The Remembering Group 1, Challenge 2

Round 1/Challenge 2
Prompts: Genre-Horror/Location-Crowded Beach/Object-Fanny Pack
Challenge: Write a 1000-word original story in 48 hours incorporating the prompts

Disclaimer: This is quite graphic, so if you're squeamish, might not be for you. 

The Remembering

A man emerges from temporary amnesia and rediscovers his true nature.

The midday sun burns fresh scars into his already seared skin. A bead of sweat trickles from beneath the nest of matted hair and slips into the corner of his eye. The sting of salt from his own body wakes him. He is curled up like an embryo in the soft sand, his hands around his ears shielding him from the screams of tow-headed toddlers playing tag with the surf. From this fetal position he watches the sidewise swell of god-fearing Americans trample the beach as Southern California cities spill clean in celebration. A swirl of red, white and blue assaults his eyes as well-muscled young men near the water’s edge toss a striped football in perfect spirals. 

He forces himself upright and leans against the sea wall. He doesn’t know how he ended up on this beach on this day in the middle of summer’s gut. He gingerly rubs his head and feels the scab through a tangle of blonde blackened with dried blood. His pulse quickens as the hazy imprint of cat-and-mouse stamps down on some dark corner of his primitive brain. He lost his footing at one point and tumbled backward against pavement. That much he remembers. But was he prey or was he predator in the game?

He licks his chapped lips. Ragged red high tops stuffed with socks lay next to his bare feet. He unfolds the wadded-up black jacket he used as a pillow and reads the label. Member’s Only. He takes a deep intake of air. His caked nostrils flare at the aroma of squeaky-clean families with their Coppertone and buckets of fried chicken.

“Hey, is this yours?”

A freshly polished toe nudges the fanny pack half buried in the sand about a foot away. He looks up and squints, blinded by the bright July sky. He sniffs. She is about 14 and on her period.

“I don’t know.”

“Fucking retard,” she mutters under her breath and strides off. Her scent lingers and he breathes it in. His stomach rumbles.

He unearths the worn leather bag and places it on his lap. The zipper is crusted with fine sand. He works it down about two inches and stops. A shot of adrenalin pumps into his heart. He’s not sure if he’s frightened or aroused, but whatever he’s feeling it has his full attention. He exhales and pulls the zipper the rest of the way. The ripping sound exhilarates him as tiny metal teeth tear apart. He closes his eyes and reaches in. He feels the cool weight of a child’s bracelet and involuntarily shivers as he runs his fingers over the precious stones embedded into the smooth silver surface. Turquoise. An image flashes then disappears.

He takes out the bracelet and appreciates its delicate shape as recollection forms, slow, just how he likes it in the beginning before it crescendos and falls away. She was young—the girl—still in single digits and surprisingly strong for a skinny little thing. His mind rapidly tunnels into the memory and twists around two brunette braids hanging from a rear view mirror. They were attached to part of a scalp he cured in iodized salt. A flush of calm soothes him as he recalls the kill. He had gone to the library and studied up on tanning small animal hides. She wasn’t much bigger than a jackrabbit anyway.

“First you get all the flesh and fat off it and salt good for a full day,” a trapper had chronicled. “Extract the brain out of the animal, mash it up and add half a cup of water, then rub it in.” It was called ‘brain tanning.’ Only buffalos don’t have enough brain to cover their own hides, the trapper concluded.

He remembers how it felt when he popped open her cranium. She was lying face up on a coroner’s table he bought at a medical supply auction. Blood from the kill pooled around the torso and dribbled along delicate arms hanging loosely from the aluminum slab. He had dislocated the shoulder and hip joints right after the trapping so she couldn’t get away. As he brought down the skill saw, she jerked and opened brown eyes the color of earth and he missed his target. He thought she was dead, but she wasn’t quite. He strapped her down. It was too late. His hunger raged.

This was the first brain he took while the fawn was alive and he liked it. There were many after. He liked the idea of a still-firing brain pulsing in his hands. He imagines they are thinking about him as the synapses shut down.

A few steps away a fresh fawn bleats. “Mommy, you’re going too fast! Hey, that’s really pretty, mister!" He smiles and stretches out his hand. In his palm, a bracelet twinkles in the sunlight.