PRIMAL Chapter I: The Cage

🔞| Explicit sexual content | Mature audiences only

The radio alarm went off at 5:30, like every single day. Some old rock song I didn't know the name of and didn't care about. My hand reached automatically for the source of the sound. I slapped it off. Silence.

I lay in the dark for a minute, staring at the ceiling. The apartment was silent. It was always silent. A studio apartment on the edge of the city, fourth floor, where the elevator always smelled bad and the stairwell walls had worn the same greenish paint for decades. There was nothing special about it. That was exactly the point.

The apartment was like me: minimalist, sterile, untraceable.

Nothing on the walls. Nothing personal. Nothing that would give away who lived here. A bed. A wardrobe. A desk. A chair. A kitchen I barely cooked in. A bathroom where I spent too long standing in front of the mirror.

I got up. The cold floor tickled the soles of my feet. Grayish light filtered through the curtains, dawn's first timid attempt. Outside, the city still slept. Inside the apartment, the silence was so thick you could almost touch it.

In the bathroom I turned the faucet. The water started cold, then slowly warmed up. The mirror fogged over. I wiped a streak across it and looked in.

Gray-green eyes stared back at me. Dark brown hair, short, neat, slightly tousled from the night. Angular jaw, thin lips, a face you'd lose in any crowd. Not ugly. Not handsome. Nothing. The kind of face that eyes slide over. The kind that security cameras record but no one watches twice.

Perfect.

I designed this face for myself. It took years of practice to learn how to be invisible. How to move so no one looks twice. How to dress so no one remembers you. How to smile so they think you're nice but don't want to come closer.

Invisibility is the best armor. Grayness is the best disguise.

Because if they see what's behind it...

I shook my head. Not now. It's morning. Routine time.

Shaving. The blade slid across my face, smooth, clean. I watched myself in the mirror and for a moment, just a single flash of a moment, my eye did something else. At the edge of the gray-green iris, a warm color flared up. Yellow. Gold. Like a candle flame that flickers and dies.

My hand stopped, razor in mid-air. I looked into my own eyes. Only gray-green stared back.

I'm imagining things.

I wasn't imagining things. But I told myself that every morning, and that little lie helped me put on the mask and walk out the door.

The calendar lay on the kitchen counter. I didn't need to look at it. I knew exactly what date it was. My body tracked the moon phases better than any calendar.

Three days until the full moon.

My stomach shifted. Not from hunger. At least not the usual kind.

Three days. I can handle it. I can handle it.

I put on the gray pants, the gray shirt, the gray jacket. The gray man. I opened the door and stepped out into the world.



The Central Machine Factory was exactly what its name suggested: central, mechanical, and a factory. Nothing more, nothing less. A massive gray block building in the city's industrial district where three hundred people manufactured parts that no one ever saw for machines that no one understood.

Every morning I walked through the gate at 7:00. Not 6:59. Not 7:01. Exactly 7:00. Punctuality was part of the mask too. Predictability. Routine. People like someone who's predictable because they don't have to think about him. They file him under "reliable" and never bother again.

That's exactly what I wanted.

My office was on the second floor. A small room with a glass wall overlooking the production line. My desk was covered in papers, shift schedules, production reports. My computer was slow and announced with a quiet hum that it was still working but not enjoying it.

I felt myself existing around me, felt myself living.

Production supervisor. That was the official title. It meant I told people which shift works when, which production line makes what, and how many units get finished by the end of the day. Boring work. Perfectly, wonderfully, blessedly boring.

Because boredom is safe. Boredom is predictable. In boredom you don't have to fear losing control.

The colleagues greeted me as I walked down the hallway.

"Hey, Viktor!"

"Good morning, Viktor!"

"What's new, Viktor?"

I smiled. I nodded. "Hey guys. Everything's fine. Thanks." Always the same. Always just enough. A smile that says "I'm nice" but also "don't come closer."

The smile never reached my eyes. It never did. But nobody noticed because nobody looked closely enough.

