When We Were Still Human

by Vaughn Foster

  The woman was leaning against the counter. “You’re starting to feel full, aren’t you?” she repeated.

  Val nodded distractedly. Her body moved on autopilot while her mind was stunned by the taste. It had a meat base—maybe beef—in an unbelievable cream sauce, leaving her taste buds both confused and overjoyed. Celery and carrots then balanced the stew, grounding her with at least one thing she recognized.

  When she finished, her stomach breathed a sigh of relief. For the first time since the attack, she felt satisfied. The woman handed her a second bowl, but Val couldn’t eat another bite. Tears streamed down her face as she stared at the bits of meat and vegetables swirling in the broth. While she wasn’t religious, she whispered a prayer of thanks, grateful that she was finally in her right mind.

  But in that clarity came memory. The woods. Jason’s apartment.

  She shivered in disgust. The animal that had killed and devoured that deer wasn’t her. A beast she didn’t know existed had taken over and forced her body to submit to its hunger.

  “Thank you so much,” Val whispered.

  “No problem…” The woman looked up quizzically.

  “Val.”

  “Crystal. My son, Ligel, was here a second ago. He probably went to his room.” Val followed her gaze to the empty chair. She had been so engrossed in the stew that she hadn’t realized he left.

  “Thank you so much for bringing me in. Last night I… wasn’t me. I--" She swallowed and pushed the bloody nightmare away. "This food, oh my god, it was incredible.”

  “I try,” Crystal said with a shrug before sitting down herself. Her kind smile hadn’t wavered, but the way she stared into Val’s eyes was unsettling. The woman looked at her with a sense of familiarity; it was like she’d known her for years.

  “You heard what Li said about your ankle, right?”

  “What?” Val glanced at her foot then back to Crystal. “Yeah, but I’m fine. I don’t know what—”

  “Ligel and I were out hiking and found you tearing into a deer. When we got close, you tried to put up a fight. We had to get a little rough— hence my son cutting your Achilles’. But you were already so weak that you would’ve died if we left you out there. I wasn’t sure how long ago you were bitten.”

  The last word struck Val like a spear. “How- how did you know that?”

  “Now, this is going to be a lil’ hard to believe, girlie, but you were umm…how should I say this? Turned.”

  Val paled, her breath catching in her throat. “Turned?” The crazy man from the E.R. rushed to mind, accompanied by all the old horror movies about bloodsucking monsters. “You mean… like a vampire?”

  “Ghoul,” she replied calmly. She took a sip of her coffee.

  “Like a ghost? I’m de—”

  “No. If I meant ghost, I would have said ghost. Ghouls are creatures that need human flesh. They can’t eat anything else; their metabolism burns it off before digestion. All the waste is breathed out in carbon dioxide. Haven’t you wondered why you didn’t need to take a piss in the last few days?”

  "At least he wasn't crying ghoul!"

  "Monsters that live in graveyards."

  Val thought back over the montage since the attack. Her body had felt lighter, now that she thought about it. She had leapt twelve stories from Jason’s balcony and landed forty feet away. It also explained how fast she’d moved through the forest.

  “If ghouls go too long without eating, they go crazy,” Crystal continued. “Issue is, live like an animal long enough and you start feeding on… live people. You go down a dark path, your mind twisting and morphing til’ you don’t even know what you are. Only thing that matters is where the next meal is coming from and who it will be. You get bit by one of these things, and well…” She motioned towards Val with her mug.

  Val looked down at her soup. Panic and horror stopped her breathing as she saw pieces of meat float to the surface in the thick fluid.

  “But… if the only thing that a ghoul can eat is…."

  "Monsters that live in graveyards."

  "And eat human flesh."

  "Oh my god, I just ate someone! What the hell, how could you just give me that?!” Val jumped from the table, the sudden movement making her even more nauseous. She ran towards the kitchen counter and prepared to make herself vomit into the sink.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Crystal said, walking over to support Val from falling. “If you throw up, you’ll be in the same state we found you in last night. You will lose your mind, and for your safety, and that of my family, I will put you down.”

