The Calling

He looked down at his hands and was shocked at the amount of blood that was there. It was actually dripping from his fingertips and onto the concrete floor on which he was standing. Funny, he couldn't remember how it got there, but seeing it gave him that same feeling of excitement he always got whenever he saw the blood. It was like a reward to him for what he had just done. He concentrated harder, trying to remember again just how it was that the blood had gotten on his hands, and he felt that twinge of excitement again growing deep inside himself.

He pulled his hands up and held them right in front of his face and took in a deep breath of air, smelling the heavy coppery smell that came off his hands. He put his hands to his face, lightly rubbing them over his face, and looking down, he was instantly aware that he was standing on the concrete floor naked, nothing on, not even his shoes, and he wiped his hands down his chest and abdomen, rubbing the blood against his skin.

His hands continued down his body, leaving behind them a trail of blood, across his thighs, across his penis and scrotum, and down both legs. As he finished the trail down his body, he brought his hands back to the level of his face once again, and began licking what little bit of the blood that remained, enjoying the salty and acidic taste it left in his mouth.

As he continued to lick the blood from the back of his hands, he opened his eyes and looked around for the source of such a wondrous feast he was enjoying. Off to his left, over in the corner, hiding in the shadows from the moonlight outside that crept in through the windows since it was the only source of light in this place he was standing, he finally saw the body lying there and the dark liquid pool that surrounded it. Again, he felt that spark of excitement that lit within him, and not even aware of it, he was becoming erect from the thrill he was feeling.

He glanced around, not really sure why, because he knew there could be no one in here, otherwise he wouldn't be able to enjoy himself as he was without someone trying to stop him. He slowly walked over to the source of his feast lying in the corner, and as he began walking towards it, he felt that surge in him growing again. He knew that what was there in the corner was there for him to enjoy now, the fruits of his labors. He knew this was his reward for his adventure this evening, he was just having trouble remembering that adventure, but he wasn't concerned, because he knew when he looked at the body, he would begin to remember what he had done. It always happened this way, fragments of memories flashing in his mind, and slowly, over the course of an hour or so, he would remember the entire event, and when remembering it, he would again be rewarded with that rush of adrenaline as the memory of reliving what he had already done happened yet again.

He almost believed he enjoyed this part more than the actual event itself.

What layed on the floor before him nearly took his breath away. He had certainly been quite busy here, and what he had been doing had taken a considerable amount of time for sure. Nothing lying before him looked even remotely human other than the massive quantity of blood.

He knelt before the pile of pieces, his hands running thru them, much like he was sorting thru a culinary delicacy. His hands lightly made their way thru the pile, which amazingly was still lying pretty much together, though nothing seemed to be more than a few inches in diameter, if even that. Chunks of flesh, bone, and gristle were all that was left of whoever had been his target of the evening. It was impossible in this light to even determine what sex this person had been.

He carefully allowed himself the thrill of lying down on top of this pile, and lightly rolled around in the bloody pile of carnage. Little cries of passion escaped his throat, and it was all he could do to keep himself quiet, because the true height of his ecstacy was overwheming him. He rolled over onto his back and slid his hands again down the entire length of his body, rubbing the wet pieces of flesh deeply into his skin.

There wouldn't be much time for this enjoyment, however, because once the body parts and blood began to lose their heat, this erotic ritual would cease to be enjoyable. Even on a hot night such as this, because as his memory tended to remind him, this was mid-August, it wouldn't be long before the steamy heat of body temperature would start to drop, and the warm slickness he was both lying in and cavorting in would no longer feel acceptable to him.

During these frenzies, he no longer remembered who he was. He no longer remembered what he did to support himself, he no longer knew how old he was or even how long he had relished in this peculiar form of eroticism. Even after the kill, it took him several minutes to actually remember the kill itself and the dismemberment. And not long after this almost religious act he was embellishing in, his mind would close up and he would forget the kill, he would forget the dismemberment, and he would forget the celebration he revered in. He would forget it until the next time the urge came upon him and it all started again.

He wouldn't remember, for instance, that he had been doing this now for close to twelve years. He could not remember why he had ever started this in the beginning or what had driven him to it. He had no comprehension that he had committed thirty-seven other acts much like this one.

In his "other" life, the life he lived when he wasn't under the influence of the irresistable compulsion, he would hear the accounts on the radio, see the reports on the television and read about the occurances in the newspapers, and in that "other" life he would be appalled like the masses, hardly believing that a human being could be capable of such acts of horror.

But even the officers and agents that investigated these events would not know of their erotic nature or know that one could lie in warm human remains and become sexually aroused. They could never find evidence of any kind, other than the brutally desecrated bodies. They would find the semen that he left behind on occasion, but DNA testing wouldn't be performed, because the year these events started to occur was in the middle 1960's, and testing of this type was unheard of back then.

He was also privvy to acids, and after most of these heinous acts, he used acid to remove most traces of finger and footprints, and he always poured acid upon the bodies themselves, and although the acid never totally destroyed the bodies themselves, it made the work of law enforcement that much harder to perform.

During these acts he performed, he would be aware conciously of perfoming it until it was over, long past the killing and the dismemberment. He would remember it during his throes into ecstacy, but once the body began to lose its heat and its appeal to him, he would begin his act of cleaning up the scene, carefully packing away his tools of the trade in his gymbag he had been carrying around since graduation. Each time as his clean up was done, each time after the last of his acid had been poured and his last tool of torture was put away, his memory of the incident would begin to fade with each step he took away from whatever location he had performed it in.

He would never remember how he had met his victim or how they had gotten to where his act had occurred. He would only remember the act itself after it had been performed and he would forget about it as soon as he walked away.

Such was the gift God had blessed him with.

Such was his calling.