Prey Drive

by James White, Wrath

  “If I do it, and it works, then I’ll never experience that high again, will I? I’ll never feel the same ecstasy I felt before.”

  Professor Locke shook his head. “No, Joseph. I won’t mislead you. You will never feel anything like what you feel when you consume human flesh. That ‘high’ as you put it, will be gone for good. But you won’t crave it the way you do now either. Addicts have difficulty producing the endorphin dopamine without indulging their addictions. The experiences that produce endorphins in normal people, such as dancing, riding a bike, eating ice cream, getting a hug, will no longer produce dopamine in those with addictions and that’s why you have these depressions when you don’t act out. Nothing else does it for you. My hope is that your brain will form new nuero-pathways so you will be able to produce endorphins through normal healthy experiences. You’ll be able to appreciate the little things normal people enjoy, experiences you are oblivious to now.”

  Joe felt his heart sink. As much as he hated the ravenous beast inside of him, Joe could not deny how much he enjoyed the orgasmic ebullience he felt when the monster claimed another victim, when his tongue was wet with blood and his belly filled with meat, the soul of his prey circulating through his veins.

  “Yes, but it won’t be the same transcendental ecstasy will it?”

  “No, Joseph. It won’t. The choice is yours. You can try it and maybe find some release from this thing inside you that you used to call your curse, or you can keep this curse forever.”

  Joe nodded. He remembered the look on the faces of Alicia’s mother and her little sister, Lana. They hated him for what he did, Lana especially. She looked so much like Alicia it made his heart hurt and she was appalled by him. To her, he was a reprehensible abomination. The psychotic deviant who’d ended her loved one’s existence.

  “You’re a sick, perverted bastard and you deserve to be locked up forever! No one could ever love you, Joseph Miles. You’re a fucking MONSTER! No one could ever love you!”

  The memory of Lana’s words stung. Joe had never wanted to be the man Lana accused him of being, but he was. He was a monster, a sick perverted monster and no one would ever love him unless he was cured of this curse. Every day the guards brought him stacks of mail from people wanting to save his soul or to see him burn in hell for what he was, what he’d done. Then there were the letters from women like Selene and men like his cousin, Dirk; people who got off on the thrill of knowing a famous serial killer. His choice was either life with the perverts and sycophants or life with regular people, real people, like Lana.

  “I made my choice when I first came to you and asked for your help. If you say it will work, Professor, I trust you. Do what you have to do.”

  Professor Locke smiled warmly. “That’s good, Joseph. Very good.”

  He called for one of the prison nurses, a short, skinny black man with big glasses and a head full of short dreadlocks. The male nurse’s hands shook as he swabbed the crook of Joe’s arm with alcohol, patted the prominent vein pulsing there, tied his enormous bicep with a short length of medical tubing, and eased the IV into place. While the nervous nurse stabbed an IV needle into Joe’s arm, Professor Locke busied himself preparing the ketamine drip.

  A heart-rate monitor and EEG wires were placed on Joe’s head and chest. Professor Locke withdrew to a swivel chair across the room where he monitored Joe’s vitals and waited for the ketamine to take effect. A sense of calm descended over the massive human predator.

  “I feel kind of woozy.”

  “That’s normal,” Professor Locke replied. “It will pass.”

  The monster was not merely silent. It seemed to have slipped into a coma. Even when Joe ran the previous evening’s activities through his mind, the monster remained in hibernation. After a couple of hours, Joe was escorted across the hall to the small room where the PET scanner was kept.

  “How do you feel now, Joseph?”

  “Peaceful.”

  “Do you still feel lightheaded?”

  Joe shook his head. “I’m okay.”

  “Good. Good. I’m going to put you in the scanner for a few tests. I’ll be showing you pictures again. You just breathe and relax, okay? This won’t take long.”

  The professor asked again that Joe’s shackles be removed and again Officer Belton called the SORT team to be present first. Six men in riot gear filed into the room and took positions around the PET scanner before Belton unlocked the cuffs on Joe’s wrists and ankles. As he unlocked the handcuffs he leaned in and whispered to Joseph.