  Val stopped her struggle, thinking back to the previous night. She'd attacked Jason. She'd snapped the neck of that deer with her bare hands. If Crystal and her son had been humans...

  “You said if a ghoul eats humans, they’ll go crazy," Val started shakily. You can’t expect me to live like this. I’m begging you.” She grabbed Crystal’s shoulders and pleadingly stared into her eyes. “Just kill me now.”

  “Sit back down, you’re not listening,” Crystal soothed. Gently placing a hand on Val’s back, she led her to the table. “I said if we continue to eat living humans. Feeding on the dead is a more...humane way of survival.

  “Our ancestors were forced to dig up the freshly buried, but now that we’ve been hunted to near extinction, there are more options available for those of us still around. The most common is working as a mortician, my own profession. Once the body’s buried, no one notices if a few internal organs are missing. And if someone is to be cremated…” She closed her eyes and ran her tongue across her lips.

  “What the hell is wrong with you!” Val slammed her hands on the table. “Dead or not, they’re still people!”

  “Were people,” Crystal replied dryly. “Their spirits are long gone. What’s left is an empty, edible shell. It’s the survival of the fittest, girlie. Eat, or let your mind get eaten. Just know that if you pick the second one, you won’t have the option of whether you eat the liver of an old man on his way into the ground, or rip the beating heart out of someone you love.”

  Jason.

  The horror in his eyes continued to haunt her. She couldn’t go back to him, or her old life. Being around people would only tempt the unthinkable, and that would create a monster.

  No.

  That would release the monster.

  Val looked up at Crystal, but the woman’s green eyes seemed to stare through her. It was like she was trapped in some distant memory.

  Val cleared her throat and Crystal blinked.

  “It sounds like you’ve had experience.”

  “Ligel’s father,” said Crystal somberly. “He was human, but he knew what I was. He accepted me, said it didn’t matter. Said that he trusted me. After Li was born, I started getting tired. I couldn’t take care of myself, and getting what I needed became more difficult, especially with a newborn. Every time I saw my husband, I felt pangs of hunger. I wanted to eat him. But I loved him. He was the man I married, the father of my child. I couldn’t put him, or Li in danger, so I planned to leave.

  “As the weeks went by, I started noticing little changes in Ligel. It started with eating less and staying up during the night. I guess for human children that’d be normal, but he had always slept ‘til morning. Before I knew it, his teeth had grown in. They—they were sharp.”

  Crystal looked away and wiped a stray tear. She closed her eyes and absently stirred the spoon in her mug until her hand stopped shaking. When she raised her head again, she took a deep breath and continued her story.

  “I realized then that I couldn’t hesitate any longer. Not only that, but I had to take Ligel with me. I couldn’t curse my husband to raise a son that wasn’t even human. I’d be leaving him alone with a child that had my disease, but no discipline or self-control. I wrote a note explaining what I had to do and why I had to go. I was going to leave it on my pillow when I realized that would be far too cruel. He would know we were alive and that we were out there som
ewhere. He would know that I still loved him and knowing would breed false hope. I had to make him forget…”

  The last word lingered in the air like a weight. Val wanted to pry, but she knew the other woman was done talking. But regardless of what Crystal meant by “forget,” she had gotten her point across. This thing that had happened to her— this disease— had completely changed her life. If Crystal had known going in what she was and had to give everything up for the sake of her family, what hope did Val have?

  Val dropped her gaze to the floorboards. “Where do I go now?”

  “You’ll stay with us,” Crystal said. A small smirk spread across her face. “You’re a ghoul now, and that means you’re family.”

