Becoming Imuego

Look at them sitting there, struggling with their tests and their mundane worries about what to wear to this year’s Halloween Ball. None of them truly aware of what an actual struggle is even if it crawled up and bit them in the behind. For so long I tried to hide it, hide myself. “Play nice and just pretend to be a human.” I was told, but every year its only gotten worse and worse and I’m starting to wonder how much more of this can I take? This year’s ball theme is ‘The Beauty in Monsters and Ghouls.” What a joke, there is no beauty in being a monster. Shimmering chandeliers, big dresses, confetti and caked up faces of prissy make-up. It was all a glamourized distraction for what was really to come, none of them had any idea.

I used to be normal, a sweet and kind child with dreams of being something more, like most children around my age. That was until my parents decided to pack up the family and move us to the outskirts of a little town in Virginia. “It's quiet and wide open there, a lot safer than the city.” My mother had said trying to convince me of the new adventure. I begged and pleaded with them not to go but in the end, I lost and was hauled across country from New Mexico, from my friends and from the only home I knew. Talk about a change of scenery. As my preteen years approached it became clear why my parents wanted to move. Back then I never really questioned why, I just figured they were cruel and wanted me to be unhappy. That was until the day of the incident on the summer evening I spent at the park with my new friends.

I was only the age of 11 when I had spent that whole day at the park with some of the other neighborhood kids until sunset fell on us. One by one children left, heading home in time to meet their families for dinner. Until there were only two, a boy my age named Jermey and I. “Five more minutes, Five more minutes.” Jermey and I would chant, hoping to buy ourselves a little more time of fleeting sunlight as we raced around the playground equipment before repeating ourselves in a cycle of giggles. Those five more minutes turned into an hour before we decided to hop on our bikes and race each other home. “Let’s take the long trail through the woods by the train tracks.” He said, leading the way. I was a little more hesitant but dared not let him know for the fear of the teasing that would come. It was safer if we stuck together. Who knew what kind of animals were in those woods I thought as I followed close behind as we disappeared down the dusty road.

As we road through the trees deep into the woods, by the train tracks sat a huge pond of water begging to be played in and as children we willfully obeyed its calling. Its where Jermey dropped his bike, hopping off to gather rocks to pelt into the water, skipping them across the surface. As he was my dear friend, I followed his lead, doing the same. 1-2-3-4 the rocks skipped across the water leaving only ripples before sinking. It was a new game, a new competition that lasted until the lights on the electric poles came on, lighting the line of the train tracks through the now dark woods. It was the latest I had ever remember being out, with the moon sitting high in the sky I had a new feeling of rebellious freedom, I wasn’t ready to go home yet, and I could tell he felt the same. “Let’s play a new game.” I said, excited by the darkness around us. “Hide-n-Seek!”

We put our worn shoes together in a count of eenie-meenie-miney-moe to see who would hide and who would seek. I lost and he was to hide, and I was to seek. His footsteps slid in the dirt as he ran away to hide. Every crunch of rock under him as he ran, I could hear, every panicked breath magnified, and it made the excitement of the game just that much more exciting. I was to find Jermey and leap out from behind the tree he thought he was tucked so cleverly behind to scare him. The excitement built and I bided my time before leaping on him. “Got cha!” I yelled out, taking him to the ground in that instant. Only one scream left him before I took him down.

I was filled with excitement and hunger as I ripped him limb from limb. The impulse to feed, devouring him. I devoured his arm as if it was the juiciest piece of smoked turkey that I had ever had in my life. Only, this was no turkey, but a child of the same age as I. He was my friend, he was my prey, he was my dinner.  It had been the best feeling of my life. I remember how the growl rumbled ferociously from somewhere deep within me, the sweet smell of his blood and how the points of my teeth sharpened within that moment, perfect for tearing flesh from bone. Even now thinking back builds an insufferable hunger from within me. I couldn’t stop, until I was stuffed and could go on no more. When I came to, I stood for a moment in shock not believing the sight before me. It was as if I had another being overcome my body with such a ferocious intent that I couldn’t explain it away. Seconds, minutes, maybe longer it took me to realize what I had done and there was no way of undoing it. Panic began to set in. There Jermey laid, in pieces of what used to be the form of a perfect little human who had been a friend of mine, but I couldn’t weep for him, as much as I tried to mourn, I only saw… food. “What have I done?”

