Souvenir (part 1 of ?) [EDITED]

Blood sprayed up the white walls as I carefully sliced the old man's chest open. His choked moans were music to my ears. Closing my eyes, I pulled apart his aged flesh to reveal his innards. I licked my lips as I saw the precious red liquid flow. I pushed my hand deep into the wound, letting the blood trickle through my fingers. Searching through his rib cage, like looking for lipstick in an old handbag, I saw what I was looking for. A sigh of satisfaction escaped my lips as snapped off a rib and wrapped my hands around his heart. I felt his heartbeat slowing down in my hands as I squeezed it. I smiled as the man's eyes rolled back and turned white. I then pulled at his heart, tearing the veins and arteries out of his body. I gently wrapped the heart in some fine silk and put it into a white box which I sealed with a red ribbon. I raised the box to my lips and kissed it softly, leaving a print of my deep red lips on the box. Smiling slyly, I stood up, stepped over the disfigured body and climbed onto the ledge of the window in which I entered. I glanced at the blood-splattered clock, which read 3:42am, before dropping from the ledge and landing on the concrete below. I looked back up at the open window, wondering how his family would react when they discover their grim loss. With the white box under my arm, I sprinted back to the depths of darkness from which I came...

Once safe and hidden amongst the long grass, I got on my knees and felt the ground for the trap door, concealing my hide-out. After finding the latch, I lifted it up and slid into the gap, making sure no one saw me. I slid down a make-shift ladder and landed softly on the familiar ground.

Underground was where I hid my 'souvenir' collection. Shelves upon shelves held hundreds of boxes, similar to the white one, lined up neatly. I placed the white box with the rest of them. My work here was done. I glanced around the damp, dark underground crevice which I called home. The room resembled a stereotypical underground lab: a book shelf that, instead of books, was lined with vials and syringes and pots. The floor used to be tiled, but the earth that oozed from the wooden panels on the ceiling had fallen onto the floor. I just hadn’t bothered to clean it up. The wooden panels stretched across the whole of the room, which was surprisingly big. They were held up by wooden beams, similar to that from a pirate ship, which were placed strategically in four places of the room. In front of my ‘book shelf’ was an operating table. I hadn’t had the chance to get proper use out of it yet, but it was used frequently for preparing my ‘equipment’ and, occasionally, my meals. A metallic kitchen-like cabinet, which stood next to the ‘book shelf’, housed a typical sink with the standard hot and cold tap combination. The other side of the room looked more homely; an old tatty sofa with springs and stuffing sticking out was where I lay my weary head at night. There was a small fridge next to the sofa for my food and a small table which held a radio. The shelves were above my sofa and were extended to the other side of the room. They were held in place with stakes. Yes, indeed. This was my home.

Stretching my arms up, I kicked my boots off and fell backwards onto the sofa. I rest my head on one end of the sofa and put my arms behind my head then drowned in the increasing intensity of the creations of my overactive imagination.

Suddenly, I was in a damp dark cave that smelt like rotting flesh. An odour that I am very well acquainted with. I tried to move my legs but they were frozen, transfixed to the very floor. I looked down to see my legs and gasped in horror. What I saw was not my legs, but two mangled lengths of flesh. Blood dripped onto the floor where my kneecaps were torn off, flesh hang from my thighs had been ripped to shreds by what I could guess to have been claws. I no longer had calves as the muscles had been cleanly cut from my legs making a strange contrast with the ripped flesh of my thighs, the bone was exposed and the blood was attracting flies. I took a deep breath and slowly turned my neck to look at my arms, but then I saw something else. Something that looked strangely familiar. I squinted my eyes to clear my vision but then wished I hadn't; on the floor, some distance away from me lay my severed right hand in a pool of oddly dark blood. By the discolouration I could tell that it had been there for at least an hour. Confused and worried, I tried waking myself up by biting into my shoulder. However, I couldn't feel anything and as I was closing my eyes, I was unable to notice that my shoulder had already been bitten and disfigured by an unknown cause. At that moment, all I could taste was blood and fear. My eyes began to spin as I felt blood and pus continuously pouring through the numerous wounds on my body. As I watched the red and yellow liquid ooze from my shoulder, I could feel the pain starting to kick in; starting with my legs. I tried to yell out in agony, but my throat began to fill with tiny crawling maggots. Feeling them crawling up through my airways, I started to feel woozy and with my last choked breath, I fell to the floor.