  Chapter 5

  Months passed and seasons changed. By the coming of Autumn, the ghoul had accepted her new life; her new home. Unfortunately, acceptance couldn't soothe the longing for her old life. What she wouldn’t give to see her friends, or her family, or to even go for a walk in the city. The little things she had hated, like Dr. Peterson’s three-hour lectures on physiology, or arguing with her father about politics, she now desired more than anything. But she— the part that was still human, that was still Valerie Stephens— pushed it back. Crystal and Ligel had shaped her control and abilities far beyond what she could have done alone. When she fell, they were there to catch her.

  “Again!”

  “Crystal!” Val pleaded, throwing her head back. “We’ve been at this for hours!”

  “And?” Crystal placed her hands on her hips, a small smile still on her lips.

  Before Val could blink, claws swiped in front of her face. She had barely flipped out the way when Crystal charged her again, firing a flurry of punches and kicks.

  Val countered each of them, scanning for an opportunity to take the offensive. Crystal moved to knee Val in the stomach, which exposed her own flank. Val rolled away and fired a punch at Crystal’s abdomen.

  It was futile.

  Crystal had caught the punch with her left thumb and index finger, then flipped Val onto her butt.

  “This is why we’re not done yet,” Crystal said with a smirk before helping Val up.

  “Ligel!” Exasperated, Val stomped over to Li, who was still absorbed in his punching bag. “Why didn’t you help me?”

  “Mom’s a badass,” he said, not losing concentration. “I’m not an idiot.”

  Almost a year later, things were no different. A black belt apparently meant nothing; neither Val nor Ligel was any closer to taking Crystal, one-on-one. At the very least, however, the woman had given them Thursdays off.

  Correction: Crystal had given them Thursdays off from combat.

  Val stood atop a hemlock, scanning the forest for movement. "Ligel," she breathed.

  She wasn't sure when he became a surrogate brother. Maybe it was when she got lost three months ago; he had brought her food and spared her the horror of slipping away into the beast. Maybe it was at two months, when she killed the bobcat that had cornered him in a narrow ravine.

  There.

  Val spotted the blond blur in the leafless treetops a few hundred yards away. The instructions were to practice evading and blending; either she was simply a fast study or Ligel was losing his touch.

  She ran across the branches with the dexterity of a squirrel until she was smiling down at him. He was carefully looking side to side, confident that he had properly hidden himself.

  “Hey, Li.”

  Ligel jumped, then stumbled back until his foot slipped. He futilely grasped the air, but his sharpened nails just missed the branch he’d been perched upon. Looking up, he could clearly see Val smirk, accompanied with a small wave. Returning her wave with an extension of his middle finger, he closed his eyes and spread his arms before crashing into the ground.

  Taking a less direct route down, Val waited at the base of the tree for him to get up. She couldn’t help but shake her head at the bloody mess lying in front of her. A few seconds later, Ligel sat up and started pulling himself back together. He turned and smiled, the disgustingly gory wounds already sealing shut. Within a minute or two, all of his bones and muscles had reset and grown back like new. That was another plus to being a ghoul: they could regenerate until there wasn’t even a scratch.

  According to Crystal, the only things that could legitimately kill them would be decapitation, or complete destruction of the body. Li once said there were disputes in the scant remains of the ghoul population of whether or not a beheading could still be survived, but Val was content with not testing that theory.

  Once Ligel had fully healed, he walked over— obviously not upset about losing the match. Val looked down at his bloodstained shirt and smiled, still amazed at how much they connected. He was only fifteen and certainly acted his age, but there was something different about him. She could casually talk to him the way she had been able to with her friends. As an only child in her past life, this was a completely new experience.

  But as she thought of the good times, the poignant truth that everything was fake pressed harder. She didn’t have a brother. She was the only child of two incredible, loving parents. She had co-workers, and professors, and friends who were probably worried sick in the midst of conspiracy stories and news broadcasts.

  Acceptance had been getting easier, but what hurt more than anything was the fact that she didn’t know why she was still there. Every day was the same and every day she was wasting her life. The hunger was tamed, but Crystal kept saying that she wasn’t ready to leave. Life was good, but each denial scratched a deeper ravine between Val and her mentor.

