IGNATIUS The Colors of Rage

Chapter d Reflex

With his chest drowning in adrenaline, he felt the thrill of the moment, and also love. A lot of love. The sensation was nothing similar to orgasm or whatever, but the feeling of a longing having been met; a warm embrace; it was everything; the meaning; the goal; the reason for life. This was his place. It was natural. It was meant to be. His heart raced. He sucked hard, wanting it more than anything. 

With each gulp, the pressure in the man’s veins diminished in strength and the sensation tapered off with it. Panic eroded through the last few moments of excitement. Iggy sucked and sucked, but nothing could respark fireworks when the pressure was gone. Gloom descended all around him. The normal was back, and it was darker than it had ever seemed before. 

Emi’s palms pressed back on his shoulders, trying to unhinge him from the indents in the man’s arm. Iggy was hooked into him, unable to wake up and let go. His mind was an empty room. There was no control, no thoughts. “Iggy…?” Her voice was distant. How many times she called his name, he didn’t know.  She pulled him back harder, stretching him away from the body. “Iggy… he’s dead. The pressure is gone.” 

Iggy glimpsed the pale flesh and released him, finally. He tumbled backwards, tripping her back onto her rear, and falling against her knees and shins. There the man sat limp in the metal chair across from them. His fixed pupils settled on the opposite gray cement wall. The bitter salty urine spread over his lap. His skin was already waxy gray. 

As Iggy observed the dead man, there was nothing more disturbing to him than the barbarous gnash that he had made in his arm. The inward waving of his forearm looked as if he was made of something soft and pliable, like clay. Iggy had cut into his bones easily with his sharps, and the strength in his fingertips alone was enough to cut into his muscle without effort. Little rivers of rusty red blood ran along the curves, and even seeing the color initiated a flutter of tremendous excitement through him, again. 

He looked up, meeting Emi’s bright face as she peered down on him adoringly. He tipped forward away from her, knelt onto his knees, and then faced her. She sat back holding herself up by the arms, staring, and waiting. 

He leaned in to close the gap between them, but it wasn’t enough. He crawled on top of her and aligned their faces. He licked her lips. Her tense muscles loosened and she fell back an inch. The thirst reflex was still strong, and even though he watched her intently like prey, he knew that the kind of nourishment that he needed wasn’t what she could offer him. 

It seemed like it was just the two of them until Nansen moved. His hands clasped one against the other in front of his upper abdomen and he leant forward. His eyes glimmered wet and dilated. “Good boy, Iggy,” he praised. “Wasn’t that fun? Aren’t you happy? Now, you get to do that every night, for as long as you live.” 

Iggy couldn’t concentrate. His attention caught sight of the string of lights shining hypnotically from the hallway, illuminating the darkness. Directly across the way, the red light called him like a siren, promising him another delicious taste of the red nutrition. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay and not only relive the ecstasy over and over, but because he was starving again. Still thirsty. He licked his lips and whispered, “again,” then he leapt to his feet and charged inside the next prepared room.

“Wait!” Nansen held out an arm, missing him by a fraction of a second. “These people are for everyone! We share them! Iggy! Wait!” 

Regardless, no one could have stopped Iggy. After his third victim, he became overwhelmingly woozy at the height of his thirst hypnosis that Nansen seized the moment and collected him over his shoulder and dashed out of the basement before Iggy realized that the blood was gone. 

The next thing Iggy knew, he was sitting on top of a bar stool, staring at himself through a mirror. He should’ve felt some sort of mixture between shock and surprise, confusion perhaps, but he had absolutely no sudden response. His mind wasn’t aware of much. He couldn’t think thoughts. He could only see what was before him.

Gazing through the mirror, he could see Emi standing against his left shoulder, stroking his black hair between her fingers and a comb. Even with the extra curves that hindered the length, it was below his collarbone, and strange to feel it against his skin. It hadn't been that long before. She played, lengthening and dropping his hair with each stroke. Her voice was soft, yet sharp like glass. “How short will it be?” 

Nansen paced back and forth with his arms crossed tightly over his chest and scissors clenched in his hand. All of the muscles in his body were tense. “He’s going to be so mad at me,” he groaned, bringing voice to the thoughts rolling around in his head. He shook his chin side to side disgracefully and planted a palm over his temple. His eyes clamped shut as if he were feeling the actual pain of guilt. “I should have waited. I’m such an ungrateful i***t!” He pointed his finger straight toward Emi’s back. “KillJoy, if you tell Baine how awesome it was to watch, I’ll kill you.”

Her lips twinged. “Don’t give me any more ammo to use against you, i***t. No wonder why you’re the buffoon around here.” 

“Dammit, we should have waited.” He spun around. “I’m going to regret taking him down to the feeding rooms alone.”

Her head tilted and she narrowed her sights on him. “Enough already. You’ve said that a million times. Are you going to get snipping at this mop, or what? Do you even know how short you will make it?”