Excerpt: "Born Evil"

Note to the reader: This story contains graphic elements, and may not be suitable for those with delicate sensibilities.

I watched with a kind of detached fascination as the needle came out of my arm. The crimson drop on its slender tip was a stark contrast to the cream latex glove that held it.

I kept staring, feeling the burning tingle in my arm begin to ease. I hated having blood drawn. It made me nauseous. To think back on that now, getting queasy at such a piddly thing... God, I was a pussy.

I looked up into the eyes of my big black orderly, who was double-checking the measurement on the syringe. 10cc's, not a drop more or less. He glanced down at me and gave me the half-smile you give an annoying child.

"Can you fall in love with life again?" I asked him.

Did I mention that I was out of my mind at the time?

He cocked an eyebrow, but didn't respond. No one ever did. They probably thought I was contagious. Little did they know...

I had spent the last six months here at the scenic Tabutte Rest for the criminally insane. Of course, few among those of us doing the 'resting' ever got to partake of the 'scenic' part. They generally preferred that we stayed in.

They were running blood tests on me every day now. The doctors still had no clue why I was the way I was. The psychiatrists were sure I was bipolar, schizophrenic, or both. The clinical folks didn't buy it, but they didn't have a better answer. The staff thought I was a vampire, despite the fact that I slept at night, had no problem with daylight, loved garlic, and got queasy at the sight of blood.

I could hear them talking sometimes, when they hung around the nurse's desk down the hall. They'd say things like 'I heard he killed her with his own teeth. Tore her neck out.' Hence my mysterious vampirism.

My orderly shoved a small handful of pills down my throat, then poured half a pitcher of water on top of them to force me to swallow. That, to me, was sufficient explanation for my mental state in and of itself.

Still, I did have something of a problem. I really did kill a woman, though I had no memory of how or why. I didn't know who she was, where she came from, or how she managed to get into my apartment. But none of that mattered. The bottom line was that on a lovely Tuesday morning, the police found me covered in blood with bits of flesh stuck in my teeth.

And that wasn't the first time I'd woken up that way, either. Twice before, I'd woken up next to a corpse with no idea how it had gotten there. Both times, I had reason to believe that I had been directly responsible for each body's present state.

Any guesses why blood upset my stomach?

The orderly sauntered out, leaving my tiny room to a dreary monochromatic fate. I wondered if it had occurred to anyone that making a person stare at a blank white wall for six months can make him loony, whether he was before or not.

After a while - I don't know how long; no clocks - a doctor I'd never seen before wandered in. She was tall, dark, and, well, I didn't know yet whether she was handsome; a surgical mask covered her face. From her eyes, I guessed she was from India.

"Well, hello there!" I chirped, "Always good to see a new face!" Or, rather, some new eyes.

"I bet you are," she said in near-perfect English. "Can you tell me about last night?"

"Right to business, eh?" I said. "Well, I seem to recall sleeping. It's a bad habit, I know, but I don't have a lot of options here."

She raised an eyebrow. "You recall sleeping?"

"I did have a nice dream about a pretty doctor who came to see me. I must be quite the interesting case, what with so many of you guys dropping by to look in on me. Mind telling me why that is?"

I could tell she smiled by the way her eyes crinkled around the edges. But she didn't bite.

"Do you actually remember any of your dreams?"

"Not really. They're just dreams. I haven't remembered them since I was a kid."

"Hmm," she said thoughtfully. Then she thought for a time.

I got impatient, probably because I was nothing but a patient. "What's my prognosis, Doc?" I asked.

"Frankly, we don't know. That's why I'm here. Honestly, I don't know that I'll have any more luck than any of the others. But how often do you get a case like yours?"

"I'm a study in studies, is it?" I had thought as much.

"I'm sorry. That was rude of me, to dehumanize you into nothing more than a case file."

"No worries," I said, cheerful as ever. The pills, I think. "You can make it up to me and take me out to dinner tonight."

"Tonight? Oh, I don't think so."

"Got a hot date lined up?"

"No, I'm married," she said, brandishing a ring, along with a healthy dose of irony. "But you are not going anywhere after sunset."

Now that was interesting. Sunset, huh?

"Why's that? Am I a werewolf now?"

Her brow drew down in puzzlement. "You really don't know what happens to you at night, do you?"

"Not much, I expect. I am sort of tied up, in the literal kind of way." You think you've got no life? Try living with a catheter.

"Mr. Bremen-"

"Trent."

"Trent, within a few minutes of closing your eyes, you go into violent seizures, followed by parasomnia, during which you exhibit exceedingly aggressive behavior. Why do you think you're restrained?"

"Para-what now?"

"Parasomnia. Wakeful activity while technically asleep."

"I sleep-walk?"

"Not exactly. You try to tear yourself free, threaten the staff, spit at them, and even try to bite. You appear to be fully conscious, but in an enraged state."

"Wow. And I thought it was to keep me from fondling the nurses."

"You killed a woman, Trent."

"Why hasn't anyone told me this before?"

"Because it was clear that you weren't aware of your actions. They didn't want to exacerbate your condition."

"Why are you telling me now?"

She was smiling again. But it was a different smile. There was a hint of malevolence in her eyes this time.

"I think the only way to figure out what's wrong with you is to make you worse," she said.

I had the sense that I'd just been upgraded from oddity to guinea pig.

"Come again?" I said.

"It's simple, really. If you start showing more symptoms, we'll have more information to work with."

"Did it occur to you that coaxing more symptoms out of me might be a really bad idea?" I asked, "Considering what I've got going on already?"

"Yes."

There was a long pause as we each measured up the other. I broke the silence first.

"What do you intend to do?"

Again with the evil smile. "I'm going to hypnotize you, and see what happens."

She pulled a small ball on the end of a string out of her lab coat. She squeezed it, turning on something inside that made it glow softly. It wasn't an even glow, though; some spots were lighter than others, and they swirled. She began to swing the ball in front of my eyes.

"Let yourself relax..." she said.

Flash

I'm in a candlelit room. A dusky young woman is holding me, wearing only her undergarments. I'm rubbing her shoulder with one hand, caressing her bare back with the other. She looks up at me with deep brown eyes set into a blushing face.

Pulling away from me, grabbing my hands, she moves deeper into the room.

"Do you think I'm sexy?" she asks in heavy tones. She lets go of my hands and leans back over the edge of a bed behind her. A slender foot runs up my leg...

Flash

"What did you see?" the doctor asked.

I was breathing fast. My catheter was particularly uncomfortable just then. I closed my eyes for a while, trying to compose myself.

Then I told her. I knew it must have been one of the women I'd murdered. Not the one the doctors knew about, either.

When I described the girl to her, her eyebrows rose. I knew she'd be startled when she figured out I'd killed more than once.

"Were there any distinguishing marks on her? Tatoos? Scars?" she asked.

A vision of the girl's leg came to me. There was something...

"A snake. There was a coiled snake on her left ankle," I said.

The doctor's hand shot up, as if to cover her mouth. Her eyes reflected horror, then fear. Then she ran out of the room.

That night, the good doctor got her wish. My curious condition apparently got worse.

I knew, because when I woke up, I was no longer in the asylum. And I remembered.