The Reincarnation

John drove. He thought someone might have been following him, but the van he suspected was nowhere in sight. He was close now, he could feel it. Pulling off on the side of the road, getting his gun from the trunk – the border patrol, John’s money stuffed in their uniform pockets after some careful conversation, wouldn’t consider searching it – and driving on, he knew it wouldn’t be long.

He checked his gun. Still loaded. He checked his face in the rearview mirror. Human – well, human enough. He checked his location. Country road. The gravel road led to a gravel driveway. Even after he slowed to a crawl, his car was still too noisy. He pulled off into a field and parked it behind some bushes.

Setting off on foot, he was suddenly aware of the area around him. This was the country. He had heard of it, but had never found the time to visit. He had always been too busy scrambling up the corporate ladder, thinking there would be time for the country some day. The landscape disoriented him; he felt slightly off balance in it. It wasn’t made of the clean lines and sharp angles he had known all his life. Trying to regain his composure and not be distracted by the randomness of the woods, he proceeded down the driveway – at least it was close to man-made.

At the end was a cabin in the woods, next to a lake – something he had only seen before in pictures. Its shimmering surface made him uneasy, but the pull was strong. “Concentrate,” he said between gritted teeth.

He walked up to the cabin and peered into a window. A kitchen. John looked at the black, cast iron pots and pans that hung from the ceiling, the cabinets made of knotted pine, a hallway leading to another room.

Walking the perimeter of the house and looking through another window, he saw where the hallway led. The living room. The moon was casting its glow into the room, illuminating it slightly. There were two people wrapped up in blankets on a futon. John felt a warm surge in his chest, his back arching with the strength of its pull. He knew that the man he had been racing to find was here, in this room. He discerned from the size of the lumps on the bed that the man was the lump on the right. He walked quickly around the cabin until he found the door.

The door was unlocked. John slipped inside, holding his gun up as he approached the bed. The man was stirring. Dreaming, John supposed, drawing nearer. Walking to the right side of the bed, he leveled the gun at where he thought the man’s head was. He pulled the blankets back.

The man faced away from John, but his hair was the same color as the man on the TV. John grabbed his shoulder, rolling him over. It was him. John’s mind flexed as his chest filled with the throbbing warmth. This man has your energy, his mind instructed him, the pull at his chest confirming it. His mind filled with a primal urge, a childish urge – it informed him of a manner it believed would get his energy back inside of him. Repelled, John used what remained of his higher faculties and resisted the urges from his lungs.

He placed the barrel of the gun against the man’s forehead.

Hannibal smelled something familiar and it woke him. He was nestled between David and Laura, and was jostled by David moving. Not moving, but being moved. It felt different to Hannibal. His eyes adjusted to the light.

Hannibal saw John and sprung at him, jaws agape, claws out. Tearing into the flesh of the man’s arm, he fell to the floor. A loud noise made Hannibal jump.

Hannibal smelled fire.