There's a dull ache that ebbs and flows like the certainty of the ocean tides. It rises and falls, from one side of his temple to somewhere at the back of his head. Pain, it was pain. The word and explanation for what he feels is lost somewhere in the dark expanse of his mind, but it's there, on the tip of his tongue; as if he could remember it if given just a moment, just a second to consider. But there is no time, or if there was, it is not his. He is an imposter. He watches the world through eyes that are not his own. He tastes the soot in the air, the salt of sweat, the blood that seeps from the split down the middle of his lower lip. It is metallic, bitter, but sweet.
He wants more. He craves it with an utmost obsession. It transcends the throbbing in his head and without reluctance, he tucks his lower lip between a pair of fangs and bites. He is rewarded. The split gushes sweet nectar and he laps at it without abandon. The infected closes his eyes and in that darkness he's unaware he's in a chain-link cage, a small stall located just behind the wall of the fighting arena. He can hear the spectators. They scream and they yell. They smell of a foul stench of alcohol and body odor, it's the smell of disappointment. Of money lost and reputations sullied.
He is the cause, but he's unaware of his failure.
A red streak of blood trails down his forehead and splits between his eyes, down the bridge of his nose, then veers off the side of his left cheek. He feels it's cold lick and it makes him open his eyes. His fingers lift and wipe over it to catch it before he presses the tips of those fingers to his tongue.
Waste not.
He hears those words like they were spoken aloud, even though they are nothing more than a memory. It scares him and his eyes lighten to a bright shade of yellow while pupils dilate, then contract. He doesn't understand. But he wants to. He wants nothing more.
Somewhere, outside the concrete room, a door slams and he knows, or he thinks he knows, he has only moments before they throw him back out there. Before he's corralled back into the arena and left to defend himself from another, just like him, that craves the sweet red nectar. He knows this because he is still conscious, if he were not, his fight would be over.
The Devil You Know
