My name is Alan Walz, and I am one lucky motherfucker.
That wasn't true for my entire life, until today.
The portal floated before me, motionless, its thin, pink border spinning around a door-shaped view of a city I'd only ever seen on a computer screen. If you looked at the portal from the side, you could only see the border, perhaps an inch thick, while the back showed the same view as the front.
I had always imagined, when I was a kid, that I would develop some superpower or special ability; telekinesis, teleportation, that sort of thing. Of course, I abandoned such delusions when I got older, which meant I was quite surprised when I started seizing while taking a piss, every muscle in my body contracting wildly as my mind was flooded with information I couldn't parse.
It ended as fast as it started, but my seizing made a huge mess all over the toilet and floor that I wasn't excited about cleaning up.
That took a backseat in my mind, as the unintelligible information coalesced into concrete knowledge.
I knew three things, as sure as I knew how to walk, or breathe, or masturbate.
One: I could open a portal to another universe every 24 hours.
Two: I could gain one "capability" from someone by... drinking their blood.
And Three: I really, really, wanted to drink someone's blood.
That third thing was a pressing urge. I tried to calm down, but it was a persistent craving, a need as much as a want. It drove me, and I found myself not even bothering to clean up the mess of piss around the toilet. I was lucky none got on me. The urge made me want to open a portal immediately; I knew in my bones that it'd be as simple as waving my hand while holding the desire to go somewhere in my heart. But it was hard to decide when I was so hungry, the thoughts refusing to solidify, slipping through my fingers like I was trying to hold on to fog.
I attempted to take a moment and calm down, closing my eyes and breathing slowly, but it had the opposite intended effect. My mind could only focus on the pressing need I felt, and the most immediate solution to it. It made me riled up, the consequences of the action I was intending to take not even a blip on the horizon. To be fair to myself, I figured I didn't need to worry about things like consequences when I could disappear from the entire universe with a moments notice, provided my portal wasn't on cooldown.
I'm sure I would be able to return, but I didn't know it with the same certainty that I knew the other stuff, and I didn't really care. There was cool stuff here, but I didn't have anything tying me down; no friends, no family, only a full-time job at a supermarket. And that definitely wasn't something I wanted to do for however many more years...
So I left my apartment with one destination in mind; the apartment next door, of course.
See, the portal had a cooldown, but the "capability" stealing didn't. It was simply limited to one per person. I didn't know exactly what counted as a capability, but it felt broad, like, really broad. My hope/plan was that I could steal my neighbor's capability for "strength", making me stronger than a normal person. Then I could go to another apartment, and have an easier time taking their blood, and basically go from apartment to apartment...
I stopped in front of my neighbor's door, staring at the painted wood.
Was I really, seriously considering becoming some sort of, stat-vampire serial killer?
I shut my eyes, breathing out a slow breath...
Before opening them wide and knocking a few times on the door.
I had always wondered if I was a good person, or a bad person. It felt good to help people, but at the same time, it felt good to hurt people. Not that I went around beating people up, I just favorably recalled the few fights I had gotten in when I was a kid, and there was always a repressed desire to respond to confrontation with violence.
I always paid my taxes, but shoplifting was fun every now and again.
I was a law abiding citizen, but did I really want to pay fifteen dollars for a streaming service I was only going to watch one show on?
I did good things, I did bad things, so it made me unsure if I was a good person, or a bad person. For a while now I had assumed that meant I was a neutral person.
But now, I knew.
I was a bad person. And that thought felt right.
When my neighbor opened the door--Mike, I think his name was--greeted me with a smile.
"Hey, Alan, right? What can I do for you this fine evening?"
Damn. He seemed like a nice guy.
But man, I was starving. Still, I couldn't just jump on the guy and bite his neck like a vampire; I wasn't sure I could manage to get enough blood before getting thrown off, and I didn't think I even had any vampire fangs.
A cursory feel of my teeth with my tongue confirmed that suspicion.
