i'd driven west for two days, drunk a bottle of tequila and smoked a packet of cigarettes, filled up the wagon several times and slept approximately two hours in a small town with no name. i'd stayed in the truck, no point exposing myself, at least in 
here i was protected. 
once the booze ran out i stuck with the weed i picked up before i left. it cost me a few hundred dollars but took the edge of my fear.
the landscape was like mars, red dust everywhere with no real signs of life. occasionally a cloud of dust in the distance would turn out to be another car or 4x4. they would honk their horn or yell some incomprehensible call as we crossed but i remained silent and focused on driving away as fast and as far as possible.
yeah, it's unusual for me to drink or smoke but my nerves where shot to pieces and my head filled with some sort of traumatic memory i couldn't expunge, alcohol did seemed to blur the details and that was good enough for me.
i'd packed my bag in such a hurry, i'd forgotten basic stuff, a passport, bank book, laptop, i had probably left my front door wide open. it was of no consequence, i didn't plan on returning. what i found in the bag was a couple of cd's which were useless as the truck had no cd player. there was a worn copy of an old science fiction novel by robert heinlein and some loose change. it was a small bag. i chucked it from the window at 120k's. 
my possessions were now a truck, the clothes i wore, a bottle of water and a bag of weed. 
i poured some water into the back of my throat and sucked hard on the dying joint. my thoughts had slowed down, events stopped spiralling and were beginning to form some sort of lucid narrative.
it started with a dream, maybe now in retrospect it was never a dream but some sort communication from something i couldn't quite comprehend.
deep sleep, darker than night, a soft sensation and whispering in a unfamiliar language, my eyes appear to open as the sound becomes louder and through the ambient light i see the red eyes of beasts burning like wolves as hot breath hits my flesh and their salivating mouths drooling acid hits my body, mouths leer down and unholy teeth tear into me. my scream is lost in the sound of their frenzy, bits of my body torn away, blood spurting up and staining the sheets. it's a horror movie in my head. there are graphic details of abysmal  brutality, soft focus close ups of flesh being pulled apart like cotton wool, long beastly array's of teeth chewing bits of arm and leg. there's my eyes rolling back in their sockets as some wave ripples through me, but it is not pain. these beasts are eating me alive and i feel no pain just pleasure. i watch myself being eaten by them and all i feel is joy.
did i wake up? i did not, i fell into a deep deep sleep soft angels whispered blessings over my carcass. 
in the morning i cleaned my teeth and dressed, completed my work day with unbounded energy all the while feeling incredible pleasure from my dream of the previous night. my performance at work was impressive as though shot full of energy, my thinking was acute and sharp, i problem solved in seconds challenges that would usually take me hours. i also noticed my reactions where faster, my sensory system heightened. 
i had experienced drugs that enhance performance but this was beyond any drug, even the powerful shamanic tools, although i had neither supernatural of psychic abilities only i was animal sharp. i could hear conversations in other offices and focus in with excellent precision. this spilled over all my senses, vision, taste and touch. in my lunch break i usually have a salad wrap but today i ordered a steak sandwich and could not only taste the molecules absorb themselves into my bloodstream, i could tell the fear the slaughtered cow felt at the time of death. and that felt like nutrition. 
i managed to keep myself away from my peers at work and slipped away a few hours early, on the drive home furious thoughts rushed through my mind.
how can a dream or nightmare have such an effect upon me, perhaps i was completely mistaken. the only way to know was to return to it. 
once home i showered and checked my messages, several from tina the girl i was fucking. she wanted to see me so i texted her back with some excuse, she got angry and sent some hostile texts so i turned my phone off and took myself to bed.
slipping down, somewhere deeper than any space, a new dimension wraps itself around me. something grabs my arm and bites down sucking blood from my wrist. it feels so good, my body relaxes and floods with pleasure, a semi- sexual arousal. the hunger of the pack as my limbs are tor form my body, a violent splurge of aggressive animalistic  savagery. i see myself i smile in rapture. i can feels hands upon my body, ripping it apart.
sunlight floods through the bedroom, i lay there naked breathing, i am alive. it's incredible, my body floods with power and strength, i can perceive intense detail just by focus of attention, drill down into atomic structures. 
the day is bizarre, i'm in a completely different time, people around me function in slow motion while i act with a superior swiftness. i accomplish superhuman amounts, while consensus reality moves through treacle. 
