Heart Pangs

Chapter 7 - Changes

The longer Camille spends in middle school, the less interested she becomes in spending time with Felix. She has new friends now, kids that are own age and kind who do far more interesting things than biking aimlessly around town. In a way Felix is relieved. He's not sure what he would do if her feelings for him persisted. Her moving on from him is the easiest solution. But in another way, he misses her and her non-stop attention seeking from him.

In this way, Felix and Benji end up spending most of their free time together without her around. But, as the first few weeks of high school have quickly proven, finding time to meet up grows steadily harder. At first, they manage to meet every other week or so, but soon enough, it becomes only once a month, if that. It doesn't take long for them to look forward to the summer as the only period of time they may be able to see each other with any type of regularity.

High school is a weird and sometimes scary time for Felix. There are the freshmen like him who aren't much taller than prey, and there are the seniors who are virtually fully realized preds. For most of his freshman year, he feels dwarfed by the upperclassmen.

By his second year, Felix finally starts measuring up. At first he's excited as he shoots up, starting to rival his own father, but there are unforeseen side effects that he doesn't expect. The first of which is that all that growing leaves him with growing pains and a lack of coordination, especially at the beginning. He finds himself tripping over his own feet and overestimating his reach more times than he likes. He's all arms and legs and it makes him self conscious.

He also unexpectedly develops sharper senses. Or maybe his senses simply shift to be more acute to certain details. He notices quiet sounds more than he used to. He picks up and can decipher smells far better than he ever could before, particularly when it comes to the scents of people. His attention for movement is far more sensitive, specifically quick movements. It's distracting. Even the tiniest quick movement from the corner of his eye draws his attention.

The worst part, however, are the weird urges he's been having around Benji. At first, he isn't really sure what he's experiencing. The first time it happens is when Benji runs to his side to catch up with Felix's suddenly giant strides, another thing Felix has trouble controlling. Benji barely reaches Felix's chest now. The sudden, quick movement in his peripheral for some reason makes Felix want to grab Benji. His hand is halfway through the air before he realizes what he's doing and stops himself. He shakes his head, wondering why he even felt the need to do that.

The odd urge happens to him several more times, but his times with Benji are so sporadic, Felix doesn't connect the dots at first. Then it becomes more than just the occasional need to grab him. As Felix's senses grow more attuned to picking up and recognizing scents, Benji's quickly becomes familiar to him. Soon, whenever Benji is nearby, Felix gets a little thrill at the smell of him. He thinks, at first, this is just a result of him being excited to see his friend. It takes him awhile to figure out it's more than just that.

Summer comes along and so do more changes in Felix. He finds himself either constantly hungry or tired.

"You're a growing boy," his mother assures him when she catches him sneaking snacks in the kitchen. "It's only natural."

His father never says anything, but Felix can tell by the glow in his eyes that he's proud. It gives Felix mixed feelings to have his father look at him like that. On one hand, he wants to make his parents proud. On the other, over the years, Felix has mostly sorted out what his father does for work.

There is a shadowy place just outside of town called the Facility. To the preds that Felix goes to school with, it's a sort of house of dark desires.

"I heard only preds work there and they can consume whatever prey they want," Felix sometimes hears in passing or from his friends.

The Facility is always a hot topic during lunch or in the halls between classes, especially amongst the cool kids, the ones who brag that they know preds who consume and will do it too once they're old enough. The rumors about the Facility always vary. Sometimes it's a prison or a secret lab run by the government. Sometimes it's a consuming den for celebrities and other important people. Consistently, however, preds who work there supposedly always wear a black and red uniform and have to keep their identities secret.

The proximity of the Facility leads most of Felix's class to believe their town is a hotspot for employees to live. Felix doesn't ever say anything, but he knows the truth. He knows they're right. He knows this because his father is one of those Facility workers.

It's something he's figured out about his father slowly. From the moment Felix realizes his father practices consuming, he does his best to ignore the nights the man comes home with a clearly full belly. It's not so hard at first. His father often comes home late, and he usually doesn't make a big deal about it. However, once Felix begins getting older, growing larger, his father talks more freely about consuming. He does it in almost a cheeky manner, like he thinks it's something Felix will be interested in. When Felix enters high school and learns about the Facility, when he hears about the black and red uniforms, things connect.

He's seen his father come home in a black and red uniform every week for as long as he can remember. And the way his father talks about consuming now? He's stopped holding back. He talks about his prey in a clinical, detached way. They're prey at the Facility that he has to interrogate and dispose of, that much Felix has gleaned. And all the friends of his father that Felix has spent his life acting polite around, the ones that always intimidated him though he never knew why? Felix now knows why. They also work at the Facility.

Of course, none of this is something Felix can discuss with anyone else, least of all Benji. Felix once asks Benji if he's heard of the Facility. He has, of course he has, but he doesn't describe it in the way Felix's classmates do. To prey, the Facility is more like a horror house. Facility workers are like boogie men in the night who snatch up unwitting prey. Every prey in town knows someone, or knows someone who knows someone, who's disappeared to the Facility and never returned again.

Felix is sure he knows what happened to all those prey, but he can't tell Benji. He can never tell Benji any of this. It's a dark secret he shoves to the back of his mind and forces himself to forget whenever they're together.

And being together has gotten increasingly hard for Felix.

Once summer begins and his time with Benji increases, the strange urges he's been having start to add up. Although Felix doesn't fully understand what they're adding up to until one day his subconscious does the math for him.

The combination of endless exhaustion and hunger have started making him fall asleep at odd hours. Early one afternoon, after making plans to meet up with Benji that evening, Felix passes out on the couch. He dreams that he awakens to Benji knocking at the front door. Felix goes to open the door and he suddenly feels so famished that he grabs Benji right off the front porch and devours him, kicking and screaming, without a second thought. Felix finally feels so wonderfully full that he doesn't feel regret for his actions at all. That night his father comes home and congratulates Felix for becoming just like him.

Felix wakes up in a cold sweat, gasping for air. His stomach feels painfully empty. He sits up and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. He was so sure the dream had been real until a moment ago.

He runs into the kitchen and pulls food off the shelves, shoving it into his mouth until some of his hunger subsides.

He meets up with Benji that night still rattled from his dream. Despite his efforts to act normal, Benji still asks him several times if he's feeling all right. Felix brushes off his questions with what he hopes is a cool laugh and a careless, "Yeah, I'm fine." But now, he can't stop seeing Benji in a new light. He can't stop looking back on all those little moments for the past year and understanding what they were all building up to.

Felix gets home late, glad he made it through his time with Benji with no slip ups. For once, Felix is glad Camille has stopped spending time with them. He wouldn't want her mixed up in all of this.

He's not sure what to do about the situation. He's not sure there's anything he can do without admitting how he's been feeling to Benji, and that is the last thing he wants to do. His only hope now is to make it through the last few weeks of summer and let the start of school be the buffer that keeps him away from Benji until he gets his feelings sorted out.