Prey Drive (16 page)

“Wait here.”

Joe stood silently as they unlocked the door to the prison medical facility where the professor had set up his lab. They walked past beds filled with sick and injured prisoners, some who’d been shanked, beaten, raped, or all of the above, and some who were dying of AIDS, cancer, and other illnesses. The place reeked of pain and despair, death and hopelessness. Joe could feel his own prey drive respond to the weakness surrounding him. His primal instinct to cull the herd awakened the monster within, sensing so many easy kills. Joe began to salivate as he walked past, staring at row after row of meat. Those he passed stared back at him. Some held expressions of fear, obviously recognizing who he was. Others appeared to recognize what he was and crossed themselves or mumbled prayers as he shambled past their beds. A few challenged him with words of defiance.

“Fuck you lookin’ at, muthafucka?”

Joe grinned and licked his lips in response. He saw the goose bumps rise on their skin and smelled the fear wafting from them despite their continued show of bravado.

“I’ll whoop your fuckin’ ass, white boy,” one of the inmates challenged. He was a huge, bald, heavily-muscled black guy with bandages on his arms and waist. He’d obviously been in a fight. Joe stared at him long and hard, remembering his face. He had a feeling he’d be seeing him again.

They took him to a separate room from the rest of the inmates and strapped him to a gurney, leaving the shackles on as well. The professor came in not long afterward.

“Good afternoon, Joe. How was your morning?”

“It was fine, Professor. How is the cure coming, sir? Will I be ready to leave soon? I can’t stand it here.”

Professor Locke gave him that look you give a child when he asks why he can’t eat ice cream for dinner every night. “I’m working on that cure and I have a few promising new ideas, but I want you to understand, Joe, that even if I cure you, there’s no guarantee the courts will release you. They still consider you to be a danger to society.”

“But if I’m not dangerous any more they’d have to release me. If you can prove to them that it was the disease that made me this way, that it wasn’t my fault, they would have to let me go if I was cured, right?”

Professor Locke bowed his head and then looked up into Joe’s eyes, and shook his head, and shrugged. “I don’t know, Joe. Let’s just work on getting you cured first and then we’ll see.”

Joe nodded, clearly dejected.

“I promise I’ll do everything in my power, once you’re cured, to get you out of here. I’m going to stick an IV in your arm now, Joseph. It contains a sedative called ketamine. You may have heard it referred to on the streets as ‘Special K’.”

Joe nodded. He wasn’t exactly from the streets. But he’d heard about Special K from students on campus. “That’s an animal tranquilizer, isn’t it?” Joe asked, sneering in disgust. “I’m not an animal, Professor.”

“Yes, I know Joseph, but ketamine has shown remarkable promise in the treatment of addictions and obsessive- compulsive disorders. We’ve been attacking the problem as an issue with your serotonin production because of the low serotonin levels seen in patients with chronic addictions, but recent studies suggest that it could be an issue with your glutamate receptors. People with addictive personalities, like those with OCD, experience intrusive, anxiety-provoking thoughts and obsessions. They feel compelled to perform repetitive behaviors or to indulge and over-indulge in behaviors that are potentially destructive, such as gambling, smoking, drug abuse, and over-eating. The only medications that have proven effective so far are serotonin reuptake inhibitors like Prozac, but even with SRI treatment, most patients still experience significant symptoms and cravings.”

“Is that why the Prozac hasn’t been working for me?”

Professor Locke smiled and nodded. “I think so, Joseph.”

“But I don’t have OCD. I’m a murderer, Professor. I kill and eat people. What does this have to do with me?”

The professor gave Joe that same indulgent smile he gave him whenever he asked a question. “I know you don’t have OCD, Joseph. Not exactly. But your addiction is very similar. That’s why you repeat these homicidal behaviors. That’s why all serial killers do. They are compelled to do so. It is an irresistible urge, an addiction, and the same anxiety-driven depressions ensue when those compulsions are ignored. Am I right? The same euphoric high results from indulging these compulsions and the same guilt and self-loathing sets in once the high dissipates. You know it’s wrong, but you can’t stop yourself. Isn’t that right, Joseph?”

