Chapter 48What’s Left of Me Isn’t Human
What’s Left of Me Isn’t Human
Aslanov
It feels like I’ve died, and my body hasn’t caught up yet.
Every step grinds bone against bone. My feet are numb, but my legs shake like they’re about to give in. The gravel under me crunches, too loud. It sounds like breaking glass. I freeze. Just a sound. Just gravel. Keep walking.
It’s ice cold, and the adrenaline is wearing off. I’m starting to experience what insanity feels like.
I can’t tell how long I’ve been moving. Time stopped back in that cell, split open and left to rot with everything else. I don’t feel anything except pain, and even that’s starting to feel far away.
Then—I see it.
A flicker. Blue. Sickly, twitching light in the distance like a dying firefly. Neon. Real neon. Civilization. Maybe.
I blink and it’s closer. The letters don’t make sense. Half-dead, humming. T_L , maybe? R_I ? The rest is gone, eaten by rust and time. But it’s enough. A motel. A place to disappear.
I drag myself to the door. The office is empty, glass cracked, dust on the counter. No sign of life. No cameras. No people. Just me, the dark, and the constant, low hum of that sign buzzing like flies in my ears.
My hands won’t stop shaking.
I’m not even sure how I made it this far.
My body is on auto-pilot, pulled by muscle memory or maybe by the same desperate animal instinct that kept me breathing all those weeks, months, trapped in the dark.
In that fucking cell. I don’t remember leaving.
I barely remember escaping. Just flashes.
Hands. Screams. A face too close. Blood.
Their blood. Mine.
Room 7 is the third one down from the office.
I don’t check in. No one’s there. The smell hits me first; mildew, rotted wood, old cigarettes soaked into the wallpaper.
Everything here is brown. Dusty, greasy brown.
I don’t knock. I don’t even look around.
I just push the door open like I own the place, like I’ll kill whatever’s on the other side if it isn’t empty.
It is.
The lock barely works, but I throw the bolt anyway and shove the chair under the doorknob.
The fan above me turns too slow, each wobbling rotation like it’s counting down to something.
The TV is dead-eyed and humming faintly, screen black but alive in a way that unsettles me. It hums like it knows I’m here.
The bed is made, but the blanket’s stained. I don’t want to touch it.
I collapse onto the floor. The bed is too high.
The floor is closer. Safer. The air is thick, like it’s been exhaled a thousand times and never inhaled back.
I’m crawling out of my own skin. My shirt is soaked, blood stiff in places.
The wound on my face is a mix of dried and fresh blood, my head throbs like a second heartbeat.
I press my fingers to it, and they come away slick and dark. It’s too much blood.
The shadows in the corners move when I blink.
They move when I don’t blink. The adrenaline is wearing off, I’m going insane.
I lie still, flat on my back, and stare up at the ceiling until it begins to breathe.
It pulses gently, rising and falling like lungs.
I feel my fingers twitch. My spine seizes up.
Something’s in the room with me. I can feel it.
Watching. Not breathing, just… waiting. I snap my head toward the closet.
Nothing. I snap it again toward the bathroom. Still nothing. Still everything.
I scream without sound, just this locked-up animal noise that rips up my throat and tears into my teeth. My body remembers pain even when my brain won’t name it. My muscles clench when I hear boots. There are no boots. No boots. No one’s coming.
No one’s coming.
I crawl under the bed like a child hiding from monsters, except I am the monster.
I’ve seen what I can do. What I did to get out. What I’d do again if anyone touched me. If anyone tried to drag me back. I’d rip out their eyes with my teeth.
But I don’t want to hurt anyone.
Or do I?
I don’t want to hurt her.
The vodka from the mini fridge tastes like plastic and regret, but it sterilizes the towel well enough.
I press it to my face, and the pain is white.
My vision goes blank, and I gasp like I’ve been tortured again.
Or maybe I am dead? Maybe I’m still there.
Still strapped down. Still in the dark. I hear the drill. I smell the burning.
My wrists burn.
When I look down, the skin is torn and purple, rings of rot burned in from the cuffs they kept me in.
I run my fingers over them, and it makes me nauseous.
My wrist is dislocated. My body jerks like I’ve touched a live wire.
The scars are raised and angry, and some are still wet.
Still open. As if the cuffs never came off.
Like the steel is still there, invisible now, sunk into the bone.
There’s blood everywhere. My own, but others too. My clothes are stiff with it. Caked in dried brown patches like flaking rust. I can smell it in the fibers. I can taste it when I breathe. It clings to me like a second skin.
My fingernails are packed with dirt and blood. Black under the edges, crusted around the cuticles. I must’ve clawed my way out of somewhere. A grave? A hole? I don’t remember much. Where am I?
I stare at my hands like they belong to someone else. They tremble, and then they clench, and I watch the knuckles go white. There’s something under my nails. A piece of someone. Flesh. I rub my hands with the towel.
My feet are fucked. That’s the only word for them. Blistered and split open. Torn in places I didn’t know could tear. The soles are ragged, like I walked across glass and fire and didn’t stop until I forgot how to feel it.
I slam my head back against the wall.
Once.
Twice.
Just to feel something real again.
I whisper to myself, words in a language I don’t remember learning. Maybe I never did. Maybe someone whispered them into my ear while they peeled my skin back. Maybe they’re prayers. Maybe they’re curses. Maybe I don’t deserve to know the difference.
The silence in this room isn’t silence. It’s a pressure.
A constant hum buried beneath my hearing—like a dog whistle made for men like me.
I can feel it clawing at my spine, whispering beneath my skin, ‘‘they’re coming, they’re coming, they’re coming.
’’ Even though I know—logically—I’ve already killed them. Or most of them.
But logic doesn’t matter anymore. Logic’s for people who still know where they are. I don’t. Not really. I know I’m in this room. I know I found it, stumbled in like a dying animal. I know the ceiling fan is still spinning and that blood’s still dripping down my face. That’s about it.
I don’t remember screaming. I don’t remember anything before the motel sign.
I barely remember me .
I stumble to the cracked mirror above the rust-stained sink and stare.
The man looking back at me shouldn’t exist.
His eyes are bloodshot, sick, empty things, ringed with purple and red, like he hasn’t slept in a century.
My face is a map of wounds, bruises, and a jagged, angry cut in the middle between my eyes.
My beard’s patchy and caked with dried blood.
The cut is deep, like someone tried to carve the truth out of me and got interrupted halfway through.
The fucking fan is laughing at me.
I shuffle through drawers. Trash. Moldy envelopes. A broken comb with hair still in it.
Then, bottom drawer, buried under a stack of rotted motel bibles and matchbooks with phone numbers scrawled in red lipstick, I find it.
A phone.
Old. Flip-style. Cracked. Ancient.
But I snap it open and the screen flickers.
A single green bar. One. Somehow, God or the Devil wants this call to happen.
The numbers stick under my fingers, like the keys don’t want me to do it. My hands shakes so bad I can’t press them right. I hit the wrong one. Again. Again. Then finally, I get it.
Her number.
It’s the only number I remember.
I press “Call.”
It rings.
I drop the phone.
Like it’s burning me.
I scramble after it like a madman and press it to my ear. Nothing. No answer.
I call again.
And again.
Seven times.
On the seventh, I don’t hang up when it goes to voicemail.
I listen.
To her voice.
I press the phone to my chest and slide down the wall.
I curl into myself like a dying man and whisper her name into the dark.
I see her face when I close my eyes. And I hate it. Because it reminds me I’m still a man. And being a man hurts more than being a monster.
Because men feel guilt.
Monsters just eat.
And I’m not sure which one I’ll be if she picks up that phone.