The Selfless Gene

Chapter 1

5 years later...

"Fucking bitch." His strength was constant but after a year the words he spat out bordered on ridiculous. Locked in a lightless prison, bar the thrice daily feeds, he was a creature of the deep.

Although his humanity was clinging on, every day in the pitch black the beast grew stronger. Not just inwardly: he felt it on his very skin. His beard had moved in long ago, while his hair swung loose down his back like an overawed flower desperately gasping for light. In his meditative moments, he'd trace his face and body, creating a mental silhouette of every hair and shape. He was reminding himself of Thame: the man, not the beast. But with every unclipped region of his body now overrun, he knew he was all but converted.

"Eat up my boy, I need you fit and healthy," Chirpier than usual, she bellows from the light, "Can't be long before my boy returns to me."

Heavy iron bolts move and a stream of light pierces into the bleak cave that holds Thame. Like a spear, it carries a painfully sharp edge, illuminating the cold ragged edges of the cave and the surface of the insanely heavy boulder between him, freedom, and revenge.

He'd long given up pleading and resorts to a low growl in her general direction. The food was nutritious, carefully chosen, but laced with drugs. Starve and die, or eat and be controlled. Thame wouldn't let him win.

The captor switches to the language of the beast.

"I can sense that you're nearly free. Fight that last battle and you'll forever be out of the past. Tonight is your biggest conquest."

Conditioned, Thame begins to eat. The first two months he'd tried a hunger strike. Not only to chance freedom, but because he no longer ate animal product. Ever since he broke up with Isabella on holiday, he'd felt deeply connected with the sentience of other creatures. Respect and compassion for one another, the freedom to co-exist without the human need for control and ego. In the first Cave Spring, goats would meander around, nibbling their way along an ancient track. He could smell it: years of knowledge, contentment, love. His beast didn't bellow with fire and rage to engage in death's dance with the animals, simply purred envious at their freedom. Eventually though he gave in, acknowledging that death was not an attractive option for dessert.

The stale stench of man and beast trickled out where the light entered, although Thame had long since noticed that. A hole with a deep stream at the back provided for nature's needs. A carefully laid trap sitting dormant for thousands of years, waiting for the right inhabitant.

He fought at first, when his body could still stand against the drugs being pumped into his system. Striking, scratching, booting the hard metre-thick stone walls to no avail. He'd evolved: lion to crocodile. Lying in wait.

Thame ate sitting on the floor, back against a cold rock wall, next to his beast. They ate together.

Water drunk, the heat of the day again rising, the drugs began to take hold and the daily battle for his soul began.