  “Please try something. I saw what you did to Addison’s neck. You should be put down like a rabid dog and I’d love to be the one to do it.”

  Joe smiled back at Belton. There was no confusion between them. Despite the power Belton’s position gave him and the relative powerlessness of Joe’s circumstances, there was no doubt who the alpha wolf was. If all things were equal, Joe would tear Belton apart with ease and they both knew it.

  “Okay, just relax and look at the slides.”

  Professor Locke put what looked like virtual reality goggles on Joe’s face, headphones in his ears, and slid him into the machine. He started up the scanner and it began to whir and click. Music filled the headphones, Beethoven, orgasmic music. It drowned out the sound of the scanner. Then the pictures began.

  This time, there was little preamble. Joe was shown a few pictures of apples and kittens and trees, presumably to establish a baseline, and then came pictures of plus-sized models and porn stars with enormous breasts, hips, thighs, and asses. Joe stared rapturously. He was aroused, but the monster was silent. He wanted to fuck them, to ejaculate all over their large breasts and buttocks, not eat them. Then came the photos of Alicia, and Joe felt a sudden and overwhelming sorrow. He finally saw the beautiful woman’s death as Lana saw it, as a tragedy and nothing more. They showed him the same photos he’d been shown before of Alicia in an evening gown, in a low-cut blouse, and finally of her as she’d looked in the hospital before and after surgery, with her breasts eaten away.

  “Turn it off. Turn it off! I don’t want to see anymore! TURN IT OFF!”

  The final image flashed before him. It was of a pile of splintered bones that had been picked clean of flesh, gnawed, the marrow sucked out. It was all that remained of Alicia.

  Joe ripped off the goggles and pulled out his headphones, but he couldn’t extract himself from the scanner. He was too big and the PET scan was too small. He was trapped. He began to hyperventilate. “Get me out of here!”

  “I’m coming, Joseph. You have to calm down. You’re making these gentlemen nervous.”

  The whirring and clicking stopped and the platform on which he lay began to slide out of the machine. Once free of the scanner, Joe sat up and was slammed back down just as quickly as the SORT team rushed in and pinned him to the gurney. He was cuffed at the wrists and ankles and quickly dragged to his feet.

  “I need to go back to my cell. Take me back to my cell!”

  “Joseph, wait! Calm down. I need to show you something. Please.”

  Joe was being held by three guards. One had his left arm wrenched behind his back and the other had his right and there was another guard behind him with a baton lodged under his chin, pulling back on it so that Joe had to lean backwards at a painful, spine-wrenching angle to avoid being choked to death. He took several deep breaths, closed his eyes, and when he opened them he was calm again. He was surprised how easy it was to regain his composure.

  “Gentlemen, please. You can let him go now. He isn’t going to hurt anyone.”

  “This is bullshit! You said he was medicated!” Officer Belton yelled, jabbing a finger at the professor. His eyes were brilliant with rage. He appeared on the edge of physical violence. He was scared. Joe could see it as conspicuously as if he’d been wearing a sign. He could smell it in the man’s perspiration, a gamey odor full of adrenalin like that of a frightened doe. The man was terrified, even with more than half a dozen specially trained officers in the roo
m, and that pissed him off.

  Professor Locke turned to Officer Belton and looked down his nose at the angry corrections officer. It was clear that Belton wanted to strike him and would have if he didn’t know he’d lose his job because of it.

  “He is medicated, Officer Belton. He isn’t resisting, is he? Perhaps you’d be interested in seeing these results as well?”

  “What results? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Come. Take a look.”

  Professor Locke gestured toward the small booth where the monitors for the PET scanner were kept. Belton followed him along with Joe and two of the SORT officers. The professor pointed to a red, blue, and yellow image of what was clearly a brain on the monitor screen.