People instinctively kept a certain distance from me. Not consciously, they didn't even understand why. Not because they hated me, not because I was unfriendly. It was something else. Something the human brain can't articulate but the human body senses. An ancient, visceral signal from deep in the spinal cord that whispers: careful, this is not what it seems.

Animals know this. Dogs, for example. The neighbor's dog started howling every time I walked past. Cats scattered. Birds went silent.

Humans are more civilized. They don't howl, they don't scatter. They just... don't sit next to me in the cafeteria.

Lunch break. 12:00. The cafeteria was packed, as always. Plastic trays clattering, metal utensils clinking, the murmur of conversations. The smell of food that was hard to identify but the stomach accepted if the brain didn't think about it too much.

I sat down in my usual spot. In the corner. Alone. The table seated four but the other three chairs always stayed empty.

My invisible cage.

I ate. I chewed. I swallowed. I didn't taste any of it. My body accepted the fuel but my mind was somewhere else entirely. Three days from now, this cafeteria, these people, this food, this entire gray world would feel as distant as another planet.

"Viktor! Hey!"

I looked up. Bela was standing at my table, tray in hand, wearing that wide grin that was his trademark. Bela was the maintenance guy, the factory's unofficial clown, the kind of person who knows everyone, jokes with everyone, and is incapable of accepting that someone wants to be alone.

"Mind if I sit?"

No.

"Sure," I said, and smiled.

He sat down. He started talking. About soccer, his wife, his boss, his neighbor who watches TV too loud. I nodded in the right places. Smiled in the right places. Said a "really?" and a "no way" and a "that's rough" in the right places.

But I didn't hear his words. My brain was somewhere else. Because I was sensing something.

Bela's scent.

Not body odor. Not deodorant. Not lunch. Something else. Something a normal person doesn't detect. The smell of blood beneath his veins. The rhythm of his pulse on his neck. The faint, sweet aroma of adrenaline that meant Bela was slightly nervous, though he himself didn't know why.

Because his body knows what's behind me, even if his brain doesn't.

I squeezed the fork between my fingers. The metal bent slightly.

Control. Control. Control.

"Everything okay, Viktor? You look a little pale."

"I'm fine. Didn't sleep well."

"Ah, that sucks. Same thing happened to me this week, my Marika snores like a steam engine, I tell her..."

I wasn't listening again. My eyes were on his neck. The pulse of his carotid artery. Fast. Healthy. Full of life.

No. No, no, no. This is Bela. This is harmless, funny, kind Bela. Not prey. Human.

I set down the fork. Pushed my tray away.

"Sorry, Bela, gotta go. Work."

"Yeah, well, work's gotta get done! See ya, buddy!"

I stood up. I walked away. Down the hallway I was moving faster than I should have been. I went to the bathroom. Locked the door.

The mirror. The mirror again.

I looked in and there at the edge of the gray-green eye it was. The gold. The yellow. Not for a moment. Not for a flash. It was there and it stayed and it stared at me from the mirror like someone else. Like something else.

My hands were on the sink. I squeezed. The white porcelain cracked under my grip. Tiny fractures spread across the surface like capillaries.

Three days. Three more days. I can handle it.

The eye in the mirror glowed amber-gold.

Can you?

I turned away. I didn't look back.



The rest of the workday passed in gray and slow, like the river that flowed behind the factory. Production numbers. Shift schedules. Reports. Signatures. The whole thing was an endless, repeating melody where every day played the same note.

But my body wasn't gray. My body was alive.

At two in the afternoon I heard a conversation. That by itself wouldn't have been unusual, except the conversation was happening two floors up, in the chief engineer's office, behind a closed door. Two men arguing about quarterly numbers. I heard their words as clearly as if they were standing next to me.

At three o'clock I smelled Szilvia's perfume, the secretary's. Szilvia worked in the other wing of the building, separated from my office by two fire walls and a corridor. Her perfume was cheap, sweet, too strong. A normal person wouldn't have smelled it from their own office door. I could smell it at the tip of my nose, and my stomach turned.

At four o'clock the sunlight came through my window and I saw the dust particles. Not the way people see them, hazy dots dancing in diffused light. I saw each one individually. Every single particle. Its shape, its rotation, its refraction. As if the world's resolution had suddenly jumped tenfold.

