The Unnaturals

Chapter 6

I stared at the dirty, bedraggled homeless guy in the center of the room. The only coherent thought I could get through was: Why is he eating pizza?

"What?" I said aloud involuntarily. He had a half eaten pizza in his hand, and it was dripping cheese onto the cardboard in his lap. There were two more pizzas left in the box, and I could tell he'd planned on eating them. That is, until I walked in. "Dude, you-" I'd been about to say, you reek, when was the last time you took a shower? When I realized that was probably not very nice. He was frozen, his eyes fixed on me, the pizza still posed inches from his mouth.

"Uh..." he said unintelligibly. Suddenly I felt a rush of anger that felt ancient- like it wasn't even mine.

"Get out!" I snarled at him. His eyes widened and he threw the pizza into the box, closed it, and looked panicked as he realized the only way out was being blocked by me.

I moved aside, further into the room, giving him what I was sure was a if-looks-could-kill-you'd-be-dead-thirty-seconds-ago glare, and he fled. I followed him back down the hallway and watched him run out the door, wanting to make sure he was really going.

How dare he go into that room and eat pizza like it was a lounge area! How dare he open the door and go in where no one was supposed to! For some reason the feelings injustice, rage, and something else I couldn't identify rose up in me, threatening to take over completely. I didn't know what would happen if I let that happen, and I didn't want to find out.

For a strange moment, I felt myself floating in between two different dimensions- one that was the present, with me in it, and one that was the past, with feelings of anxiety and fear all concentrated on that door, that room, by multiple people. What had gone on in there?

Shaking my head to clear it of the weird, deja vu-like feeling, I forced all the swirling, confusing emotions back down. Now was not the time to go insane. Now was the time to keep my head, and go back to that room to find out whatever I needed to find out.

Turning around and trying to ignore the feeling of wrongness in my chest, I went back to the room. The smell of death lingered slightly but I couldn't tell if that was from the homeless person or from the room itself.

After I made it three steps into the doorway, everything stopped. I even think I stopped breathing.

But this time it wasn't because of some weird power fluctuation inside of me, or any kind of inexplicable feeling.

It was because everywhere on the walls of the bare room were scratch marks.

They were too tall and wide to be animal. These... were made by humans. And from the different spacing between the claw- or nail marks- I could tell they'd been made by multiple people.

And that was when I noticed it. The room wasn't as empty as I'd thought.

In the corner of the room was a length of rope. The same rope I recognized that had been cut off of- by me, specifically- the wrists of a captured Tory.