The Cannibal Corpse of Boston

The night was loud. Despite not quite being the city that never slept, Boston was always crawling about with the evening life. On a North 7th street, drizzled with various rivaling nightclubs, the activity was the strongest. College students were the main demographic, the kings, queens and royalties that ruled the area. They brought in the most business, freely throwing away the money their parents sent them for various holidays or for rent on access into VIP lounges or for another round for their friends to grow that much more intoxicated off of. They were careless individuals, the hundreds that never second guessed a concern about the next morning and how they would cope with an empty wallet that was supposed to assist them survive the following week. Partying was their main objective and nothing would stand in the way as a pillar to their hunger for experiencing the livelihood of being a young adult. Some could say they were stupid, idiots; but others could empathize with the desire.

One man in particular haunted the corners of the strip. Every weekend he would show up, hooded and with a black face mask tightly secured around his mouth. Rarely anyone noticed the grayish-green tint to what skin was revealed, and those that did laughed it off with jokes. They thought he had too much to drink or was celebrating Halloween a couple months too early. They found his contacts to be 'radical' or, 'realistically creepy'. Never did they consider the reality that he lived. To them, it wasn't possible. It was unfeasible. A thing like him didn't exist, at least not in anything other than the two-starred fictional movies streamed occasionally on Netflix. 

The truth was that he did exist, much to his disliking.

Jason Rupnic had been a person like them. He went to the university, he studied hard for his family and every weekend, he wound up traveling down the same sidewalks into the very same clubs everyone else currently went to. Like them, he drank, he laughed, he exchanged numbers, and when he was tired, he went home to rest. Then the following weekend, he did it all over again. Drank. Laughed. Exchanged numbers. Went to rest. Drank. Laughed. Exchanged numbers. Went to rest. 

For three years he tapped along with the dance, rinsing and repeating throughout his early twenties. He made handfuls of friends. He encountered dating. He broke up. He cried. He overcame it and he moved on. His plans for the future were to continue with that sentiment, to be wrapped up in the addictive sensation of it all and do it until he graduated. Then he would get serious. Then he would conform to the outside society, put on his business attire and become a new man. He would make money, find a suitor and feed into the normalcy of the American dream. Get a career, succeed. Find a mate, succeed. Make a family, watch your offspring succeed. Retire and meet your ending with peace. A life of succession. 

For Jason Rupnic, however, destiny's watchful eye had a different plan. 

On a Tuesday evening, April 12th, he spontaneously found himself with a craving. Stumbling throughout his dorm, he ate everything he could get his hands on. Chips. The hamburgers left in the fridge. His roommate's leftovers. The raw chicken bought for a friend's dinner party. Steak nuggets. French onion dip. Nothing sated the sensation. It was gnawing like an obsession, eating him from the inside out. Figuratively and literally. 

He threw up, not once or twice, but multiple times. At first it consisted of chunks of the food he'd shoved down, mixed with the acidic bile of his stomach. When that was emptied, it was streams of chocolaty-red blood. It splashed on his floor, down his shirt and in paint like droplets on his desk as he took to the computer in fear, frantically searching Google for any pinch of relief. The internet gave answers, but none of them were as dire as his condition. He was certain he didn't have stomach cancer. He was certain his lungs were working. And he was certain an ulcer couldn't cause the copious amount of fluid he was spewing. The emergency room was the last resort, but it was where he needed to go, quickly.

Before Jason could think of how to get there, his roommate showed up from a morning's jog. Panicked by the scene, he sought Jason out. When he found him, he also found himself screaming for his own well being. Teeth were gnashing into pieces of his body, taking with them morsels of both his flesh and clothing. Like he were nothing but a piece of bread, Jason bit into him and tore through portions of his shoulder and arm. Without properly chewing, he swallowed and swallowed, eagerly devouring lumps and slabs of his roommate. His hands held tightly onto him, pinned nails sinking strongly into a wriggling rib cage that vibrated with shouts and pleas. The pain was evident, but Jason's starvation was the priority. Frantically, the roommate toppled over. Together they fell with a struggled thud onto the floor.

After agonizing moments of shrieked wailing, only one of two arose. 

---

"So, Jasoooooon. Has anyone ever..y'know, asked you if you like Friday the 13th?" 

A voice irritatingly annoying sounded not too far off from behind him. In the darkness of the alleyway, he recognized who it belonged to and where they might be behind him. As his body was blocking off the only exit, he figured they came from somewhere above. A rooftop maybe or over the bricked fencing that blocked sections off from one another. How long had they been there, was the question. He was aware that they were similar to a cat, quiet and an excellent lurker, but did they really not have anything better to do than to spy on him watching people meander in and out of clubs?

He scoffed, iridescent eyes turning with his head as he cast a look in their direction. From the shadows of the billowing, blanket canopy hanging stories above both their crowns, the familiar features of a man he dealt with often stared back at him. Jester in expression, a tongue swiped over pearly lips and a smile edged heavily with amusement. 

"What? Not hungry right now? The last time we spoke, you tried to nibble my sweet little fingers."

A hand emerged from the gray-scale abyss, daintily wiggling all five appendages. 

"That wasn't very Voorhees of you."
"What do you want." 

Finally he spoke, flaccid in tone. 

A pause bounced between them, but was short lived. From the man in the darkness, a sigh sounded out, disappointed. 

"Can't a friend of yours just see what you're doing?"
"We both know you're not a friend."
"That's one way to tell me it's one-sided."

Jason grunted, turning his head away. Down the street, a girl cartwheeled over herself, then bounced up with her hands in the air. Following her trail, her friends clapped and called out cheers of excitement. They stumbled altogether, stupor with the alcohol of the night churning throughout their bodies. They were likely headed to another bar for another chance at drinking more than they could handle.

"Do you ever miss that? The whole screwing around and getting so plastered you wake up in the morning wondering what you even did?"

Though he heard him, Jason chose to verbally ignore his question. He did feel nostalgic about those times, a melancholic remembrance. It served a never ending reminder of what he could have been doing if his condition never occurred. Attempting it as he was now? People would flee from him, bartenders would reject him and everyone would beckon the help of their trusted hero. The same hero that they always relied on whenever they felt unsafe. 

"Yessss? Noooo? Okay, new question. Do you ever think that if you went there today, if they would remember you as who you were before and not who the press made you?"

His eyebrows tucked in and he whipped his attention to the voice.

"Why do you ask stupid shit?"
"Is this really stupid? I think it's valid."
"It's stupid and you know it's stupid."
"I just said it was valid."

Shoulders pushing from the wall he found himself leaned on, Jason turned himself completely away from the other. His hands fell to his sides and he flexed them, coiling the tips of his fingers against the cold, dry texture of his palm. Dealing with this particular company wasn't what he had in store for his evening, nor did he want to stick around for conversation. They were business partners, both using one another to leverage a foot higher towards a common enemy, nothing more. Viper wasn't a friend of his and he wasn't a friend of Viper's. Forcing himself into small talk was frustrating. He didn't want to cause a scene here and grow too hostile. Leaving seemed to be the only option.

Without further indulging, he walked from the alley and away, down the sidewalk. He could hear the soft laugh catching the wind after him, but refused to pause for it.

Not today.