The senses are waking. It always starts like this. Three days before the full moon, the body begins its preparations. Like a machine warming up for peak performance.

Except this wasn't a machine. This was an animal stretching in its cage.

At five o'clock the shift was over. I nodded to the guard at the gate. On the street, the fresh air hit my face and a thousand scents flooded my nose at once: exhaust fumes, frying meat from the corner grill, wet concrete, dog shit, blooming linden trees, cigarette smoke, human sweat. Each one a separate layer, each one crystal clear, each one intense.

The world was loud. Too loud. Too sharp. Too much.

Three more days. I can handle it until then. Until then I'm human.

I walked home. The apartment waited just as silently as I'd left it. Key in the lock. The door closes. The world stays outside.

I stood under the shower and let the hot water run over me. I washed off the grayness of the day. The factory smell. Bela's words. The crack left in the porcelain sink that I'd pretend not to notice tomorrow.

The water ran down my body and I felt the gray peeling away, the mask dissolving, the daytime man slowly evaporating until someone else remained in his place.

I stepped out from under the shower. The mirror was fogged. I didn't wipe it. I didn't want to see my eyes. Not now.

I went to the wardrobe.

On the front shelf, the gray clothes were lined up. Shirts, pants, jackets. The daytime uniform. The outfit of invisibility.

On the back shelf, there were others.

Black jeans. Tight, form-fitting. Dark gray t-shirt that outlined the chest and the arms that the loose factory clothes carefully concealed. Black leather belt. Black boots.

I put on the other Viktor's clothes.

I stood before the fogged mirror and looked at my blurry outline. I didn't need to see myself in sharp focus. I knew who was looking back at me. Not the gray middle manager. Not the invisible man. Someone else. Someone who knows what he wants and tonight he's going to get it.

So who are you really, Viktor? The gray man? The dark-clothed night figure? Or the thing that comes out on the full moon?

All three.

None of them.

I stepped out the door. The city showed a different face at night. The neon lights, the shadows, the bustle that's indifferent by day but promising at night. On the streets people moved with a different energy. Faster. Hungrier. As if the night pushed everyone closer to what they really are.

Or maybe it's just me who feels that way. Because the night is mine. During the day I belong to the world. At night I belong to myself.

I walked. My instincts led me. I didn't have to think about where I was going, my feet knew the way. My body sensed the people around me as they passed. Each one had a different scent. A different rhythm. A different temperature. A young couple walked hand in hand, their heartbeats in sync. An old man walked a dog, the dog stopped as I passed, whimpered and backed away. The owner didn't understand why.

I understood.

The sounds of the city accompanied me as I headed toward downtown. Cars, music, laughter, glasses clinking. But beneath the surface there were other sounds too. Soft moans from dark alleys. Quick breaths in the depths of parking garages. The city's secret life that only comes alive at night, that speaks only to those who know where to look.

I knew.



The bar was on the edge of downtown, in an alley that nobody found by accident. There was no sign. No neon. Nothing to indicate that something was here. Just a black door in a gray wall, and if you knew the rhythm of the knock, it opened.

I knocked. The door opened. The sound and the smell hit me at once.

Heavy bass from the speakers. Sweat. Alcohol. Perfume. Leather. Cigarette smoke. Poppers. And underneath all of it, the scent that normal people couldn't detect: testosterone, desire, and fear blended together into a single heavy, intoxicating vapor.

The bar was dark, the way a place like this needs to be dark. Enough light to see faces, but not enough for memory to capture the details. Metal counter. Leather seats. Mirrors on the walls that multiplied the shadows. In the back, doors leading to back rooms, rooms behind rooms, darkness behind rooms.

The men looked up when I walked in.

They always looked up. Not because I was flashy. Not because I was handsome. Something else. Something they couldn't name. Maybe it was the way I moved, like someone who knows exactly where his body is in space. Maybe it was my eyes, which glinted differently in the dim light than they should have. Maybe it was some ancient, animal signal that their bodies received before their brains could process it.

They were attracted. They couldn't help it. Like moths to a flame.

