Corey returned to consciousness with pain still shooting through his destroyed eye socket. His good, left eye could see the end of the knitting needle jutting forward from his face. With a shaky, mutated hand, he reached up and drew the needle out of his head, the sound of metal on bone grinding in his ears. He nearly passed out from the pain. Once it was removed, however, the pain rapidly began to recede.
He waited for the pain to vanish completely, while he listened to the sounds in the house. His mom was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables. The neighbor's dog was barking outside. Inhaling deeply, he could smell cooking seafood. Seafood? Finally, he was down to an itching in his right eye, and he began to see through it again.
Corey levered himself up and concentrated, shifting his body back to a basically human form. As he stepped into the kitchen with his psychotic mother, she turned and eyed him. “That took longer than I expected. If you're passed out, you can be killed.” She turned her back to him and resumed chopping vegetables.
What have I gotten myself into? He looked into the pot and recoiled when he saw tentacles curled inside the hot liquid. “What's this?”
“You'll be eating octopus and crab. They're almost done.” He eyed his mom warily, then went to sit at the table.
Sure enough, he was soon served a large crab with octopus tentacles around it. His attempts to chew the octopus were, at first, ineffective. Suddenly, he enlarged his throat and just swallowed them one by one, not bothering to chew at all.
Next was the crab, which she had served without any fork, hammer, or anything else. His initial attempt at forcing it open with his hands was an utter failure. Then he shifted his jaws, and simply bit into the creature, shattering the shell and grinding it up, along with the tender flesh.
This isn't how you're supposed to eat crab and octopus. I know that much. What's she doing? His thought was interrupted when a searing pain hit his shoulder. His mom had stabbed him with a vegetable knife. “What the hell?”
“Defend yourself!” Unlike before, there was a fire in her eyes. He could see that something had snapped inside her mind, even as she came at him with two knives, slicing and chopping at him.
Her assault was short-lived. Armoring his skin let him grab her wrists with little danger. Despite having her restrained, she twisted and struggled, holding fast to the knives. He meant to just squeeze enough to force her to drop the knives, but instead he heard a sickening, cracking noise.
The knives dropped as his mother's wrists disintegrated under his grip, her hands flopping uselessly. “Mom! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to hurt you!”
“There's only one lesson left.” Her voice had a touch of sorrow in it. He wasn't sure what was happening, but then he heard a soft cracking sound.
“Mom?”
She slowly smiled, fervor lighting her eyes once more. “Eat me.” His mom fell over, dead.
~~~
Two hours later, Corey was still staring at his mother's body. There was a part of him that saw carrion before him, carrion that would fuel his body wonderfully. The other part knew this was his mom, a woman who had cared for him for years.
Blake's voice was the first warning that the bully was back. Unlike before, however, his voice was gentle. “You have to eat her, Corey. If there's a body, too many questions will be raised.”
“If she just disappears, there will be an investigation, too. A missing person case is usually a big deal.”
“Not as big a deal as murder. Not as big a deal as a woman who had a cyanide capsule in her back tooth suddenly using it on a day when she called in sick for herself and her healthy son. You don't want an investigation into you.”
“Won't the cyanide kill me, too?”
“Poisons can't harm you, Corey. Eat up.” Blake calmly approached the corpse and extruded metal blades from his arms. In moments, he had chopped her body into several pieces, completely dismembering her. He tossed her head into Corey's lap. “Eat.”
Closing his eyes, he let his senses shift to those of an alligator. He smelled food. Extending his jaws, dislocating them, he swallowed the food, not thinking about what he was doing. He refused to think about what he was doing as he swallowed the large mass. He refused to consider what he'd done as the last of her hair slipped down his throat to follow the mass in his stomach.
His brain went haywire as his stomach rapidly absorbed its contents. Images of him as a child flashed through his mind. Images of a naked man changing to a wolf as pleasure slammed through his/her body. The feel of the man slipping vials of fluid into her hand in a dark alley. Image after image, memory after memory slammed into his mind, until one settled prominently.
“Don't harm my son, Elenore. You don't want to make me angry. Protect him from learning his heritage until he's old enough to control it. No meat. Do you understand me?”
She nodded fearfully, eying the creature that had impregnated her.
“If you abort him, I will destroy everyone you love. Your family, friends, coworkers, everyone will disappear. Am I clear?”
She nodded again, hopelessness crawling through her.
“Good, then I will provide for you. When you finish your task, you'll be free to do as you wish. Understand?”
She nodded again.
The memory was replaced with another, a vision of Corey as he'd seen himself in the mirror two hours ago.
I've raised a monster. I've cursed the world with another one. There was hopelessness in the thought, right before she bit down hard.
Corey's awareness returned to the present, where he felt fingers sliding over his tongue and down his throat. Most of his mom's body was now gone. Blake had been feeding him while his consciousness was overwhelmed. His mom's torso looked smaller. The room looked smaller.
“Finish up, Corey, and then we'll plan for the rest of your life.”
Corey allowed himself to be fed the last of his mother's body, as self-revulsion swept through his mind. I'm a monster. My mom had no use for me. My father was a monster that blackmailed her into raising me. My father is a monster that made this... thing... awaken me.
I just ate my mom. I'm a cannibal.
