measure and able to withstand exertions far beyond imagining.

The moon played with Jack’s mind and made him think of atrocities he could commit without punishment or guilt. The moon sent Jack over the brink of madness and into that dark yet shiny abyss, deep into his own sense of self, tearing his sanity and any remnants of conscience apart, making him believe the things that he had previously only dared to dream of. Jack thought himself invulnerable and superior to those that had spawned him – his mother - the Hume, and his father - the Wolf were both inferior to what Jack was, what he had become.

His first victim did not know he had been attacked, so swift did death arrive.

Jack saw the man staggering in a drunken gait; he gave the impression that he was pulling himself along the wall which ran alongside the footpath he was taking. He would stop and stand still for a moment, seeming to get his bearings, before moving off again. Jack could hear him singing to himself.

Jack hit him from behind, bashing the base of his skull, breaking the connection between life and body with one almighty blow.

Then the body was lifted with such ease that the tiny part of Jack that still remained was astounded at his own strength. The anomaly that Jack had become carried its prey high onto the rooftops to devour glands and flesh in a wanton spree of violence and gore. The dead man’s throat was torn out and the Thyroid gland was devoured. With that, the last vestiges of Jack’s humanity became engulfed and the beast took over entirely.

The man’s remains were taken high above the city and dropped without effort or remorse, into the River Thames to be washed up long after the soft flesh had decomposed beyond hope of the terrible injuries done to it being discovered.

Many hours later, when Jack’s body had ridden itself of the effects of the glands he had consumed, Jack came to his senses. He thought nothing of where he had wandered to, his temporary madness giving justification to his whereabouts.

---

Keme did not seem to need or want to hunt on the first of the October Full Moons. He wished, instead, only to be with Isabella. They lay on her bed in each other’s arms, murmuring their love to each other.

The door banged open, scaring them both, and a drunken Mary staggered in, dragging a laughing man with her. They saw Keme and Isabella in bed and Mary’s expression changed.

“You told me you’d be out tonight,” she said, the quiet tone and even the slur in her voice did nothing to disguise the menace it held.

“Yes I did, I am sorry Mary. Come Keme, we should go.”

Keme pulled back the flimsy sheets, but made sure that Isabella’s body was still covered and then leaned to grasp his clothes. When he was dressed, he stood and made to herd Mary and her companion out of the door whilst Isabella dressed too.

Mary’s companion did not want to move and Keme’s herding technique became more forceful.

“Who are you shoving?” the man snarled at Keme, perhaps thinking that he was just a client.