If they only knew.

I stepped up to the bar. The bartender knew me, nodded, and pushed a glass in front of me before I opened my mouth. Whiskey. Neat. Always the same.

I raised the glass to my lips. The alcohol burned down my throat. A pleasant burn. A human burn. The kind that suppresses the other one, the non-human one, if only for a few minutes.

My eyes swept the room. Slowly. Methodically. Like a predator surveying the herd.

Selecting.

In the corner, two young men were laughing. Innocent. Fresh. Drinking their first cocktails, eyes wide at the place, buzzing with the excitement of novelty. No. Not them.

At the other end of the bar, a middle-aged man sat alone. Sad eyes, a ring mark on his left ring finger. Married. Hiding. Maybe his first time. His hand trembled around the glass. No. Not him either.

On the dance floor, a group moved to the music. Beautiful bodies, sweat, smiles. They were enjoying the night. There was nothing dark in them. Just youth and desire and the feeling that the world was theirs. No. Not them either.

Then I saw him.

He sat by the table in the back corner. Tall, muscular, broad-shouldered. Expensive shirt stretched over his muscles. Expensive watch on his wrist. Short hair, strong jaw, confident posture. The kind of man who's used to being the strongest in the room. Who's used to being in charge. Who's used to everyone playing by his rules.

But my eyes didn't see his body. My nose didn't smell his cologne.

I smelled his scent.

His real scent. The one beneath the cologne and the deodorant and the skin. Arrogance. Cruelty. That particular, metallic smell that radiates from predators, from predators wearing human skin, who see other people as prey. Who exploit, humiliate, hurt, then move on to the next.

I knew this scent. The animal knew this scent.

My stomach shifted. The hunger that had been humming as background noise all day suddenly surged, as if someone had cranked a radio to full volume.

Eye contact.

He noticed me watching. He looked back. His eyes sized me up, head to toe, with that appraising look a buyer uses to evaluate merchandise. He smiled. Confident, arrogant, possessive smile.

He thinks he's the predator.

I smiled back.

My smile was different. There was nothing human in my smile. But he couldn't see that. He just saw a thin, dark-haired man smiling back at him in a bar.

He doesn't know. He has no idea.

I picked up my glass and headed toward him. I slid through the crowd like a knife through butter. People unconsciously stepped out of my way without knowing why.

I sat across from him.

"I don't usually do this," I said. That was my usual opener. A lie. But people like feeling special.

"I do," he said. His voice was deep, confident. "I like what I see."

So do I. But for different reasons than you think.

The hunger was screaming inside me. Not for food. Not for sex. For something deeper. Something darker. Something that lived in the marrow of my bones and reached toward the full moon like a flower toward the sun.

But tonight wasn't the full moon night. Tonight I'm human. Tonight is control.

Tonight is sex.

"Let's get out of here," I said.

"My place is close," he replied.

Of course it is.

His apartment was exactly what I'd imagined. Expensive and empty. Modern furniture, chrome and glass, everything in its place, nothing personal. An apartment like this isn't a home. An apartment like this is a set. A set of power. A set of control.

Just like mine. Just the other side.

The door had barely closed when he was on me. Fast hands, strong grip, possessive mouth on my neck. He was used to being in charge. Used to being the one who pins someone against the wall. Used to the other person letting him.

I let him.

For a while.

I let him pin me to the wall. Let him press his mouth against my neck. Let his hands slip under my shirt and rake across my chest. His body was hot and hard and impatient and I could feel his arrogance in every touch.

Yes. You really think you're in control.

Then I reversed it.

Not with force. Not that. Something else. My body moved, fast, smooth, with a speed that wasn't entirely human, and before he realized what was happening, he was the one pressed against the wall, my face inches from his, my hand on his wrist.

His eyes went wide. First from surprise. Then from something else.

Fear.

There you go. Feel it. Feel what it's like when you're not in charge.

"Wait..." he started.

I didn't wait.

I kissed him. Not gently. Not sweetly. I kissed him the way the animal would have kissed if it had the mouth for it. Deep, raw, possessive. My teeth sank into his lower lip. I tasted blood on my tongue. A tiny drop. Almost nothing.

