The Truth

Chapter 2: The Girl

The next day news of the girl's death had reached the whole town. Everywhere he went he could hear fragments of whispered conversations.

"Poor girl. So young."

"The woods are so dangerous. Going out there at night..."

Along with the news, rumors began to spread. Tales of a monster. Tales of a serial killer. People were scared and so their minds began to run wild. Fear. It does strange things to people. An animal in the woods? Probably, but with the only eyewitness insisting on the existence of a monster, uncertainty grew. It would soon fade, Daniel knew this. He gave it a week. People would gossip and create extreme stories and then the incident would fade from their minds. In a week there would be something new to talk about and then only the girl's family would be left wondering why. And what.

Daniel walked into the coffee shop. He exchanged a pleasant conversation with Dina and ordered his usual. He sat and read his newspaper, the usual routine. He skipped the section reporting the girl's death, he had heard too much about it already today.

He walked back home. It had been a perfectly normal day, so why did he feel a growing sense of unease? Why had he felt the need to clean yesterday? Why had he destroyed his new hiking boots? He had never even worn them. So why? He didn't have a reason; he just had needed to. He couldn't shake the feeling. And the jacket. He hadn't worn it recently, so why had he washed it?

The jacket.

He stopped for a moment and then picked up his pace. He reached his house and rushed to the bedroom. There it was the bag of clothes he had packed the night before. He thought back to the brother's description of the attacker. No. A black cloak and a black jacket are too different. Right?

Daniel picked up the bag and walked back out of the house. He carried the clothes to a nearby parking lot and slid them into the slot of a metal box labeled 'Clothes Drive'. He frowned at his actions. Those were perfectly good clothes. So why did he want to get rid of them so badly? He tried to clear his head. Why was he feeling so odd, so paranoid? It wasn't like he had committed the crime. No. He hadn't murdered anyone. Hadn't harmed anyone. He had done nothing wrong. Not this time.

He made his way back home and started to warm up some water. A nice cup of tea would calm him down, he was sure of it. He saw steam rise from the kettle. He began to pour the water when he noticed how slowly the water was coming out. Was something blocking it? He popped the lid off of the kettle and saw a small plastic bag floating in the water. He took some tongs from a nearby drawer and pulled the bag from the kettle. It held a crumpled piece of paper with one sentence written on it:

WAKE UP AND FACE REALITY DANIEL

Who had? When did? His mind flooded with questions as he tried to avoid remembering what the message meant. He had failed. He remembered now. No, not remembered. He had always remembered what he was. He acknowledged now. Acknowledged the fact that he had tried to run away from six months ago when he moved to the small town. He was a monster.

Daniel himself was not a monster. No. He wasn't putting on an act when he went about his normal life, when he had pleasant conversations with others or when he sat and enjoyed a good book. It was his other self. The one that only came out occasionally. The one he couldn't control. The one that thirsted for chaos, who enjoyed pain and laughed at misfortune. The one he thought he got rid of six months ago.

He smiled to himself. Of course he hadn't gotten rid of it. That would have been too good to be true. As much as he didn't want to admit it, he had known this would happen. He just needed to suppress it again. Act normal until everyone forgot about the girl, until no one was curious about the monster in the woods. He had done it before; he could do it again.