Cannibal Red

"A monastery?”

“Uh, yeah.”

I stare at Tyler, his features showed nervousness, but I didn’t dare tell him that, not after we just…what did we just do?
Did we…get back together?
Standing up straighter I place my hands on my hips, licking my bottom lip and watching Tyler shuffle, an awkward moment rising.

Tyler looks up at me, a small smile twisting along his lips. “Looks like we’re going to the place of holy.”

As much as it was absolutely ridiculous, Jonathan Ricetaker (yes, his last name is actually Ricetaker), lived as a young learning monk in a monastery. He was, of course, hardly a monk as Tyler had told me; he only did certain jobs like helping stock the library, dusting, mopping the bricks outside the other monks’ doors, small things like that.
But why the hell would Jonathan Ricetaker be at one of Tiffany Waltz’s parties, when he is studying to become a monk? They are dedicated to god, they don’t speak, and they don’t go out to teenage parties and get drunk, then kiss girls, infecting them with a serious disease.

“You’re insane.” I mumble to Tyler. I was sitting in the passenger seat of his car, watching him drive. I noticed he never took his eyes off the road, and always tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.

Tyler stops at a light, and winks at me out of the corner of his left eye. “Do you trust me Lee?”

I inhale sharply, looking down to smooth out the monks robes that Tyler had given me. He’d said he’d stolen them, in a cocky way, but I knew that he’d just sewn some crappy brown material and copied the look from a monk he’d seen whilst spying on the monastery.

After staring down at the material I look back to Tyler’s face, where he had tied back all his hair, and removed any make up around his eyes, he had even shaved.
Somehow he looked more mature. More trustworthy.

“Yeah Tyler, I trust you.”

We parked the car in some surrounding trees, a few kilometers from the monastery. It would have been frightfully abnormal for monks to see some of their own coming out of a vehicle.
Quite frankly, I didn’t even know we had monasteries in Australia, but apparently this one nobody even knows of.
Emerging from the trees, hoods over our heads, Tyler moves closer to me, his hand brushing mine.

“You sure you want to do this?”

I bite my lip. “Definitely.”

If your local mall was huge, that had nothing compared to a monastery. It was built with bricks, and went up about seven times the size of your house; there was a lifting elevator which brought you up to the second level, where a pointed nosed monk sat looking over the balcony whenever you rang the bell for the elevator to be dropped down.
From the moment Tyler and I stood on the very un-safe looking elevator, we were monks. We couldn’t do anything that would make us get caught.

We were gods’ people now. And we were going to sin. A lot.

The beaky monk didn’t even look at us when we reached the top of the building, he just continued staring down at the world below him, maybe he was wishing of the things he was missing out on being locked up in the monastery.
But maybe he didn’t even know of those things.

There was a long brick paved path leading up to three tall buildings in the middle of the monastery, and a graveyard lying to the left.
After all I had been through; the place still gave me the creeps. I followed Tyler to a long row of rooms near the big buildings, one of which had an enormous cross on the top of it. I guessed that was the church.
There were only a few people walking around, all of them men; some spoke in hushed voices in small groups whilst others were doing small jobs. Some even stood around looking shifty around the church.
I was sure even Gods’ people had their rebels.
Looking around I noticed how grim and beaten up the monastery looked; it had obviously been there for many years. It was amazing how something so big had been so hidden all those years.

Tyler nudged his head slightly towards a room, identical to all the others, wooden doors placed on iron hinges on those grey brick walls; and I wondered how he knew which room Jonathan Ricetakers’ room was.
Knocking twice on Jonathan’s door, I took a big gulp of air and exchanged a worried glance with Tyler underneath our hoods. He looked just as afraid as I was.
This could all go horribly, horribly, wrong at any second. And then we’d have a lot of trouble.
Before Jonathan Ricetaker opened the door, Tyler whispered.

“Don’t do anything, until we get inside.”

“Greetings brother,” Tyler said, his head bowed, his hands folded into a prayer gesture. I did the same, only out of fear.

“Hello brothers,” Jonathan had a deep voice, but still a teenage voice. “What can I do for you? Is there something I have done?”