Almost.

My entire body trembled from that drop. The hunger roared in my chest like a caged animal catching the scent of meat.

Control. Control. Control.

I pulled myself away from the blood. Redirected my brain to the sex. Sex was safe. Sex was human. Sex was the field where I could release the energy without crossing the line.

I pushed him toward the bedroom. The bed was large, expensive, white sheets. I threw him down on it. I climbed over him. My eyes bored into his and I saw the confusion in them. This man wasn't used to this. Wasn't used to someone getting on top of him. Wasn't used to being directed.

You'll get used to it now.

I undressed him. Quickly, efficiently, impatiently. I tossed his clothes on the floor like wrapping paper. His body beneath me was muscular, hard, strong. Another predator's body.

But tonight you're the prey.

My mouth traveled down his chest. It wasn't a kiss. It was a bite in the disguise of a kiss. My teeth pressed against his skin, right at the edge of pain, just enough to make his back tremble and his head snap backward. I felt the muscles beneath his skin tighten. Felt his heartbeat quicken. I took his nipples between my teeth, pulled, sucked, until he moaned and his hand gripped my hair.

Louder.

I moved lower. His stomach trembled with his breathing. His hips rose as my mouth approached. He was impatient. Demanding. Used to getting what he wants, when he wants it.

But tonight you don't decide when.

I took his cock in my mouth. Slowly. Torturously slowly. Just the head at first, my tongue tracing circles around it, tasting, feeling the pulse of blood beneath his skin on my tongue. It was hot and hard and throbbing and the animal inside me roared at the proximity of blood.

I took him deeper. My throat received him, my eyes locked on his from below and I watched him lose his mind. His mouth open, his eyes glazed, his hands gripping the sheets. He was making sounds he didn't want to make. Deep, guttural moans that climbed higher and higher as I increased the rhythm.

That's it. Let go. Lose control. Give it to me.

I pulled my mouth back. His cock stood in the air, wet, hard. He looked at me with fury, demanding.

"Don't stop..."

Now I decide.

I flipped him over. Face down. His face pressed into the pillow. I put my hands on his hips and pulled him up to his hands and knees. His back arched before me. His body trembled.

"Wait, be..." he started.

I wasn't.

I entered him with one slow, deep, merciless thrust. I felt his body resist, then surrender, then receive. Inch by inch. The heat and the tightness nearly blinded me. The pleasure started at the base of my spine and exploded in my brain like lightning.

God.

Suffering and ecstasy cut through me simultaneously. Because the pleasure, the brutal, raw, animal pleasure, it hurt. Not the body. The body felt good, the body felt incredible. It hurt the soul. Because with every thrust I felt the animal getting closer to the surface. With every thrust I felt the cage cracking. With every thrust I felt myself becoming a little less human and a little more that.

But I couldn't stop. I didn't want to stop.

I increased the rhythm. Hard. Merciless. My hips slammed against his ass and the sound filled the room, flesh against flesh, body against body, rhythmic, animal, primitive. The man beneath me moaned, screamed, his head thrown back, his hands tearing at the sheets.

"Fuck... don't stop... don't..."

I didn't stop. My hand gripped his hip, my fingers dug into his flesh, leaving red marks that would be blue by tomorrow. My other hand fisted his hair and pulled his head back. His neck stretched taut. His carotid artery pulsed blood directly beneath the skin.

Don't look. Don't feel it. Don't smell it.

But I felt it. With every sense I felt the scent of blood and the warmth of blood and the promise of blood.

The thrusts grew deeper, faster, wilder. The pleasure spiraled upward, higher and higher, more and more unbearably. My body was on fire. My skin burned. Every nerve was taut like an overdrawn string about to snap.

My teeth... my teeth were growing. I felt it in my mouth as the canines elongated. By millimeters. Maybe a centimeter. My tongue ran over them. They were sharp. Not human sharp.

Control. CONTROL.

But my body wasn't listening. My body was hurtling toward the climax like a train that can't stop. I leaned down on his back. My chest pressed against him. My mouth was at his neck. My lips on his carotid. I felt his pulse beneath my tongue, fast, throbbing, wild, alive.