Joe nodded, remembering how he felt after killing the librarian and seeing Alicia’s horrified expression. Remembering how he felt seeing Alicia in the hospital after cannibalizing her breasts, how he felt seeing her sister’s face the other day. The professor was absolutely correct. Whenever he allowed the monster to take control and sate its hunger for flesh, he felt terrible afterward, but if he were being totally honest, he’d have to admit that he was feeling less guilty every day.

“Professors at Yale University have been conducting experiments that suggest a different neurotransmitter, glutamate, may be responsible for many of the symptoms of addiction. In the Yale study, medications that modulate the neurotransmitter glutamate through the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor, a major type of glutamate receptor in the brain, were shown to ameliorate these symptoms. And ketamine is a potent antagonist of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor. Small intravenous infusions of ketamine were used, which produced a mild euphoria that lasted less than two hours but then, three hours after infusion, the depression many OCD sufferers say they experience when not indulging their compulsions was gone. This anti-depressant effect lasted for up to three to or four days. During that time, the subjects were free of compulsions. Do you hear that, Joseph? If it worked for them, maybe it will work for you too. It’s at least worth a try.”

Joe looked down at himself. He was still handcuffed to the gurney and there were leather restraints across his chest, cinching him to the mattress. His legs were still in shackles. Officer Belton and Officer Ramirez stood behind the professor, leaning against the wall, ready to summon the SORT team to beat Joe to a pulp if he made the slightest gesture of hostility. It didn’t look like he had much choice in the matter.

“I won’t force you, Joseph. If you don’t want me to try, I can call off the experiment and have these gentlemen take you back to your cell. You can spend the rest of your life here in peace. I won’t bother you again. Ever.”

He looked back down at his restraints and then at the two guards. Officer Belton was still glowering at him.

“If I do it, and it works, then I’ll never experience that high again, will I? I’ll never feel the same ecstasy I felt before.”

Professor Locke shook his head. “No, Joseph. I won’t mislead you. You will never feel anything like what you feel when you consume human flesh. That ‘high’ as you put it, will be gone for good. But you won’t crave it the way you do now either. Addicts have difficulty producing the endorphin dopamine without indulging their addictions. The experiences that produce endorphins in normal people, such as dancing, riding a bike, eating ice cream, getting a hug, will no longer produce dopamine in those with addictions and that’s why you have these depressions when you don’t act out. Nothing else does it for you. My hope is that your brain will form new nuero-pathways so you will be able to produce endorphins through normal healthy experiences. You’ll be able to appreciate the little things normal people enjoy, experiences you are oblivious to now.”

Joe felt his heart sink. As much as he hated the ravenous beast inside of him, Joe could not deny how much he enjoyed the orgasmic ebullience he felt when the monster claimed another victim, when his tongue was wet with blood and his belly filled with meat, the soul of his prey circulating through his veins.

“Yes, but it won’t be the same transcendental ecstasy will it?”

“No, Joseph. It won’t. The choice is yours. You can try it and maybe find some release from this thing inside you that you used to call your curse, or you can keep this curse forever.”

Joe nodded. He remembered the look on the faces of Alicia’s mother and her little sister, Lana. They hated him for what he did, Lana especially. She looked so much like Alicia it made his heart hurt and she was appalled by him. To her, he was a reprehensible abomination. The psychotic deviant who’d ended her loved one’s existence.

“You’re a sick, perverted bastard and you deserve to be locked up forever! No one could ever love you, Joseph Miles. You’re a fucking MONSTER! No one could ever love you!”

The memory of Lana’s words stung. Joe had never wanted to be the man Lana accused him of being, but he was. He was a monster, a sick perverted monster and no one would ever love him unless he was cured of this curse. Every day the guards brought him stacks of mail from people wanting to save his soul or to see him burn in hell for what he was, what he’d done. Then there were the letters from women like Selene and men like his cousin, Dirk; people who got off on the thrill of knowing a famous serial killer. His choice was either life with the perverts and sycophants or life with regular people, real people, like Lana.

“I made my choice when I first came to you and asked for your help. If you say it will work, Professor, I trust you. Do what you have to do.”

Professor Locke smiled warmly. “That’s good, Joseph. Very good.”

