Blood of Gato

When William returned home, his mother didn't just greet him with a stern look—she erupted almost instantly. Her voice hit like a thunderclap, sharp words rattling through the house. He didn't even need to make out their meaning to understand—she was furious, trembling with fear disguised as rage. In her eyes, he was still her boy, the one she was terrified of losing. And so her tirade only pressed like a weight onto the guilt he had carried for far too long. Layered over his own emptiness, her outrage pitched his already crumbling mood into a deeper abyss.

Her anger wasn't unfounded. William had been slipping out at night more often, stumbling back at dawn with glassy eyes and the sluggish movements of someone hollowed out by fatigue. She feared for him—any mother would. Crime in the city had been swelling, and lately, whispers of brutal murders spread from neighbor to neighbor like an infection. To her, the threat had no face, only rumors of nameless monsters prowling in the dark. The cruel irony was that one of those monsters was her son.

He would have been forced into some half-hearted defense if not for Kemar, who casually stepped in, insisting William had stayed over at his place. A lie, yes—but a calculated one. Kemar rarely incurred debts, yet this particular favor demanded repayment: an alibi in exchange for a night with Sarah. William's mother believed every word, for she had never caught him lying before. And he, pierced by the sting of guilt, chose silence rather than denial. Right now, he hadn't the strength to peel apart that knot of shame. All he wanted was to bury his face in a pillow and sink into a deep, merciful sleep—thick and heavy as midnight waters. But sleep had long ago ceased to belong to him.

Two lives pulled him apart. One: the nocturnal existence in Gato, blood-soaked hunts through streets crawling with creatures no one dared name, the sharp stench of danger drifting through every encounter. The other: the daylight world of lectures, textbooks, and looming examinations. University hung above him like a blade, and his grades already teetered on the edge of collapse, threatening to bury every hope he had once nurtured. Endless battles with monsters, secretive steps to avoid the police—these things had nearly carved away the memory of who he really was.

So, pulling himself together with mechanical will, he left the house and drifted toward the university library.

Among the towering shelves, between the dusty spines of physics and mathematics volumes, he clung to study as though it were a lifeline. At first it worked: formulas slotted into place, integrals unraveled themselves without disdain. For a precious hour or two, logic quieted the gnawing chaos inside. But then the words began to blur. Letters trembled, dissolving into meaningless symbols. The page itself became nothing but a white noise haze. He read without reading, stared without seeing.

His mind betrayed him, circling back again and again to Milagros. To the look in her eyes—that plea saturated with life, desperate, burning—right before he walked away. He hadn't finished her. Instead, he had left her broken, bleeding, condemned to a death that promised only agony.

Was that mercy? Or had he, by sparing her, sentenced her to a punishment worse than anything he could have delivered?

Even now, his hands still burned with the memory of her blood seeping into his skin. He detested that feeling—the metallic tang of death, the weight of another's suffering trapped within him.

Why do I cling to this? the thought flickered, bitter and relentless. For Cain, for Milagros, for Latecia—killing came as easily to them as breathing. They never fractured under the weight of it, never drowned themselves in guilt. For them, it was survival. The law of the jungle. As natural as the air in their lungs… as natural as mine in mine.

A sour heat rose in his chest. Sitting still felt intolerable. His hands flickered restlessly over the book, turning page after page that no longer mattered. All he could see were faces. Blurred, half-faded, but unbearably real. Each one tethered to lives he had severed. Families. Friends. Dreams never fulfilled. Hopes never born.

And him—always him—standing at the blade's edge, the hand that had cut the thread.

"Ethics. Conscience. Morality…" The words slipped out in a whisper, half-exhaled, as if he hadn't even realized he'd spoken. The librarian at the next table looked up, startled by the sound, but William didn't notice. His head was bent low, his voice caught in an argument with no one but himself.

"All of it—chains. Shackles. A leash around my throat. And if Nietzsche was right? If morality is nothing but a splint, a crutch that only cripples the will to power…?"

The thoughts cracked against each other, jagged and raw.

Maybe I really am a coward.

Maybe I'm not ready to accept what I am becoming.