  “This is your brain while I was showing you those images just now. It is the brain of an addict. Your brain shows the same changes one would expect to see in the brain of a heavy cocaine or methamphetamine user. Here’s what your brain looked like while I was showing you those photos. That yellow spot right there in the amygdala indicates increased brain activity. The amygdala is the part of the brain that’s critical for memory and emotions. It’s often called the rage center of the brain because that’s where our flight or fight emotions are stored. It’s also where our sexual desires originate from. For an addict, when something stimulates a craving, the amygdala becomes active. A cocaine addict, for instance, will show increased activity in the amygdala at the mere mention of the word or upon hearing sounds or seeing images that remind the addict of cocaine. For you, Joseph, this increased brain activity happens when you see women, particularly voluptuous women.”

  “So, I guess the drug didn’t work. There’re flashes of yellow in the amygdala when you were showing me the pictures.”

  “Yeah, you ain’t fixed shit, Doc,” Officer Belton added.

  The professor smiled giddily. “But wait. I have something else to show you.”

  The professor went to a keyboard and began furiously typing in commands. Another image of a brain leapt onto a nearby screen.

  “I want you to look at this image. This was your brain a few months ago viewing those same images.”

  The image on the screen now showed an explosion of yellow in the area of the brain the professor identified as the amygdala. It looked like Joe’s brain was on fire. Comparing the two images, that small spot of yellow on the first screen was like the flare of a match compared to an inferno.

  “The drug works, Joseph. It works.”

  Twenty-Two

  “Cannibal Killer Suspect Convicted!”

  “Six Victims Identified in Cannibal Case”

  The headlines were sensational, but the details of the murders were even more lurid. She read about the librarian whose cannibalized remains were found at Joseph’s old apartment, cremated in an arson fire; the body they’d found roasted on a spit, most of the flesh torn from its charred bones; the child-killer who’d been butchered and nearly filleted at the state hospital; the orderly with his throat torn out; Joseph’s father who was found beheaded and burned with Bible pages stuffed in his mouth; and finally Alicia, eaten down to her bones. Cindy didn’t know what she was doing. She had allowed herself to fall for another inmate, perhaps the most dangerous prisoner in the entire prison system.

  Cindy knew that men never changed. All the promises, all the therapy, even incarceration didn’t change a thing. A bad man was always going to be bad. Still, there was something about Joseph Miles that contradicted everything she read. She remembered watching him cry when one of his victim’s family members came to visit. It hadn’t been an act. He’d been genuinely remorseful. And the things he’d said to her, the way they’d made love the last time. He’d promised her that he wouldn’t hurt her and he hadn’t. He could have killed her if he wanted to. She’d been a fool to sneak into his cell like that. It had been just as foolish of her to sneak him out of his cell the night before. She could have easily been another victim, but he hadn’t killed her. He’d bit her neck and it had hurt, but he’d stopped when she told him to stop and he hadn’t done anything close to what he’d done to the people in these stories. He’d ripped out that orderly’s throat with his teeth, but he’d let Cindy go. Maybe his treatments were working. Maybe he was changing.

  Twenty-Three

  Joe had a visitor. He was allowed to shower and shave before being led down to the visitor’s room to receive his guest. The entire time, Joe hoped that it was Lana who had come to visit him again. He was surprised to find a tall, gray-haired man in a dark blue suit and light- blue pinstriped shirt waiting for him in the visitor’s booth behind the thick Plexiglas wall. The man had a lean athletic build, clearly the result of hours in the gym. His face was lean and hard and had few wrinkles. His eyes were battleship gray, hidden behind thin spectacles with lightweight titanium frames. He smiled and picked up the phone when Joe entered. Joe sat down and picked up the phone as well.

  “Hello, Mr. Miles. My name is Jon De Salvo. I was hired by a friend of yours to represent you. I believe you are acquainted with Ms. Selene Cassaro?”

  “Is she here?”

  Joe stood and looked behind the lawyer into the hall. Mr. De Salvo gestured with a slight wave for Joe to sit back in his seat.