That meant I had to do things the old-fashioned way. I mentally cursed myself for not even thinking about bringing a knife, while out loud I said, "Yeah, Alan. So sorry to bother you this late, but, uh," I struggled to think of an excuse, "Can I... Use your bathroom?" I rushed to explain, hoping an embarrassing excuse would prevent him from getting suspicious, "It's just, my plumbing broke, and the plumber isn't coming until the morning. And nature is calling, y'know?"
I hoped my awkwardness would be misread as being shy about asking to piss in his piss-room, instead of the fact that I was bullshitting as hard as I could about the entire thing.
His face morphed into a look of understanding before he nodded, "Sure, I don't mind." He stood to the side, holding the door open. "Bathroom is just to the left--Ah, you'd know where it is, same apartment 'n' all that."
I nod, a look of gratitude plastered on my face, as I entered. "Thank you so much, I won't take that long."
The interior was built the exact same as mine, an open design with a kitchen, living room, and a hallway leading to two bedrooms and a bathroom. His decorations were nicer, though, with a thick, brown rug and a fancy coffee table in the living room, and a wall-mounted shelf in the living room that had a few plants on it. Even a tall bookshelf next to his modest T.V., half-filled with a spread of self-help books.
I heard the door shut behind me with a click as I passed between the kitchen and living room, on my way to the bathroom. Fuck, I couldn't just rush for a knife and run at him; the dude was several inches taller to me, and the last time I had been in a fight was five years ago, when I was still in high school. I wasn't confident at all that I could beat him like that; if it wasn't for this hunger inside me, this desire to consume blood, I wouldn't have dared coming this far. The hunger motivated me, pushing me forward without the choice to turn around.
I'm not sure if I would have turned around, though, even without that constant pressure.
I entered the bathroom, locking the door behind me, and looked around. Same as mine, basically. I started pissing, the tank still half-full from my power-sponsored interruption only a minute ago. At least I didn't have to risk him wondering why he didn't hear me making piss.
Once I was done, I started washing my hands, which was when I got a spark of hope in me. If you could even label it hope when the context was so fucked up.
I left the water running and dried my hands, then opened the medicine cabinet; a couple prescription drugs I didn't recognize, toothpaste, deodorant... No razor of any sort. I checked the left drawer under the sink next. Nail clipper, a spare tube of toothpaste; still no razor.
Then I opened the other drawer, and behold, a razor!
But not a proper razor-blade, which wasn't what I was hoping for. It was one with five tiny blades, and I almost gave up on it, but an idea crossed my mind. It made made me grimace, but I felt it would probably work, and that's what mattered in the end.
I fiddled with it, longer than I would have liked, and broke off each individual blade. I held the five thin strips of metal in my palm, and felt it wouldn't be enough; luckily, he had a few replacement heads. Now that I had done it once, I was faster to get the blade from them, leaving me with a handful of small blades.
I shut off the faucet, took a deep breath, and exited the bathroom.
Mike was sitting on the couch, watching a football game on the T.V. The placement of it meant that his back would be to me as I walked by. He turned to me, and I gave him a grateful smile, "Thanks so much, man. I'll make it up to you, I promise."
He chuckled and turned back to the game, waving his hand dismissively, "Don't worry about. It was no skin off my back." He didn't even care that I had spent a suspiciously long time washing my hands. Or maybe I was just paranoid; either way, he wasn't.
I almost sighed.
C'mon, Mike, why'd you have to make it so easy?
His eyes were glued to the game as I walked up behind him. I couldn't imagine being so laissez faire with a stranger in my home. I mean, we weren't complete strangers, having talked half a dozen times, and we lived right next to each other, but still. Not enough caution on his part.
That worked for me.