They… they are beyond this. Übermenschen. Not crushed beneath guilt. Not fooled by the illusions of human laws. Free.

And then the stab of recognition: But me—what am I? Caught in between. Half-beast, half-man. Unable to take either path. Too much conscience to surrender, not enough strength to refuse.

He dragged both hands across his face, pressing hard, but the weight in his chest only thickened. Shadows of memory crawled in behind his eyes: broken moments, splinters of screams, the arc of blood across a wall, lips twisted in a final convulsion. His own arms stretched forward in the vision, carrying the unbearable knowledge—this is the instant, the moment when another life extinguishes under his hands.

Again, the whisper, trembling, only for himself:

"Should I stop resisting? Yield? Maybe then… maybe then it would be easier."

His throat tightened until breathing felt like a punishment. He clenched the book between his fingers so hard the spine nearly snapped. There he sat, buried inside the library's glow: rows of mathematical volumes standing in orderly silence, fluorescent light spilling yellow on the desk, and yet a sudden, brutal clarity struck him—this, here, was no exam in algebra. His real examination was happening beneath the skin, in silence, inside the soul.

His mother's face surfaced—it always did. Her fear, her tears, the mercy in her anger. He did not want this life, the life of predator, the path that reeked of blood. But each night his strength to resist felt thinner, slipping strand by strand.

Milagros's face came next—her agony marking the line he had drawn in fire between them. One achieved victory. The other didn't. And William knew the truth: the border was porous. It could dissolve at any moment, and he would find himself on her side of it, faceless, voiceless, just another ruin.

When he closed his eyes, even for an instant, the beast was waiting. The hallucination unfurled like instinct: warm slickness on his lips, the metallic-sweet stench of iron and flesh, torn bodies scattered, ripped open. And not faceless strangers this time—but the people he loved. His mother. His sisters. His friends. Their faces warped in agony. His teeth breaking into them, his body trembling with hunger, without shame, without measure.

It was no longer metaphor: the animal in him showed its teeth, pressed close, and whispered with dreadful tenderness—See? This is who you are.

"No!" The word cracked out of him, strangled, and he snapped his eyes open, shoving the book away as though the vision had come from its pages. His body shuddered at the possibility that it might be real—that he might become that. The revulsion rose thick, nauseating, but even as he tried to push it away, the echo lingered. A vibration in his skull. A shadow behind his breathing.

A bitter laugh slipped from his lips, the sound dry, broken.

"Ridiculous. Even to think about it—pathetic. Philosophy won't save me here."

He leaned back, eyes squeezed shut, trying to force himself into silence, but silence refused him. The words kept coming, crashing through his mind in fragments, in thudding pulses, as though his thoughts now had a heartbeat.

Stop flinching. Stop twisting away. I am a killer. Whether I like it or not doesn't matter. Fact: those corpses are mine. My hands. Not only the beast, not circumstance. It was me who listened. Me who obeyed the whisper.

The rhythm sharpened, breaking thought into jagged shards:

I have changed. I will never go back. My mother's child—the boy she thinks is still here—he no longer exists. I belong to another world now. One where morality does not hum the way it does among humans. Angels have no place in hell. But monsters? I don't have to become one of them completely either.

Another pause. Bitter, quiet acknowledgment: I hover between. Not human, not beast. Just myself. And I will have to live with it.

"No one's going to save me," he muttered, pressing his hand into his forehead so harshly it felt like he might squeeze the ache out through his skull. "Latecia, Cain—they showed me well enough. Here, it's every soul for itself. Look away for a moment, and they'll leave you to rot. Egoism—survival's only law."

Cain's silhouette returned, the vision of him walking away without hesitation, without a glance back. The memory clenched somewhere deep, tight and bruised.

"I want to cut the rope. Sever whatever binds me to them," William whispered, fingertips brushing at his temple reflexively, as though touching the thought itself. "But I'm not ready. Not strong enough yet. I don't even understand the rules of this… this 'world of phenomena,' as if naming it made it less unstable. Best to stay close, but not too close. Learn from them, but never trust. Any deeper and I'll drown."

He closed his eyes for a moment and let out a low, tired laugh.

"God… my head is splitting."

