Jason Teufel

Chapter III: Under the Great Dam

“Choice is an illusion. You think you have it, but you don’t. In reality, it is those with power and the circumstances of one’s situation that will define what you may or may not do.”

(The Way of the World, author unknown)

Jason opened his eyes to the dark, sunless room around him. According to the time on his phone, it was still early in the afternoon but the drapes on his window were drawn so tight that it appeared as if it were dusk. For a moment, Jason simply lay on his bed and allowed himself the blissful fantasy that the events of the past morning had been merely a vivid hallucination, brought on by the stress of an unusually creepy night.

Reality soon smacked him in the face though as a thick stench caught in his throat, forcing him into an upright position as he gagged on the foul-smelling air around him. The awful odor was the scent of death, mixed with mutilation and the beginnings of decay wafting up from a bloody, torn corpse laid out on the floor before him.

Jason had never seen such a revolting sight in his life. The body was that of a young man, roughly his age with the same height and build. Bright pink intestines, mingled with various corrosive stomach acids and peppered splatters of dark red, hung from a slit in the man’s lower chest that settled into a small pile to his left with thick chunks missing from the sides of several of the entrails. A deep gash looked as if someone had literally ripped the man’s esophagus right out of his neck. The entire front end was missing, exposing long severed tendons amongst the remains of his dripping jugular vein.

It was too much to behold, Jason leaned over the side of his bed and vomited all over the dirty clothes strewn about his floor.

What the hell is going on? This has to be a nightmare of some sort. Why on earth is there a dead body in my room...? Are those teeth marks?

Getting slowly to his feet, his head light with a queasy sickness, Jason stumbled out of the door of his room and down the hall to the bathroom where he splashed cold water on his face and tried to keep himself from puking a second time.

Running his hand along the wall to support himself, Jason moved down the hall to the living room, instinctively flicking the light switch on before remembering that the power was out. It wasn’t so dark that he couldn’t see but when he turned his gaze to the kitchen he quickly wished that it was.

Moragan, the psychopathic self-proclaimed vampire Jason had met earlier, was sitting at the counter. Her bright red eyes were fixed on the contents of the plate in front of her as she ate what Jason could only assume to be the missing pieces of the body from his room. Without even thinking, Jason ran past her to the kitchen sink and heaved what remained of whatever his last meal had been.

“You ok?” she asked him, finally looking up from her meal.

“No, I’m not ok! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Ummm breakfast,” Moragan said, with a very innocent expression on her face. “I made you some too. Do you like eggs and bacon?”

“Honestly, I may never eat again.” Jason spat bits of saliva and chunks of food into the sink. “Why is there a dead person in my room?”

The vampire smiled. “Oh, that’s you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, I figured if you’re going to come with me, you’re going to need a reason why you stopped going to work and why you are nowhere to be found. What better reason than being dead?”

“Woah, woah, woah! Who said I was going anywhere with you?”

“Let’s not go through this again, Jason,” Moragan said, pointing a fork with a long dripping piece of human flesh menacingly at him as she spoke. “We both know you need a new life or you’re going to end up hanging yourself one of these days. And I really don’t want that. You’re the only human I actually like. This is for your own good. And if you won’t come with me willingly, then you’re more than welcome to explain to the police how a dead half-eaten body got into your apartment.”