Eating healthy, living well

"Lieutenant Melboury! The girl last night, the one in the bathroom, is that really an accident?" 

"An accident doesn't sever your jugular like that, don't you think? Why do you always ask me crazy questions?"  

"But sir, the paper--" - "Give me that!" 

"What is this garbage? who is following the case? Never mind, I'm following it from now on. Someone sold a lot of crap to a reporter.... The window was open, there was vomit in the toilet and on the floor. There was blood spatter on the wall behind the toilet and all around the window. The cut on the neck is wider on the right side and tapers off as you check deeper, a textbook stab wound. The victim had swelling at the level of the chest and micro-cuts on the forehead...." "While she was drunk, someone who wanted to get at her pushed her head against the mirror, she tried to escape through the window, but she was stabbed and thrown against the sink. That's what happened." "And this dynamic you understood it from..." - "From the mess the ambulance people left behind. There wasn't a trickle of blood inside that body, yet those idiots went in three of them, turning the corpse over and putting electrodes. They should have stayed outside! We told them to stay outside!" 

The two policemen were talking as they walked through the corridors inside the Neapolis police station, by now a maze of boxes and iron poles resting on the walls; there was a huge commotion because the garages were being expanded and the work was supposed to take at least another month.

James Scariot was sitting at the table in his dilapidated house, a wooden building with peeling white paint in most of the rectangular boards that make up its structure. He would soon have to get up to get into his black van and travel to the company for which he works as a welder. Hard work. But it allows him to be alone all day. He needs to talk to virtually no one, as he communicates with his colleagues through notes and post-its. He liked or disliked nothing. He needed to work to distract himself from the voices. His shift would last six hours then he would go home, heat up some mush in the microwave and alienate himself along with the voices in front of the TV, gobbling down bottles of any alcohol in order to sleep. He knew he was not well; it was obvious to him that his psyche was an abomination. He had grown tired, however, of asking for help. No one had ever really cared about him, not even the specialists he was paying. Their job was to listen to him, but they didn't even make an effort to pretend. There was something about his being that led everyone to ignore him, to mock him without ever taking him seriously. No one ever listened to him, even as a child, whenever he opened his mouth his interlocutors seemed to take pleasure in being distracted. After years of unsuccessful attempts, he had come to prefer only listening and then not even that. He never had a friend, he knew people yes, but it's not the same. He had become cold, apathetic, disinterested. He had begun to appreciate self-hatred from an early age . A deep disgust. Nothing he did mattered to him; every accomplishment was quickly forgotten. When he happened to think about the fact that he had been born, he was enveloped by a strong nervousness, his every muscle tensed and his teeth clenched hard on his cheeks until his mouth was filled with blood. 

The sound of a siren indicated to him that his shift was over, he got up, went to sit in his black van, started the engine, and drove off. 

The fresh evening air invigorated him. After a few miles of driving he saw a strange light along the road and stopped the van on the side. A strong yellow light was illuminating a wall of pine trees rising beyond the left side of the road. Approaching on foot, he notices how the light is originating from a huge black box, a shape that occupies almost the entire ditch that lines on the right side of the roadway. Approaching slowly, James begins to make out a figure, a shape stretched upward with semi-spiny flaps surrounding a central cylinder in alternating strokes. It looks like a tree, but it has two drooping flaps halfway up the trunk and what appear to be three legs that, with a motion rhithmed by the dull sound of bare feet on asphalt, spin the figure around itself. Just above the arms, in the center of the torso, is a gap in which two strands of white blocks protrude outward. They are teeth. It is a mouth. The creature, moving one leg at a time, moves away from the road and disappears. The source of the light is now clearly distinguishable; it is a car. With relaxed steps, James approaches it, places his hands on the door and through the broken window notices that there is an unconscious person in the driver's seat. He moves his head closer to the interior of the passenger compartment, slowly, his eyes wide. He sniffs the middle-aged gentleman sitting with his hands still on the steering wheel, and he appears to be obviously drunk. With his eyes almost out of their sockets, James' mouth opens wide in a slow, continuous movement, opening to a size no longer human, then suddenly clamping down on the driver's cheek. With a sharp movement of his head, James rips a piece of flesh from the face of his victim, who wakes up and, in pain, screams and begins to struggle. The hungry executioner grabs him by the wrists, forcing him to sit, and slowly uses his legs to drive his torso into the interior of the cockpit. Bringing his head closer to the driver's face, he proceeds to deliver more bites to his face in a sudden, animalistic manner, while his victim's babbling screams give way to gurgling and gargling given by the blood gushing from his face in spurts, obstructing the airway. By the time the unfortunate man stops struggling, what little remains of his face is unrecognizable. James then pulls his dripping jaws away from the now-dead body and piles the pieces of skin detached from his bites inside his victim's mouth, carefully wedging them in. Turning his back to the car he walks away, but after a few steps he notices something is approaching the van. It is a bicycle. Astonished, James stares at the bicycle, propelled by the creature from the previous evening, which with one hand on the pedal moves rhythmically toward him. Enthusiastically, with its mouth wide open and tongue hanging out, the beast passes him, its gaze focused on the road ahead. James raises his fists to the sky and lets out a cry of joy, "I did it! Iiiiii!" Jumping, laughing, in disbelief of his abilities, he makes his way to the van, ready to return home. The van's taillights, about to leave the car behind, illuminate the lanky figure returning from the forest, leaning curiously in front of the car window to appreciate James's handiwork.