I realised my dark side was returning in earnest a couple of weeks after the ritual, while I was eating lunch with Amanda – a girl from my programme who was struggling to wrap her head around divine command theory. We were discussing the Euthyphro dilemma when a sudden urge pierced my consciousness:
Stab her with your fork.
The impulse was so sharp, so overwhelming, that I had grabbed the fork and raised it before I had even finished the thought. I managed to wrest control of the desire before I brought it down against her neck, but the ferocity of the urge and the utter lack of control I seemed to have over it chilled me to the bone.
It happened again the next evening, when I was passing the Refectory on my way to the library. Two drunk guys stumbled out of the booming entrance, their faces slack and happy under the fluorescent-green lights, and the all-consuming longing to slit their throats swallowed all else. My fist clenched of its own accord, and my feet lunged me in their direction as though under some divine command. If I’d had a dagger on my person, there was a very real chance I might have acted upon it.
Before I knew it, the impulses were coming thick and fast, and bridling them became a never-ending battle – one that required all my concentration at all times lest they take full hold. Seemingly overnight, the ability to study, to communicate, to think of anything but bloodlust was entirely lost. The clarity and the innate sense of goodness I’d felt in the first few weeks following the ritual were shrinking down and down, until it felt as though there was a mere pinprick of light left.
I cancelled my private tutorials with Dacre in case I alienated him once again. I stopped going to class; I couldn’t concentrate anyway. I stopped sleeping, for fear of what I might do when I let my guard down. The effort of holding back a ravenous tide meant I was perpetually doused in cold sweat. I couldn’t even eat, because any distraction could be fatal.
Simply put, I was terrified.
One night, in a fit of desperation, I went to the chapel to . . . not to pray, exactly. To find solace? Forgiveness? Something to provide a salve, a balm,anythingthat would ease the monstrous instincts for just a moment so I could think. A voice from above to tell me I was not evil. I was not broken. That I would be saved, somehow.
I didn’t find it, of course. No god in any world or any realm would absolve me of the thoughts in my head. But it was a relief to be in a wide-open space with nobody else around; nobody else I could fantasise about killing in vile and vicious ways.
As I sat there in the scuffed pew on the back row, staring miserably at the centuries-old floor, I felt something soft brush across the back of my neck like a fur scarf. Jolting upright, I watched as Salem leaped gracefully on to the pew beside me, arching her back and stretching out her paws.
For the briefest moment, her presence was the salve, the balm, the moment of fleeting goodness I needed. A tiny speck of relief that almost brought me to tears. There would always be cats. Cats hated you regardless of your thoughts. Theycouldjudge you, but it was probably too much effort, and anyway, they’d rather be left alone.
And then she looked back at me, and something red and unnatural flared in her eyes.
Unthinking, I grabbed her viciously by the throat.
Her claws gouged at the backs of my hands, the red vanishing from her eyes as her normal yellow irises shrunk in fear. A spiderweb of scratches formed across my skin, weeping red, but I didn’t let go.
Her neck was so fragile; I could feel even tiny matchstick bones beneath my palms.
Stop stop stop stop, pleeeease stop, whimpered the five-year-old girl at the core of me, but I couldn’t. My limbs were no longer my own.
Utterly unable to wrest back control, my grip tightened on Salem’s neck and made a snapping motion; a violent, right-angled jerk to one side.
Crack.
Her body went limp in an instant.
The horror hit me all at once.
No no no no no no noI dropped her to the ground and retched up nothing.
Please please please, it was a mistake, please please don’t be dead don’t be deadBut her soft black body was still, head crooked at an awful angle.
Over my desperate gasps, slow footsteps echoed in the chapel. Self-preservation kicked in, and I hurriedly nudged Salem’s body further under the pew in front of me.
I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry, you didn’t deserve it, I’m sorry I’m a monster I’m–
I stood up, smoothing down my blazer, and dabbed at my eyes to make it look like I’d been crying. Blood roared in my ears as I turned into the aisle.
Professor Le Conte had stopped walking a few metres away, all his weight on his back foot as though he were about to turn and leave. He offered a remorseful look, as though he was embarrassed to have caught me in a moment of private turmoil, and lifted his palms in apology.
My pulse thudded in my chest. ‘I was just leaving.’ The words seemed to come from very far away.
‘Very well,’ he said in that soft, assured tone. ‘I do hope everything is all right.’
I nodded, a strangled feeling in my throat, and then strode past him towards the exit.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, I just killed a cat, fuck fuck fuckAs I reached the door, I glanced back to see Le Conte had taken a seat in the front row, far away from where Salem’s lifeless body lay on the cold stone floor.
Panic rose in my chest like a black tide. Someone would find Salem soon. They’d find her with her neck snapped. And they would know – surely, they would know – it was me.
I was every bit as evil as I’d always feared.