River Of Horrors - A Schlattbur Story

PART 1 - CRAZY

RIVER OF HORRORS

PART 1

───── ❝ CRAZY ❞ ─────

To say he's gone crazy is an understatement. 

The longer he keeps his eyes trained on him, the more reaffirming that statement becomes. That's right, even crazy people — people who are tipping over the brink of insanity — are still people. Still human. It is the ability to think, to feel, that makes us human. The fundamental core of human nature. The reason why regardless of how twisted or warped one's perception of the world may seem, we are all still human.

But not him. Not Schlatt. There is nothing even remotely human about him. Not anymore.

He can't think. He surely can't feel, either. It's like watching a feral animal ravaging its prey, tearing it limb from limb without a shred of repentance. 

It isn't just the way he let his pale, slender fingers coil icily around his neck. It isn't just the way he dug his nails so far deep inside his flesh that his veins look like snapped electrical wires. And it isn't just the way he'd hiss venomously yet enticingly into his ears, his slithering words rippled by the low grumbles from his throat.

It isn't the way he'd talk, grumble, or claw. But rather, his eyes. It's his eyes. 

The flickering look of sheer lunacy in his eyes is what truly makes him look insane.

His eyes are glazed over, chafed, vibrating in his sockets as he eyes him down. Pupils contracting and dilating in twitching spasms, fleeting with the sensory wild cravings of blood. Human blood. Flickering behind his raw, starvation-crazed amber eyes, is the urgency of trying to search for something — anything — to cease the gnawing hunger eating him up.

There is no other word that can be suitably used to describe him other than a blood-thirsty, man-slaughtering cannibal. He's not human, anymore. He's something else, something horrifying. Something too terrifyingly, horrifyingly awful to even think about. Something he doesn't want to allow himself to admit but knows deep down that the person he knew that man once was is gone. 

He's a monster. Schlatt is a monster.

Even going through with the plan, there was a part of him that still was hesitant. A small irrational, delusional part of him tugged at the sinews of his heart — and that was that that Schlatt was okay. He ran away because he was scared and confused and he thought he was a monster but it was all in his head so he regretted his decision and he'd come back home. That's what he wanted to believe, at least.

But seeing him like this, acting like something completely different — it crumpled up the last of his hope into nothing more than an insignificant paper ball.

Who knows how many humans he's devoured by now. Who knows what the consumption of real, human blood might have done to mess up his brain. He can only pray to whatever God might exist that somewhere in that monster is the real Schlatt.

A sharp scream punctures the atmosphere of the dead forest, before quickly dissipating into a mist swept out by the midnight's violent breeze. The shredded tapestry of autumn leaves ruffles the surroundings as he watches the man he thought he once knew pin down a human against a tree. It's a boy, with scruffed dirty blonde hair matted all over his forehead. His face is inexperienced; young; youthful. Sixteen at least. If not, younger.

"Let go of me!" the boy shrieks out, thrashing about, rattling the frigid air from the waves of his screams. Schlatt's claws gnaw into his neck dig deeper, as he chokes him harder against the tree. He gargles out a disoriented sentence, just barely audible.