Inheritance (Book 1 of Wakwak Chronicles)

Coming Out

Brooklyn, New York.

Monday. Dusk. An alien sound breaks the darkening sky.

It sounds like one of those tropical jungle birds.

"Wak... wakwakwak..."

This creature is airborne but an avian, hardly, an alien to the land yes and no not necessarily but very much a predator. It traverses across Kings Highway like a dark streak towards the New York Community Hospital. There seems to be an invisible force, a tether pulling it there.

What am I? What... have I become? Who... This must be a dream. It's just so surreal. Martin Rebane, a copywriter for an ad agency, has no idea what he has become.

Perched on top of the hospital, he looks down at the scene of an accident below across the hospital. A lingering scent the tether that brought him to the hospital has increased in intensity. With a predatory instinct he moves around the best way he can to make his presence less conspicuous, he used the emergency staircase and stops on the floor where it seemed strong. He pauses and continues down differentiating the strength of the scent to discern which floor to stop; he goes back up two floors back to where there was some sort of high intensity pressure something that was heavy on his senses.

This is the floor, says Martin thinking, and analyzing his options. Why am I even hiding? Why am I even here? Let me just go along with this dream and get a sense of what this is all about.

He was about to open the door to go in the floor's hallway. But he stopped.

Ooops!

What was that?

That was not good. More people nearby?

Hmmm... Was that like a heart throbbing... no... its mine, oh and now that is not. It's there but not strong and it is again, maybe this must be when someone is facing towards me.

As he is able to distinguish when people are not facing towards his general direction, or so he thinks, and willing to try out this theory he goes in.

Okay, I am in, so far so good. I just wish there was an actual line that says go here then I would not try to keep on guessing where I should go. And what is that?

Martin sees a white colored mist more like a smoky trail, but white not gray.

It's not exactly what I want but this will do. Just like those cartoon shows, unbelievable. Boy, did I eat any magic mushrooms or what.

Now that he is in walking along the hallway, the intensity of the odor is driving him nuts, the more he smells it the more he craves for it. It smells like that Southeast Asian fruit Durian. It isn't that the smell is good but a repugnant sweet smell, like a leaking gas with feces; it is that hint of sweet and sugary smell that makes it all the while confusing him and confusing his senses. The smoky trail fades away; he has lost visualization of his target's location.

He could sense the throbbing of his heart again, the murmurs and the whispers of everyone in the floor, confusing him; he reverts back to his other senses his new extra senses and isolates the scent (for the lack of a better description since it is not exactly a scent in human terms) of his target the one that stood out, his would be prey.

"Paging Dr. Burns, Dr. Burns, paging Dr. Burns, to the ICU..." The dull sound of the hospital's PA system blares into his ears as it becomes numb and inaudible.

What? This is like an ICU floor, there is going to be a lot of people here, I'd better get out of here before it's too late.

But he starts to lose himself with that maddening itch inside his head clouding his senses, the urge to feed and claw into the meat with your bare hands and eat it like you never ate for days. It is not really a headache that he is feeling; it is like when one is being mummified or having those bandages all over your body, like a pressure or constriction on all points of one's body, the feeling of numbness, like millions of dull needles pressed simultaneously enough to make you feel that it is there.