  “What’s up, sis?”

  Val glanced to Ligel and shrugged. She could practically feel the lines in her face, but he would have seen through her, even if she tried to hide them.

  “We’ve explored these woods for miles on end, and she won’t even let us go into the city,” Val replied listlessly. “I’ve learned control, and in terms of ‘danger,’ I'm more than capable of handling myself against a wandering black bear…” She sighed, allowing her body to slide to the ground and rest against the tree. She held her clawed hand in front of her face and stared at the sunlight reflecting off each of her sharpened nails.

  “I don’t know, man,” he sighed, moving to sit next to her.

  “Like, I love your mom, she’s amazing, but still… It’s been over a year and we’re just spending all this time out here in the woods. We’re running around in trees when we could be assimilating into society, ya know?

  “Humans are overrated; it’s not like we’re missing all that much. Besides, it keeps us busy, I guess."

  Something in Val's face must have shown how she really felt because regret and shame instantly flooded his face. "I didn't mean— Val, I’m sorry, I completely forgot—”

  “It’s okay.” That ever-familiar forced smile cut through her cheeks again. Just like it had that morning, and dinner before that, and the day before that. She coughed a little and pushed the tears back, just like she always did. He hadn’t meant to, but he had brought up the poorly buried memories of her old life. Her friends, her parents— Jason.

  Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

  When she opened her eyes, she took another deep breath and tried to steer the conversation back on topic. “But seriously, when are we going to see more besides trees?”

  “I don’t know, Val… You’ll have to talk to Mom.” He turned away and started fidgeting with a broken twig.

  She felt like a pouty schoolgirl. Ligel obviously thought she was overreacting. He wasn’t even bothering to look the least bit attentive. He had lay down on the carpet of dead leaves and was staring off in the distance. She couldn’t really blame him. He was only a kid, and this was the only life he had known. He’d seen civilization, but to him, there was nothing alluring about it. His laid back nature and love for his mother quelled any thoughts of breaking free of their wooded boundaries.

  Val’s train of thought was disrupted. From her peripheral, she ca
ught the slightest sigh of relief escape from under his breath. She thought back through their conversation and realized that his eyes had been averting hers the entire time.

  “Li.”

  “Val…”

  “Don’t ‘Val’ me, I know you’re lying,” she said, ripping him up by the collar. “As soon as I dropped the subject, you sighed. What is it you’re not telling me?”

  “Nothing!” he squealed. He tried to wriggle out of her grip, but she lifted him higher.

  “Tell me!”

  “Okay, okay, just put me down.” He relaxed when his feet touched the earthen floor. Val stepped back against the tree and crossed her arms.

  “Well?”

  “Just don’t tell Mom, okay? She didn’t want you to freak out.”

  She raised a brow. “Freak out about what?”

  “Well... It’s just that ghouls aren’t the only thing out there.”

  “What?!”

  “Yeah... Remember maybe a month after you moved in and Mom explained that we’re called mirage?”

  Val nodded in agreement. “Humans don’t notice us unless they’re concentrating, and even then, we'll probably slip from memory.”

  “Yeah… Well, mirage isn’t just a term for ghouls. It covers a ton of different bloodlines.”

  Val blinked, trying to keep up with what he was saying. “What are you talking about?”

  “Bloodlines—ya know, races or species. It's a a more specific term or whatever, I don’t know.”

  “Okay… So, what other kinds of mirage are out there?”

  “Fairies, dragons, lycans, dwarves…Pretty much anything that’s not supposed to be real.”

  "Nosferatu!"

  "Please, sir, I don't understand."

  Val swallowed. "Vampires too?"

  “Straight shot to psych ward”

  "He was nuts."

  Ligel shrugged. "Probably."

  Val shoved back the torrent of thoughts charging to break free and forced herself to stay in the present. “So, um... So why wouldn’t your mom want me knowing about this?” Val asked, sitting back down.