Homicidal Ideation

a Carcerem Island backstory

All of his aspirations, however, had been steamrolled on that day on the water. In pursuit of whatever whim presented itself in their minds, his schoolmates had demanded that the yacht dock in an unfamiliar harbor off Carcerem Island, and despite resistance from the crew, had eventually won out with threats of termination. There was a particularly idyllic beach they'd spotted, and were determined to explore. As evening fell, the patient had followed his schoolmates across the gangplank, little suspecting what this trip onto the island would mean for his future.

At first, the figures drifting towards them across the sand seemed to be harmless, drunken carousers enjoying the night. They were not. They encircled the patient and his schoolmates, tightening around them like a noose until the first of them, the metal-faced girl, dove at his neck. Suddenly he and his schoolmates were crushed beneath wave after wave of them, snarling and gasping, their fingers clawing over his skin. Red patterned the sand in the struggle, wasted by the blood-suckers.

That's what they were. Blood-suckers, driven to attack, for what reason he wasn't sure. All he knew was that he was now infected, and he needed to fix it.

The patient unscrewed the cap from the plastic container, his hands shaking. His fits were real, but he could sense them coming now, and could often get back to his room before he truly lost control. The mania he displayed in the cafeteria just now was mostly an act, but an act preceded by the real thing. It was a perfectly unsuspicious way to get to his room without delay, and to allay any suspicions of the veracity of his apparently deranged condition.

The patient upended the container into his mouth before he could think about it, swallowing the cool, partly congealed liquid with practiced force. It roiled in his stomach, uncomfortable as always, before his body extracted what it needed. It didn't seem to matter whose blood he drank, so long as it wasn't his own. He'd tried that in his early efforts to keep from attacking people in alleyways, but it had done nothing to assuage the fits. When the fits came, they rendered him horrifyingly senseless of everything but the nearest source of blood, generally whomever happened to be near him. Afterward, he would come back to his senses roaming a deserted street or squatting in a doorway, only able to recall brief flashes of what he'd done. Most recently, he'd find himself caked in blood and standing over someone as they crawled over the cement.

It was only a matter of time before he was discovered and arrested, or worse. At first, when the fits came once a week or so, he had time to dispose of the evidence of those he'd attacked. He began systematically choosing victims and stockpiling blood packets in order to stave off the fits.

But he couldn't keep pace. The fits came more and more frequently, his lucid moments more and more rare. Increasingly desperate, he realized he had to convince the authorities that he was mentally unstable, rather than homicidal, and began making public displays of unhinged behavior in his university classes. The faces of his schoolmates, slack with horror, made his skin crawl, but it was better than being locked in prison for murder. He hadn't yet come to over a lifeless body, but there were some episodes he remembered so little of, he didn't dare assume.

The patient replaced the plastic container in his mattress, snarling reflexively at the scorching sunlight, just as Dr. Lowen's footsteps neared his door. He had memorized the sound of her stride.

The bolt slid back and the doctor poked her head through his door.

"Hello, Sersi," she said in a soothing tone. "Is it safe for me to come in?"

Sersi was back in his shaded corner. "Yes."

"Ok, I am going to come in and talk to you, all right?"