[There's a long pause. He looks at the private button, wishes he could flick it to, like, double private. He could ask to meet in person, but he's pretty sure he can't say the things that are suddenly crowding his throat if doesn't get them out now. He looks away, stares hard at the wall.]
When I was fourteen, there was a. Thing. A parasite, but for - you know, star power. Or whatever.
Everything is energy. And when things are organized, that - holds energy. And when you break things down, that releases it. So this thing. It lived inside me. All of us, and warped us, so everything we could do was twisted the worst way. I destroyed things. That's how it fed. And the more I fed it, the more it grew. I couldn't stop, no matter how scared or horrified I was, I tried so hard but I could. Not. I thought it was a demon.
[He's shaking, very slightly, everything in him wound tight.]
And I was so. Damn. Hungry.
[It's a primal, almost animal sound, just the memory of it, the ruthless starving desperation.]
You feel guilty beforehand. When forty-car pileups don't cut it anymore. You look at some kid and watch the patterns unravel and you think. I'm going to break your whole happy life into little alcoholic smithereens, I am going to crush you into a pit you are never ever gonna climb out of, when you're planning, you feel guilty. But then you walk up, and you do it, and there's nothing left in you for guilt because the thing that's been eating you alive from the inside out is sated, for an hour or a minute, and it's such a relief, it's the best thing you've ever felt in your whole damn life.
When we got rid of it. Christ. Like someone parked a truck on my chest and I didn't know until they drove it off. But then I had to figure out - what the power really was, and what was that thing, and what was me. What you are and what you do are more tangled up than anyone here really wants to admit. And he has to figure out - what's really him, between strength and hunger and choices and all the rest of it. Because all the choices were me. And it wasn't just the hunger that made me terrible. It was the rush, too.
[The relief, the power, the high-like release of constant gnawing pain.]
You care a lot less, with that on the line. You teach yourself not to care.
I don't know if he has to be human. But I know he can't be what he was, the way that he was, and he was locked into something just as tight in his head after all the years he's been following one way of surviving with himself. Maybe there's a way to balance it if he cares to, maybe not. He can figure out what else he wants to be after he's remembered that other people aren't there just for him.
[Private]
When I was fourteen, there was a. Thing. A parasite, but for - you know, star power. Or whatever.
Everything is energy. And when things are organized, that - holds energy. And when you break things down, that releases it. So this thing. It lived inside me. All of us, and warped us, so everything we could do was twisted the worst way. I destroyed things. That's how it fed. And the more I fed it, the more it grew. I couldn't stop, no matter how scared or horrified I was, I tried so hard but I could. Not. I thought it was a demon.
[He's shaking, very slightly, everything in him wound tight.]
And I was so. Damn. Hungry.
[It's a primal, almost animal sound, just the memory of it, the ruthless starving desperation.]
You feel guilty beforehand. When forty-car pileups don't cut it anymore. You look at some kid and watch the patterns unravel and you think. I'm going to break your whole happy life into little alcoholic smithereens, I am going to crush you into a pit you are never ever gonna climb out of, when you're planning, you feel guilty. But then you walk up, and you do it, and there's nothing left in you for guilt because the thing that's been eating you alive from the inside out is sated, for an hour or a minute, and it's such a relief, it's the best thing you've ever felt in your whole damn life.
When we got rid of it. Christ. Like someone parked a truck on my chest and I didn't know until they drove it off. But then I had to figure out - what the power really was, and what was that thing, and what was me. What you are and what you do are more tangled up than anyone here really wants to admit. And he has to figure out - what's really him, between strength and hunger and choices and all the rest of it. Because all the choices were me. And it wasn't just the hunger that made me terrible. It was the rush, too.
[The relief, the power, the high-like release of constant gnawing pain.]
You care a lot less, with that on the line. You teach yourself not to care.
I don't know if he has to be human. But I know he can't be what he was, the way that he was, and he was locked into something just as tight in his head after all the years he's been following one way of surviving with himself. Maybe there's a way to balance it if he cares to, maybe not. He can figure out what else he wants to be after he's remembered that other people aren't there just for him.