Instinct took over as Jake's heart beat out the tempo of The Overture of William Tell. He glanced to his left, judged the distance between himself and the creature, then broke right and dove straight through the window. He'd never been more thankful for a first-floor apartment. Still clutching his cellular phone, he ran as fast as he could, hoping the early morning sun would keep whatever the hell was in his apartment from following.

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   I see you writing, Doc, jotting down little notes. Or are you doodling? You think I'm making all of this up as I go, don't you? Maybe you think my friends and I were all hopped up on speedballs or somethin'. Maybe you'll call it mass hysteria. You never really say much, do you? You just sit and stare and judge. Well, I'm only here because the courts demanded I speak to you. It's your job to determine if I am competent. I didn't kill her, Doc. You believe me, right? Of course you don't. And you don't care. You just continue jotting down your notes, I'll continue my tale.

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   Jake burst through the door of Starbucks, out of breath and nearly hysterical. His hair was matted to his head with sweat. He looked as if he had just completed a 5k run and was about to collapse. I helped him to a chair at the table Bailey and I had claimed near the restrooms. I ordered a cappucino for him and waited for him to calm down. There were long, deep scratches on his hand. The clothes he wore were a bit tattered and blood-stained. Customers were trying not to stare in our direction, but failing miserably.

   After he calmed down a bit, Jake told us what he knew.

   "Donny, Billy's roomie, called me at seven this morning," he said in a whisper. "He said that he had woken up early for work and found Billy hangin upside-down. Gutted. The police were all over the place when I got there. His guts were gone, man. The cops said it looked like he had been ripped open while he was still alive. Shouldn't Donny have heard something? Wouldn't he have screamed?"

    I just sat there, dumbfounded. I had no idea what I should say at this point. I just wanted him to continue. I wanted to know why he was in shambles, physically. I coaxed him to continue.

   "Well, I went back to my place and called you. Then they showed up in my room."

   "Who showed up in you room?" I interrupted. 

"The creatures from the bridge. They were in my room. I dove out the window and ran here," he raised his right hand at me. "I tried to ward it off, but it scratched me. It burns, too, Danny. It burns so bad. I got away, though. I dove right out the window, just like they do in the movies. I just jumped right through it, but it burns so bad."

    He started babbling a bit so I tuned him out. I noticed that his face was pale and gaunt looking. Sweat continued to pour from him, as if the temperature inside the Starbucks were a hundred degrees. Bailey and I just looked at each other, stunned and with disbelief.

   I couldn't believe that Billy was dead. He just couldn't be dead. In the seventh grade, Billy picked a fight with a high school senior, not a scrawny little nerdy senior, but a varsity football player. The year we graduated, he flew to Pamplona to run with the bulls and had gotten gored. Billy's favorite pasttime was car surfing and he wanted to go to Florida to wrestle alligators. He was invincible. 

   The skin around the cuts on Jake's hand had started to turn a nasty black-blue color. The crusted blood on his fingers was nearly black. It had been dark red when he arrived at the coffee shop. Dark circles were starting to form under his eyes. He was literally starting to look like a splatter film zombie.

    "Dude, you really need to go to a hospital. You look like hell and I think you may have gotten some sort of infection," I chided him.

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   Jake, Bailey, and I sat in the ER for what seemed like an eternity before they called him in. The orderly looked agitated when Jake started bitching about the wait. It was more than a bit ridiculous considering that there was only one other person in the waiting room when we arrived. Good ole USA, if you ain't got health insurance, you ain't a priority.

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   Who's payin this bill anyway, Doc? Taxpayers? The city? I know I'm not payin it. Hell, I didn't ask to be here. Are you asleep, Doc? Ok, nevermind. I see your hand scribbling again. Maybe you already have it in your head that I'm trying to play insane for a lighter sentence. Is that it? You think I'm totally full of ****. Well, **** you. You didn't see what I saw. Your friends aren't the one's that got fileted like fish. Mine are. But you probably think like everyone else. That I did it and not some demon sent straight from Hell to claim my soul. Oh well, back to the story.

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   That night, as we sat in Bailey's apartment and ate Chinese takeout, that's when the fun began. Jake started to change. Not some instantaneous change, like in the movies, but gradual little things. First, I noticed that even with the pills the doctor prescribed, his pallor never returned to normal. In fact, it seemed even more pale now. The nails on his fingers also looked different. Longer, sharper. His teeth had started to take on a brownish-yellow hue. I was getting a bit nervous.