He called for one of the prison nurses, a short, skinny black man with big glasses and a head full of short dreadlocks. The male nurse’s hands shook as he swabbed the crook of Joe’s arm with alcohol, patted the prominent vein pulsing there, tied his enormous bicep with a short length of medical tubing, and eased the IV into place. While the nervous nurse stabbed an IV needle into Joe’s arm, Professor Locke busied himself preparing the ketamine drip.

A heart-rate monitor and EEG wires were placed on Joe’s head and chest. Professor Locke withdrew to a swivel chair across the room where he monitored Joe’s vitals and waited for the ketamine to take effect. A sense of calm descended over the massive human predator.

“I feel kind of woozy.”

“That’s normal,” Professor Locke replied. “It will pass.”

The monster was not merely silent. It seemed to have slipped into a coma. Even when Joe ran the previous evening’s activities through his mind, the monster remained in hibernation. After a couple of hours, Joe was escorted across the hall to the small room where the PET scanner was kept.

“How do you feel now, Joseph?”

“Peaceful.”

“Do you still feel lightheaded?”

Joe shook his head. “I’m okay.”

“Good. Good. I’m going to put you in the scanner for a few tests. I’ll be showing you pictures again. You just breathe and relax, okay? This won’t take long.”

The professor asked again that Joe’s shackles be removed and again Officer Belton called the SORT team to be present first. Six men in riot gear filed into the room and took positions around the PET scanner before Belton unlocked the cuffs on Joe’s wrists and ankles. As he unlocked the handcuffs he leaned in and whispered to Joseph.

“Please try something. I saw what you did to Addison’s neck. You should be put down like a rabid dog and I’d love to be the one to do it.”

Joe smiled back at Belton. There was no confusion between them. Despite the power Belton’s position gave him and the relative powerlessness of Joe’s circumstances, there was no doubt who the alpha wolf was. If all things were equal, Joe would tear Belton apart with ease and they both knew it.

“Okay, just relax and look at the slides.”

Professor Locke put what looked like virtual reality goggles on Joe’s face, headphones in his ears, and slid him into the machine. He started up the scanner and it began to whir and click. Music filled the headphones, Beethoven, orgasmic music. It drowned out the sound of the scanner. Then the pictures began.

This time, there was little preamble. Joe was shown a few pictures of apples and kittens and trees, presumably to establish a baseline, and then came pictures of plus-sized models and porn stars with enormous breasts, hips, thighs, and asses. Joe stared rapturously. He was aroused, but the monster was silent. He wanted to fuck them, to ejaculate all over their large breasts and buttocks, not eat them. Then came the photos of Alicia, and Joe felt a sudden and overwhelming sorrow. He finally saw the beautiful woman’s death as Lana saw it, as a tragedy and nothing more. They showed him the same photos he’d been shown before of Alicia in an evening gown, in a low-cut blouse, and finally of her as she’d looked in the hospital before and after surgery, with her breasts eaten away.

“Turn it off. Turn it off! I don’t want to see anymore! TURN IT OFF!”

The final image flashed before him. It was of a pile of splintered bones that had been picked clean of flesh, gnawed, the marrow sucked out. It was all that remained of Alicia.

Joe ripped off the goggles and pulled out his headphones, but he couldn’t extract himself from the scanner. He was too big and the PET scan was too small. He was trapped. He began to hyperventilate. “Get me out of here!”

“I’m coming, Joseph. You have to calm down. You’re making these gentlemen nervous.”

The whirring and clicking stopped and the platform on which he lay began to slide out of the machine. Once free of the scanner, Joe sat up and was slammed back down just as quickly as the SORT team rushed in and pinned him to the gurney. He was cuffed at the wrists and ankles and quickly dragged to his feet.

“I need to go back to my cell. Take me back to my cell!”

“Joseph, wait! Calm down. I need to show you something. Please.”

Joe was being held by three guards. One had his left arm wrenched behind his back and the other had his right and there was another guard behind him with a baton lodged under his chin, pulling back on it so that Joe had to lean backwards at a painful, spine-wrenching angle to avoid being choked to death. He took several deep breaths, closed his eyes, and when he opened them he was calm again. He was surprised how easy it was to regain his composure.