Monster Inside Me

I write this account of my life from my cell, as part of one last mercy. They are allowing me to remain unbound simply for this, though the guards have their weapons trained on me through the bars should I decide this pen would make a nice weapon. None of them believe me, I can only hope whoever reads this won't be so blind.

It all started years ago. I was your average kid growing up, I played with toy cars and action figures, I avoided girls because they're icky, etc. I grew out of that last phase of course, as I moved on to puberty. I read all about the changes that normally occur during this awkward time of adjustment, but I noticed one symptom was strangely lacking from my textbooks.

A few weeks after my fifteenth birthday, I started getting these urges. Not the sexual kind of urges horny teenagers get either. I found myself clenching my fists when bored, and occasionally I'd find my eyes focusing on someone's neck. I felt this strange desire to hurt someone. To feel their bodies break and bruise. To hear the sounds of their pain. I told one person about it, one of my best friends, and the look he gave me told me this wasn't normal by any means, so I hid it away.

Years passed and I did my best to hide these urges. I fought the fist clenching tick, and was determined to maintain eye contact and not stare at a neck. Despite it all, to everyone else I was an average guy making average grades with no interest in after school activities. I was starting to forget about my odd urges by the time my senior year was wrapping up, but something brought them back with a vengeance.

It was a Friday afternoon, school was just about to close for the day when I walked by a pair of students in the hallway. I just glanced at them and saw it was the head of the football team and one of the cheerleaders. Everyone knew they were a couple, but now they were fighting. I stopped at the water fountain to eavesdrop a little, and found she'd been cheating on him with some other guy. They yelled back and forth until a teacher walked by and told them to be quiet and go back to class.

I shouldn't have stayed to take that drink. As the teacher left, the football player spotted me. He approached me, asking what I was doing there and why I was listening. I tried to excuse myself but he grabbed me and pushed me against a wall. He seemed he was about to take his anger out on me, when I felt those familiar urges rising again. My vision kept shifting to different parts of his body, without my control. I fought in vain to focus on his face. At one point my vision focused on his groin for whatever reason and he, being the big macho man he thought he was, took it as a threat.

I saw him pull his arm back for a punch, but before it could land I felt my own arm move on its own. My hand grabbed his wrist before he could hit me, halting the punch. My eyes stared into his face, so I couldn't see what my body was doing but I felt my hand turn. I watched him grimace and struggle, and felt the pressure in my hand from his wrist before his lips spread wide in a scream. I heard the bones of his wrist break and pop, and there was nothing I could do about it. My body was acting on its own, control was gone.

He tried to pull away but my hand had a death grip. Continuing to twist and squeeze, tormenting him beyond anything he likely deserved. Footsteps pounded in our direction and several hands grabbed us and pulled. Finally my hand let go and released him. In that instant I was able to control my body, and I shrunk down in terror of what had happened. Naturally, the teachers and the school's police officer didn't believe my story about having no control over my body. I was suspended from school for what ultimately was the last week of school. When graduation came I wasn't allowed to go, rather my diploma was mailed to me.

Naturally my parents didn't believe me either, my car keys were taken from me and were only to be handed back if I needed to drive somewhere. Eventually I found a summer job and I was allowed my keys only in the morning when driving to work, and had to hand them back once I got home. My father kept tabs with my boss to make sure that's where I was all day.

Things calmed down after that, the urges seemed to vanish into thin air. The fist clenching and staring were just gone. I assumed I'd gotten whatever it was out of my system and tried to move on. It wasn't until a few years later that I realized just how wrong I was.

I was walking through a more dangerous part of town since my cell phone had died and my car was out of gas, hoping to find a station. I must have looked like easy prey, and I looked up when I heard footsteps to see three men approaching me. They fit the usual stereotype, urban hoodlums in cheap clothes with their jeans hanging down. One was bald and the other two had their hair braided. I tried to keep going but one of them grabbed me and shoved me into an alley. Apparently I'd invaded their territory, and they were going to teach me a lesson.

I looked around me for a way out, but the three of them spread out to block the one exit. They just kept pushing me back, the bald leader punching me whenever I didn't immediately back up. As by back hit the wall the urges from all those years ago flooded back. I felt a chill go through my body, and my hands started to twitch. Control of my body was wrenched from my as my hands balled into fists. The next part happened so fast, I had to replay it in my mind over and over to get the details.

In a split second I crossed the couple feet between me and the one on my left. My right fist slammed into his gut, my eyes locked on his pained expression. My other fist slammed into his chest to knock him onto his back. In the brief second before my eyes left him I saw him retch, and afterward could hear him heaving onto the ground. Baldie had the presence of mind to fight back and swung at me, but my hand gripped his wrist. In an instant it was broken, and my other hand grabbed the side of his head. In one move my left hand released his wrist, while my right slammed his head into the wall next to us. Over and over again, slamming his head against the brick until he went limp.

