It's been a year since that shitty day when everything went wrong. The day that started with cold coffee.
I was tired and hungry. I had overslept and missed breakfast.
Some idiot had failed to switch the hot plate on. As I loaded the filter, my hand trembled and I spilled grounds all over the counter. I scrambled to clean it up. My lunch, a sandwich I'd made myself, ended up on the floor, and was immediately stepped on by that cunt from marketing, who just laughed. And laughed. And kept laughing - until I opened my mouth.
The platform at lunchtime was surprisingly crowded. My phone and my headphones, I realised, were still on the office kitchen counter. They'd probably send them on to me. The train was very late. A man eating something foul smeared what smelled like mustard on the arm of my jacket as he shoved past to take the last seat. The entire ride he guffawed at cartoons on his phone. A blob of yellow condiment sparkled at the corner of his mouth at every crash and bang that punctuated the slapstick music. He kept laughing, sound turned up loud, no headphones in sight, like the world existed for him alone. I stared at him through the gaps between the bodies jostled against me. Each time he laughed, I imagined killing him.
A letter was waiting for me. The landlord. Market forces... unprecedented demand... rent increase 9%, generous in the current climate...
That night, I made the decision.
There was a place. I had found it two years before on an awkward weekend with a girl I'd been dating, a pale goth with a septum piercing, a tumblr full of horror gifs and an interest in Wicca. Normally I'd have swiped left but she was pretty, if you ignored all the crap. I have no idea why she had liked me. I was, she said, "a bit normcore", but she claimed I had a "dark energy" that she found attractive. Going on the pagan retreat was a bit of a hail Mary and before the first workshop was half-way done I knew it would never work between us. We quarrelled. Split up. I wandered off, left the site, and soon found myself in the woods, where I discovered the hut.
For several hours I had sat there. Doing nothing. At ease. I felt peace. It was the happiest I had been that I could ever remember.
Often when things were particularly stressful, I had returned to that place in my mind. But I'd never thought of going back.
The hut was more of a ruin than I recalled. It was probably something temporary erected by hunters to hide and wait, then abandoned. There were things I thought were deer in the woods. I was not a backwoods guy. I did not know the name of things.
It was hard. I nearly starved. And then the forest taught me. I was never alone.
I did not crave company. I did not miss pointless emails, the endless meetings to discuss the impact of our socials. The Q3 figures. The office Christmas party. The fakeness.
I woke before light, fed a few branches into my makeshift stove. Watched the sun come up from the doorway. In the winter, I opened the door of my primitive oven and watched the flames. I chewed on a strip of dried meat. Ate a handful of gathered berries. Later I would hunt. I slept well at night.
And then, one day I ran into them hiking in the woods. Two cranks from the commune nearby. The ones who had organised that retreat. They remembered me. They were friendly enough, inviting me to join one of their communal dinners, or perhaps their meditation circle if that was more my thing. But immediately, their true colors showed. I could tell they judged me, my former choices, my old life. They didn't see what I had become. They saw me as a relic of the old world, a symbol of everything they despised.
I tried to ignore them, to live my life in peace. But their judgmental attitudes gnawed at me, like a persistent itch I couldn't scratch. I felt my old anger rising, the same anger that had driven me to the woods in the first place.
One day, they invited me to a gathering, a 'celebration of unity and love'. I went. As the night wore on, their condescension grew more pronounced. They talked about me, about my 'dark energy', about how I needed to 'let go' and 'embrace the light'.
The fire was crackling, casting long shadows on their faces. They were all looking at me, their eyes filled with pity, with superiority. Someone laughed. And kept laughing.
I don't remember much after that. Just the sound of their screams, the feel of their blood on my hands. When I came to my senses, they were all gone. I had killed them all, every last one. I was the monster they had accused me of being.
But I didn't stop there. I looked at their bodies, at the flesh and blood that had once been people. And I felt a craving I had never known before. I ate them.
I buried their bones deep in the woods. Then I burned their commune to the ground.
Tomorrow I return to the city. I am hungry.