mid afternoon i'm overwhelmed by hunger. i slip out and buy some meat, the butcher smells incredible, savage brutal death surrounds me and it fills my body with a formidable desire. 
i lock the door to the office and unwrap the packages, i must have bought a whole cow. there are ribs, slabs of steak, hearts and tongues and even tails. like some cocaine frenzy i devour it, ripping into it. the stink of death is beautiful. i'm high, stoned and tripping, the lives of several animals absorbed into my memory, every detail, births and sleeps, the pastures in which they graze, the swishing tail driving away flies, the stink of cow manure and the words of a farmer, the tension of inevitable death as they move from field to cage to the incomprehensible terror beyond the metal wall. that fear feeds me, like some injected nutrient supplement the fear within the raw electrons of dead flesh offers me life. it's repulsive in one tiny part of my mind but the flood of pleasure and power overwhelms moral consequence. i'm seduced easily by such a flood of deterministic impulse. 
i wrap the bones up and hide them. my shirt is stained from blood and bone fragments litter the desk, and my office stinks like a slaughterhouse. i spray half a can of air freshener in a veiled attempt to disguise my repulsive appetites. 
on the drive home i'm torn between stopping for more meat or getting home to return to the dream that empowers me. 
am i a werewolf? 
the very thought strikes me as absurd. i do a google search and eliminate this. for all my internet searching the most plausible solution the internet can throw at me is an iron deficiency but this does not explain my dreams. it's not rational, what is happening is something else, it's a transformation of some kind, i'm passing through some shamanic stage perhaps, some further initiation ceremony.
in sleep they come, many of them, shrouded in darkness, only teeth and eyes penetrate yet their form is part human. that fierce intelligence and strange language, the harmony of their sound. like birds flock they begin upon my body, not just eating the flesh but ripping it away, peeling it from bone and sinking claws into delicate tendon. the pleasure is engulfing me, semi erotic joy floods my mind, my breathing becomes faster as though close to orgasm. my heart plucked from my smashed ribs, and bitten into by the jaws of unknowable horror. darkness is a mass of weight, it wraps itself smothering all light and extinguishes everything a hunger sated.
a series of text messages wakes me, the last one reads, 'open the fucking door.'
i go to the door naked and open it. there on the floor she sobs. for a moment something inside me breaks, i feel it crumble and reduce me . i look down at the huddled wreck, she is sobbing and whimpering.
i kneel down and pull her up, 'come on, come inside.' she trembles and splutters.
'i was asleep, i didn't know you were here.'
i lead her towards the kitchen and sit her down on the red stool while i fill the kettle with water. the night light keeps us both in the shadows.
i get some words, a sorry story about her insecurities and desires. very middle class i think, but don't dare utter anything to upset her. eventually she wraps her arms around me, and i feel like i have to reciprocate. i don't want to but i have no choice, and as i hold her to me i get a scent of her neck. discretely my nose runs down the curve, millimetres away from her skin, my lip twitches involuntary and i feel some primal urge deep down begin to surface. 
'it's okay, it's okay, everything will be okay,' the words come automatically inversely proportional to my actions, it's not calculated that way just an algebra of desire. the neckline zooms closer until it's just a massive landscape of pulsing skin under which i see a lattice of muscle and tendon, that major artery like a motorway, the taste of her like a hit of heroin exploding into my blood. her powerful life dissolves through my olfactory system and i see it all from her cosmic like inception to her ridiculous confusion of peace transformed into shock. life doesn't flow out of her, it's ripped, shredded and devoured.
i sit amongst a pile of hair, some unrecognisable organs, an eyeball and bones. my hunger sated. the whole thing a blank, no memory except that neck being conquered. the blood that soaks me drips onto  the wooden floor as i walk up to the bathroom. 

i find myself on the side of the road, the truck still running. 
i rubbed my eyes, it was bright and i was nowhere, just some red trail i must have taken off road. i estimated it to be late afternoon, the sun getting low. night would arrive soon, i figured i had four hours left so i rolled another joint and stretched my legs. 
i'd not only killed her, i'd eaten her raw. a human being. no matter what i was, what i had become i still felt guilty. that had to count for something. when i stepped out the shower, i had already made up my mind. there was only one place to go. away. inland. i could keep people safe by exile. possibilities are reduced to all bad ones, soon they would track me down, soon i would hear sirens and soon i would be thrown to the wolves. but at least in the process i could exercise some harm minimisation. in my short intervals of sleep no dreams came, but it would only be a matter of time. for the moment it was peaceful.