The Renfield Syndrome by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 59

As the night wore on, Caspian proceeded to meticulously paint his car, applying painter's tape and carefully spraying around it. Initially the paint ran due to being too close, but backing away by a few inches solved the problem. There was an unforeseen issue that raised its head. As a breeze came up, it blew a thin cloud of paint toward the fire, igniting it instantly. Unfortunately, Caspian was standing in the way, and when the cloud of paint burst into flames, it engulfed his shirt. As it burned through the fabric, Caspian quickly dropped the paint can, and whipping off his shirt, threw it to the ground and stomped out the flames. He counted himself lucky that his skin remained untouched, yet it was one of the most terrifying moments of his life. The lesson had been learned, and from then on he would be mindful of the direction he worked in, but as dawn broke, the job was done, and his car looked like a well-kept pile of junk. Caspian was now certain that he would never stand out and that he would be able to travel without being noticed. Little did he know that the new appearance of his car was not necessary and that his fate lay in an eager act of carelessness. However, the next item on his list was food. Last night’s dinner had been light, and this necessitated a full breakfast, but that also meant he would somehow have to contain the smell of cooking food. It wouldn’t be much, but it was better than starving. It was also around this time that he had grown to miss the continental breakfast at the high-end hotel near Toledo. His stomach began to growl at the memory of all those pastries and tall glasses of milk and orange juice. Examining what he had left of his supplies, he found it fortunate to find a chocolate swirl tucked away in a paper bag—a stowaway from his brief time in Toledo. If the five-second rule ever applied, it was now, and mixing a mug of coffee over the dwindling fire, he ate his meager breakfast as though it had been handed to him by a royal servant. Consuming this sweet delicacy required time and appreciation, and Caspian had both in abundance.

After breakfast he put the fire out, being certain that every coal had been stomped into the ground. Now it was time to seek out a new target. The monster finally had a chance to speak. “I want one with huge tits,” it said. “Find one.”

It had started to become demanding; not that Caspian didn’t know what it wanted—it always seemed to know and always targeted the same part of the body. It was simply hungry and was on the verge of hunting down whatever woman it saw first—be it day or night. Leaving the woods on foot, Caspian made his way through the wildlife refuge and soon encountered a small family camping near the water’s edge. Standing near a tree, he observed the woman as she tended to her children’s needs. Sitting nearby was the man whom Caspian assumed to be her husband, staring out over the water of the Mississippi River. Perhaps he was pondering the years of history surrounding its flowing currents or the works of Mark Twain, who had his start somewhere on the river, taking his name from the jargon of the riverboat captain he once was. Now, decades after his death, the river ran quiet save for the tension building in the distance as Caspian fought with his monster over its next meal. He could have simply walked away, gotten into his car, and driven to places unknown, but the monster would never let him go. It would always have its claws dug deeply into his soul, denying him his will and controlling both mind and body. Caspian was cursed not simply by what had taken him over but by his past. It was something he seemed to have been born with or at least imposed upon him by a woman who had become lost in her own anger. For Caspian, there seemed to be no way out except to give in to the disgusting appetites of what had taken up residence in his mind. He wondered if he could get back on his medication so that maybe the voice might go away, proving that it wasn’t real. Now he was forced to ask himself a confusing yet important question: what exactly is real? Is it the world outside nestled in our brains showing us only what we need to see, or is it the making of something else, something with its own agenda? Caspian shook this off as unnecessary philosophizing hastened by the monsters’ roaring in his mind. Soon they would eat.