  “Ms. Cassaro is not here today. She is still barred from visiting you.”

  Joe slumped in his chair.

  “I do have good news, however. I am very close to getting you moved back into general population.”

  “Really? How?”

  “It’s been five years since you committed the crimes you were sentenced for. You spent most of that time in the state mental hospital before being transferred here several months ago. They were able to transfer you to prison because they declared that you were now mentally competent and able to understand the difference between right and wrong and why you were being incarcerated. They declared you legally sane, in other words. Now, you are being kept in what amounts to solitary confinement because you are considered violently insane and a threat to your fellow inmates. They can’t have it both ways. Either you’re insane and should be returned to the state mental hospital or you’re sane and should be released back into general population. Since you have been incarcerated here, there have been no documented instances of violence toward either the guards or your fellow inmates.”

  Joe was shocked. “What about the convicts they made me fight? What about the one I castrated?”

  Mr. De Salvo smiled.

  “As I said, Mr. Miles, there have been no documented instances of violence toward your fellow inmates. If the guards were engaged in anything as illegal as what you described, setting up inmates to fight one another, I don’t think they would be careless enough to keep reports on these events. Would you? On paper, you have been a model prisoner. Any testimony to the contrary would have to include blowing the whistle on the practice of cockfighting. I doubt the corrections department would risk such a scandal to keep one inmate in supermax. I have several noted psychiatrists prepared to testify that your crimes were the result of your mental illness and that you are now sane and therefore not a threat to yourself or others.”

  “Will they let me go then? If I’m not a threat anymore, then why am I still locked up?”

  Mr. De Salvo shook his head. His expression was one of genuine remorse, but Joe knew better. The man was a pro and his facial expressions were as calculated as his choice of suits, his haircut, and his words.

  “No, Mr. Miles. They will not let you go. You have been sentenced to life in prison. That hasn’t changed. You still killed those people, sane or not. This is the best I can do for you.”

  Joe balled his hands into fists, squeezing until his fingernails broke the skin of his palms and blood seeped out from between his fingers. He was leaving one cage for another, but at least he wouldn’t be locked in his cell twenty-three hours a day.

  “I have one more thing to tell you, Mr. Miles. Ms. Cassaro wanted me to deliver a message. She said it didn’t work. She tried to
experience what you experience, the way you experience it, and it didn’t work. She didn’t feel anything. She wants to know what she did wrong.”

  Joe frowned. “What I experience? The way I experience it? I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

  Mr. De Salvo leaned forward, tilted his thin, titanium-frame glasses down to the tip of his nose, and peered at Joseph over them, locking eyes with him. There were few men who could so easily stare unflinchingly into the eyes of a killer. Mr. De Salvo had probably locked eyes with many such men throughout his years as a criminal defense attorney. Joseph wondered exactly who Selene’s parents were that they had required the services of such a man and could so easily afford them.

  “I think you know what she means, Mr. Miles. There’s only one behavior of yours she would emulate that would require such clandestine discussion.”

  The lawyer continued staring at him until his meaning sank in, then he eased his glasses back up onto his nose with his index finger, and leaned back in his chair.

  Joe was stunned. What has this crazy bitch done? “You mean she— she killed someone? She ate someone?”

  “These phones may not be completely private, Mr. Miles, and I’m only her lawyer. I am just the messenger in this case, delivering a message she is unable to deliver herself. I would prefer not to try to interpret the message. I am simply delivering it as directed.”

  Joe thought about Selene killing someone and eating them. He wondered who her victim was. Some portly business man she’d picked up at a bar? A prostitute she picked up off the street? Why would she do that? What was she looking for? What did she mean “it didn’t work”?

  “Is she— is she in trouble?”

  “She’s fine. She’s in no legal trouble, if that’s what you mean. Now, I was hoping you might have a reply to her query.”

  Joe thought about it a moment more. She said it didn’t work. She hadn’t felt anything. She was talking about the ecstasy of the flesh. She was talking about orgasm.