The orgasm was approaching. I felt it approaching from the depths, like an earthquake that starts in the belly of the earth and buries everything in its path. Pleasure and suffering merged, I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. The ecstasy hurt like a knife between the ribs and the pain burned like pleasure.

Bite. Bite into him. Taste it. Feel the warm blood running down your throat. Feel the life flowing from him into you. Bite. BITE.

NO.

The orgasm ripped my body in two. My spine arched, my eyes rolled back, my mouth opened and I howled. I didn't moan, I didn't sigh, I howled. My voice wasn't entirely human. It was a deep, guttural, animal roar that erupted from the depths of my chest and shook the walls.

I came inside him, deep, hot, pulsing, and with every throb I felt the world splitting apart beneath me. On one side, human pleasure, hot and sweet and complete. On the other side, the animal, howling in its cage because it was so close, so agonizingly close to freedom and still didn't get it.

The man beneath me came at the same time. His body convulsed, his cock throbbed in my hand, his release spilled onto the sheets. He screamed too, but his scream was human. Mine was not.

After the final thrust I collapsed on his back. Gasping. Trembling. Drenched in sweat. My mouth was still at his neck. My lips on his artery. My teeth, which were now millimeters longer than human teeth, grazed his skin.

But they didn't bite.

Not tonight. Tonight I made it.

I left the mark of my mouth on his neck. Red, swollen, hot. But not bloody. Not a bite. Just a mark. Just a sign. Just a reminder of how close it was.

How agonizingly close.

I rolled off him. Turned onto my back. Stared at the ceiling. My heart was pounding like it wanted to rip out of my chest. My body still trembled with the aftershocks of the orgasm. But in the trembling there was something else too. Fear. Fear of myself.

Tonight I stayed human. But tomorrow? The day after? On the night of the full moon?

The aftertaste of pleasure lingered in my mouth. Sweet and bitter and salty all at once. But underneath it there was another taste too. On my teeth. The taste of blood from that tiny drop I'd caught during the biting kiss.

And that taste wasn't bitter.

That taste was divine.

And that's what scared me the most.



After the sex he lay there. He wanted to talk. His type always wants to talk afterward, surprisingly. Self-importance somehow always comes with the need for pillow talk.

I got dressed.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

I didn't answer. I didn't turn back. I opened the door and stepped into the hallway. Behind me he said something else. I didn't hear it. I didn't care.

I got what I wanted. You got yours. That's it.

On the street the cold air hit my face and I breathed deep. The city was silent. Dawn was approaching. On the horizon a faint gray stripe announced that the sun would soon reclaim what the night had taken.

I walked home through empty streets. My footsteps echoed between the building walls. Inside my head there was silence. The kind of silence that settles over you after a battle, when your ears are still ringing and your body is still shaking but the danger has passed.

Tonight I stayed human.

On the horizon a faint light was dawning. The stars were fading. I looked up.

The moon.

It was there above the rooftops. Almost round. Almost full. Its silver light poured down the street and over my skin and I felt my body respond. Like a string being plucked. Like a door being knocked on. Like a cage door coming loose.

Three days.

Something shifted in my chest. Not my heart. Something behind it. Something that wasn't human. Something that patiently, systematically, unstoppably waited.

I quickened my steps. The apartment. Key in the lock. The door closes.

I leaned against the locked door. I stood in the dark, eyes closed, and felt the animal in my chest stretching, digging its claws into the cage, testing the bars.

From the bathroom, faint light filtered out. The mirror. If I had walked over and looked in, I know what I would have seen. Two amber-gold eyes in the darkness. My eyes. Not my eyes.

But I didn't go. Because I knew what I'd see.

I stood in the dark with my eyes closed and listened to my own breathing and the animal's and tried to tell the two apart.

I couldn't.

Three days. Just three days. I can handle it.

I can handle it.

I can handle it.

But we both knew, the animal and I, that the cage door was groaning. That the bars were bending. That rust was eating the lock.

And that the moon doesn't wait.

The moon never waits.



To be continued...