“No, no brother,” Tyler continued on, his voice whispered and confident “We wish for nothing but a small conversation.”

“Alright then, please, come in.”

Following Tyler into the room was daunting, as if we were going to walk in and there were more monks, about to suddenly uncover a woman, and no man of god under those robes.
Once we were in the room Tyler moved over and locked the door, covering any gaps with things from around the room.
The monks’ room was more like a cell, clean, yet boring. There was nothing but a simple bed to the left, and a wooden table with a candle sitting to the right. A tiny window brought in the smallest of light, but seemed sufficient for the room, which was small anyway.

In one swift motion, Jonathan makes a move towards the door, but Tyler is quicker than him, and pulls out a shining silver knife and holds it up against the boy’s neck.

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you get in the way.”

Jonathan nods and gulps, moving towards the bed. Tyler watches him carefully, one hand still gripping the knife; he pulls the hood off his head and gestures for me to follow.
Jonathan gasps when he sees me, his cheeks flushing.

“A woman is not allowed in these places, I am sinning just looking at her.”

Her, that’s how he had said it, like I was some pathetic piece of junk.

Tyler grins, and folds his arms. “Do you know, what you’re doing, sneaking out at night?”

Jonathan looks shocked, then darts his eyes around the room. “What do you two want?”

I decide to speak up, anger bubbling inside me. “I want to know, was it you, did you infect me?”

Jonathan seems to get suspicious now, his eyes still glancing quickly back and forth between me and Tyler.

“Your them aren’t you, I’m telling you I’m not eating people, I’m not infecting, I’m in a monastery, I don’t need more pills.”

Tyler raises his eyebrows. “I don’t think you understand Brother Jonathan, we are trying to find who infected my friend here.”

When you’re trying to find out whether two Super-Cannibals are related to each other by blood, you have to extract exactly a drop of blood by each Cannibal, and add that to water. If the water turns black after a minute, it means they are related, but if it stays the way it was when it hit the water, they aren’t.

Tyler has brought a pin with him, and pricked our fingers with it, his eyes squirming when he saw the blood trickle from my finger.
I knew he was resisting the urge to bite me, his eyes had turned a darker colour, and he was much paler than usual. Even when he wanted to rip at my flesh, the exhausted look on his face was beautiful.

Jonathan and I dropped exactly one drop of blood in a small glass of water each, and waited.
I looked at Tyler, he was standing in the corner of the room watching me, and his face was glistening with sweat. I knew we had to get out of this place soon, otherwise he might crack and hurt someone.
It was of course okay if he hurt me, because his defenses would kick in and he wouldn’t be able to touch me.
I looked back to the swirling water, it had stayed a bloody colour, the same colour it was when we had placed our blood in the water.
Fuck.
Standing up and dusting myself down just to avoid Tyler’s eyes I look at Jonathan. He looked relieved.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, but I’m telling you, I don’t go out at night to bite people.”

I shake my head, smiling lightly at him. “It’s okay, it’s not your fault.”

Tyler moves closer to me and puts a shaky hand on my shoulder, filling my body with feared warmth.

“Thanks anyway Brother.”

Brother Jonathan promised not to speak of his actions to anyone, and moved with us to the graveyard, where there was a slope that slid down to a hole in the brick wall that we could escape through. Because if we had to go out through the elevator we had to have an explanation, or be one of the head monks.
Saying goodbye to Brother Jonathan I help Tyler crawl through the hole, which he just fit through, and we stumble quickly away from the building, me pulling Tyler by his right arm into the bunch of trees where the car was parked.

“My god,” he breathes, as we stand taking off our robes. He pulls out the hair tie that had pulled back his mass of hair. “That was painful.”

He still looked pale, and I felt terrible. I stepped closer to him, reaching a hand out to move a piece of jet black hair out of his right eye. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t think so,” He looks down at me, placing his hands on my shoulders “I feel like, if you don’t go, I might do something to you.”

I stand still, not moving “Go on, do it.”

Tyler shakes his head “No.”

“Tyler, just. Do. It.”

He leans his head closer, and I swallow as he opens his mouth.