My hand released him, and I heard him hit the ground with a dull thud. The third one was starting to back up, having decided it wasn't worth it but it was too late now. Whatever was controlling my body decided he needed to be attacked as well. My legs carried to me him in an instant, my right hand grabbed his throat. I pivoted and watched my hand slam him against a wall. I struggled harder than I ever had before to look away from his face. His hands gripped my arm in a vain struggle as my hand pressed his neck against the wall. Tighter and tighter it squeezed, and the sight of that man's face as he suffocated still haunts me. He too went limp, and my hand released him.

Control shifted back to me, and I slumped against a wall. I think I blacked out from shock at that point. All I can remember is sitting there shaking, tears running down my face and staring at the two dead men in front of me, and the third who seemed to be dying. The next thing I knew I was in a police car with handcuffs.

They took me to the station, once again refusing to believe that I didn't have control over myself. After all, if you black out and do something without thinking, how can you remember the details of seeing it? My parents couldn't afford my bail, not that they wanted to pay it. They were shocked at first, but refused to believe my story. They left me to my fate, which wasn't pretty.

I ended up with a life sentence in prison with possibility of parole in 50 years, but that's not going to happen. During my time in jail before trial, I was in a cell by myself. But once I was moved to the prison I had a cell mate. He didn't believe my story of innocence either, and harassed me whenever he got the chance. The urge kept returning, but I fought it back for a while. I knew it would be suicide to fight these guys, these hardened criminals who spend their free time pumping iron.

Not that it mattered, since one of them decided to pick a fight with me. His brother was one of the men I killed in that alley. The guards watched us like hawks most of the time, so he didn't dare attack me openly until one day I was sitting in my cell reading. I saw him approach the cell and my cell mate talked with him. They made a deal, in exchange for a pack of cigs my cell mate would stand watch while he dealt with me.

I watched that hulk of a man walk into the cell, and slap my book out of my hand. The urges returned once more, chills ran down my body as he picked me up and pushed me against the wall. A familiar scene played out as control was taken from me again. This time though, my hand couldn't break his wrist. Instead it struggled against it, before finally he tried to grab and break my wrist. A burning sensation rippled through my body, and I felt my hand squeeze tighter than ever and I felt the shattering of bones under it. He yelled and tried to swing at me with his other hand, but my other fist slammed into his gut.

It didn't do more than stagger him, but whatever controlled me now was just starting. Repeated blows to his gut made him finally start to retch and his knees buckled. He collapsed in front of me, and in an instant I was on him. All I could see was his pained expression, all I could feel were my fists slamming into various parts of his body. Each time I felt a bone breaking under the impact. By now my cell mate had taken notice, and tried to pull me off. My arms reached up and grabbed his forearms, bending and twisting them until I heard his elbows snap. I watched my fists begin pummeling him over and over again, finally stopping when he stopped moving.

I collapsed next to him, control returning to me along with a stinging in my arms and hands. It didn't take long for the guards to come and haul me off to solitary confinement. For a week I sat in that cold dark cell alone before news got to me that those two men had died. Rumor spread around the prison that that scrawny new kid had somehow overpowered two of the stronger convicts. When I was finally released back into general population, they avoided me for the most part.

Something had changed in me since then as well. The urge hadn't gone away this time. I felt it constantly, like this itch that I couldn't scratch. I had to keep my eyes away from everyone else, otherwise I'd find myself staring and clenching my fists. One day I slipped up and looked at a man sitting at a table next to mine at lunch. I felt that familiar chilling sensation as control was taken away, and my body stood up. I then felt that burning sensation again, and everything became a blur.

My body ran right over to the man I'd looked at, and all I could do was watch while he was brutally beaten to death by my own hands. A guard ran over, wielding a club but my hands took it from him and bashed his skull open with it before more guards came. These guards had guns, however, and as they were aimed at me control returned to me. I was hauled back to solitary at gunpoint, spending what felt like years in there. All the while my skin burned, I sometimes woke to find myself having stood up in my sleep. A few times I awoke mid punch, starting the day off with a swollen hand from hitting the concrete wall.

After a while, I was let back into the population once more, which was a mistake. I wasn't out for more than a minute before I'd rushed into another cell and beaten a man to death. Guns were pointed and I was taken back to solitary. I wonder how long they'll hold sway over this thing. How much longer before the monster in me no longer fears bullets. How much more death will I be forced to watch, to take part in. How many nightmares can I endure. They think I'll use this pen to attack one of them. Really though, the only one I want to kill now, is myself, and this monster. Perhaps this pen will at last rid me of this hell.