I decided I had to run. As fast as I could, as far as I could. I ended up getting lost somewhere in the miles and miles of twisted woods that hugged our small town. I had no plan other than to just keep running as far as my legs would take me. By night fall the two of us were reported missing, and an entire search team was assembled to hunt for us, to bring us home, it would only be a matter of time that they find out what had happened to Jermey. I just knew that if they caught me that I would rot in a prison somewhere far from my parents, or immediately off to the electric chair for what I had done. It was all a lost cause, I was too small, too weak and didn’t possess the skills to disappear from the radar like I’d imagined.

When the searchers were hot on my trail, I remember the blinding lights from their flashlights shining through the trees and brush line, seeking for me. Shining towards any sound, any movement, and towards the crunch of the leaves and sticks beneath my sneakers. I held my breath; I held my nose. I couldn’t let them find me, if they did, it would be the end of me. I remembered hearing the voices shouting through the trees. “We have her, we found her!” It was some men and a woman, uniformed officers who were apart of the search party, leading our missing case. At that moment I knew I was done for. I let out a frightened wail and just sat there, I was tired, cold, afraid and could run no longer, only cry as one of the men moved in, scooping me into his arms, presumably to haul me off to jail. I buried my face into his shoulder, I cried, I screamed. I was a mess, with my clothes torn and still covered in blood. When we left the tree line of the woods behind, he laid me in my parents’ arms after the medic gave me a quick glance over and they held me as tight as they could as any concerned parent would. There was no lack of love from them in that worrying moment. As I settled myself in my father’s arms, I could see Jermey’s parents a distance away, falling to the ground after receiving the news. They didn’t get to be as lucky as my parents had and I knew why. “An animal tore him apart and I was the fortunate one to have escaped with only scrapes and bruises.” Was the talk of town. All of it was written off as an unfortunate wild animal attack and all I could tell them was that “A monster had done it.” There was no lack of truth to the statement. It was what I had become in that moment, a monster.

That night I got home and after a much-needed bath and tucking back into my bed I told my parents what I had done. I couldn’t bare to lie to them and there was no one in this world who I trusted more. I cried, going into details about what I had done. The way I felt during, the way fangs grew from my teeth and the growls that came from deep within, I had never heard before. I expected to be met with horrified looks of hellish judgement, but the opposite happened. Instead of running in fear my mother leaned in, embracing me once more with a hug and a kiss upon my forehead. “It’s alright love, it is what we are, I was just hoping that someday your father and I could show you in a different way, but this will be our life from now on.” She had said, consoling me.

“It is what we are.” She had said, meaning monsters known in the old Vaughthee language only as Imuegos. The family lure goes back for thousands of years. We live and work side by side with humans, pretending to be humans while also hunting and feasting on them, as humans do with cattle. When our numbers were at our greatest, they said whole civilizations of humans would just vanish from the history books, with not even a trace of what happened to them, centuries shrouded the disappearance in mystery. As it had been years since the incident, and I was now a teen of 15 years old the hunger had grown to great too bare and try to fight off what I am any longer. I was stepping into what I was meant to be. There was no safe place, not from me, not from us, and it became clear that my parents hadn’t moved us out here to keep me safe from the ongoings of the city but rather to keep me safe while I came of age and grew away from watching eyes as a hunter. To be what I’m meant to be. These people are not my peers only cattle to aide our species in which on the night of the Halloween Ball will begin my own passage.

Imuegos would come from all over to celebrate me, to welcome me and to feast, drawn from far and wide by the blood of the suffering. It was only the evening of Halloween as everyone prepared for the event. It was a bit morbid really, watching them decorate for their own demise. As the clock would strike 12:00am I would celebrate by painting the grounds a unique vibrant of various reds in a beautifully chaotic art of anguish. No more would I have to fight my urges but only accept the history befallen me. By sunrise there was to be another empty town written in those same history books unaware of what happened. If anyone was to find them in this century or the next that is, no answer could bare the gravity of the feast we were to have and by that time we would be long gone and off to the next small town that was rarely heard of until the next of us came of age the following Halloween and the ones to follow.