The pain roared through him. His temples beat with a relentless rhythm—like drums struck in some dark ritual. Ever since Milagros had torn his eye from its socket, his body had not felt his own. The eye had grown back—bone, nerves, vision—all restored. And yet he could not shake the sensation of absence. A phantom hollow gaped within him, some hidden wound that refused to close.

His bones throbbed like overstrained sinew after a brutal training session. His muscles itched, swollen with blood, twitching faintly with even the smallest movement. Then came the strangest realization: his new eye was sharper than the old one. Clearer. Alive in a way that unsettled him. And the difference—the unevenness—disoriented him as though the world had split into two scales of light.

"Even my tongue…" He let it drift across his teeth, and a shiver ran through him. "Rough. Coarse. Like sandpaper. Sharp."

The sensations unnerved him. They felt like tiny betrayals that his own body performed in secret.

These aren't just wounds… My body itself is changing. Adjusting. Evolving.

Images of biology lectures returned—charts of gradual transformation, the crawling passage of millennia, mutations stretched across endless time. Evolution, slow as stone weathering in the rain. And yet here, in his flesh, evolution seemed ravenous. What should take ages was rupturing through him in days.

"Instant adaptation?" he whispered, and then faltered, shook his head, stared down at his trembling hands. "Or… I'm losing it? Just some trick of the mind?"

He pressed his palms against his temples, forcing his eyes closed, as if holding himself together by sheer pressure. People don't grow back eyes. People don't survive this. But he had. And every throb reminded him that whatever he was, he was no longer only what they called human.

Drawing in a breath that dragged harsh through his chest, William fought the tremor of panic. His heart was an enemy, hammering at his ribs like it would break free. Slowly, painfully, he gathered the scattered shards of thought into a cord. There was no point trying to run from himself any longer. No more denial. If he was already bound to this new world, cruel and merciless as it was, then at least he could claim it on his terms. Responsibility was still his to seize.

I will not yield completely to the beast. Never. These shadows inside me—they're part of me, yes—but not all. They will obey. They will not command. I'll kill when I must, and only then. Necessary. No more. No less.

Milagros's face broke through him again—the raw plea in her eyes, her desperate struggle against the slow dying he had chosen for her. His hesitation had cost more than he had dared to admit—hesitation was weakness. Weakness that had teeth.

Never again. No mistakes. No illusions of naïve mercy.

He placed the book down on the desk, rubbed a hand over his face, and to his own surprise, felt a wry sort of grin twist through the exhaustion. It was a crooked smile, drained, but real.

"Be a man," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Chuck Norris would say that."

The absurdity startled him—so misplaced, so ludicrous here in this tense quiet—but it loosened something in him, just enough for air to come easier. Even humor, he thought. Even that is strength.

But beneath it all lay the debt. Milagros. He owed her for the suffering. He had broken the hunters' rule. If he had blundered, he would at least attempt to set one thing right. One single correction—for the boy he had once been. A gift, or a farewell.

His hand slipped into the pocket of his jacket and found the thin, crumpled tissue. He drew it out, slowly, hesitantly, and spread it open on the desk. Ink scrawled in haste, the words smeared, but the address stood clear enough. A chill struck up his spine as if the scrap itself were poisoned.

His thumb traced the letters. A bitter chuckle scraped from his throat.

"Well, Milagros… looks like this isn't over yet."

Inside, a tremor ran through him—a trembling at once fear and anticipation, indistinguishable, fused together. He knew: to go to her was madness. There was every chance she was waiting only to destroy him, every chance her hate for him outweighed even agony. But retreat was impossible. The decision had already rooted in him.

He rose from his chair, legs uncertain, body wavering as though reluctant. The library, with its gentle hum of lamps, its soft shuffle of pages, now felt like a cage—sterile, suffocating. The corridor air outside was cool, sharp against his lungs, but not enough to clear the pounding.

"I'll manage," he said softly, almost as an oath. "Whatever I am… I'll manage."

He pressed the tissue to his chest like it was an emblem, a fragile key, a ticket into whatever waited ahead. That was his decision, swollen and unshakable.

And now… there was no way back.