With as much speed as I could muster, I reached around with both hands; my left hand went for his nose, pinching it tight, while my other carried a pile of twenty thin razor-blades and drove them all into his mouth, which had opened in a gasp of surprise the moment my hands entered his vision. I left my right hand clamped over his mouth and braced against the couch before pulling his head back as hard as I physically could, holding it tight against my chest as he began struggling. My core stung as he tried to get up, but adrenaline flooded my body as I held him tight, and managed to keep him there. He tried to pull my hands off his face, panicking as he felt dozens of cuts form in his mouth, but my leverage was far better than his.
He started to scream, muffled as it was with my hands covering his nose and mouth, and tried to throw his fists back against my skull. They were sloppy hits that scraped and slid, only one connecting properly with my temple, but it wasn't enough to knock me off, and he couldn't get up with me braced against the back of the couch. He tried twisting, but it got him nowhere; he abandoned trying to punch and went back to pulling desperately at my hands. I couldn't see his face, but I imagined it was getting red by now from the lack of oxygen. He was desperate to breath, I was sure of that, and it gave me another idea.
Another confirmation, if everything so far wasn't obvious enough, that I was, indeed, a bad person.
I let him pry the hand on his mouth off, just a bit, just enough to breathe. He sucked in a violent breath through his mouth... And then started coughing. I clamped my hand back down fully on his mouth as his body shook with suppressed coughs. He seemed to fully lose it at that point, smacking my hands and forearms and head as his body kept trying to cough, a useless attempt to bat me away.
Then his legs pushed against the ground, pushing his body towards me in an attempt to slip out; my heart pounded as I realized it was going to work. With all my might, I jerked his head to the side; it didn't snap, but it did elicit an even louder scream. I kept pulling as I felt him pushing with all his might against me.
Ah, fuck. I should have just strangled him with something. I could have done what I was doing now, but with my grip on his throat or something, instead of this messy, horrific murder.
But I can't deny, a part of me enjoyed it. My power wanted to make people bleed, and I could almost smell the fresh blood arising inside him, pooling in his stomach.
As I was getting ready to back off and let him bleed out internally, his struggles began to die down, his blows and pushing lost their ferocity, becoming weaker and weaker until they stopped coming at all.
He was dead.
I was a murderer now.
And I was so, so, Hungry.
All there was in me was a desperate desire for blood, and it pushed me forward. I bent down, aiming to bite into his neck, I realized there was blood on my hand, probably from him coughing it up.
It wasn't much, but it looked delicious. I brought my hand up to my face; I could only hope that it was enough, and, fuck, I could only hope they didn't have to be alive to steal a capability. If I had just killed this guy for nothing, I would be furious.
Either way, there was only one thing left to do.
As soon as the blood hit my tongue, a rush of pleasure ran through my entire body, a comfortable warmth that radiated out from my tongue and filled me with satisfaction. For a moment it felt like I was suspended in the air, faced with a thousand possibilities, and I knew then that this was where I chose the capability to take.
It came to me almost naturally, his capability for strength drawn in by my desire. In a single instant, a wave of fire burned its way through my body and then, everything was back to normal. The tip of my tongue was still touching the palm of my hand; I hadn't even needed to swallow, unlike your mother. It seemed that I didn't need more than a drop... I looked beside me at Mike's fresh corpse as I continued slowly licking the blood off my hand. I was still unsure if his name was Mike, but I was sure that I didn't need to kill him in such a horrific manner, or killed him at all. I could've just bit him and ran.
But I didn't know that it only took a drop.
Even if I knew that, I'm not sure my actions would have changed.
Hate to admit it, but I felt great. No, wait, I didn't hate to admit it. I should've, but I didn't. The blood was energizing, not like a shot of caffeine though. It was more like I had an amazing night of sleep, and had just woken up to sunbeams shining through an open window, the cool breeze of spring blowing through. Everything was so clear, and now that I was satiated, I could think straight. It made me realize just how muddied my mind was before, centered only around satisfying the hunger for blood that had assaulted me mid-piss.
Forget serial killing my way through an apartment complex; I had the power to traverse universes. Every 24 hours, of course, but that wasn't long in the grand scheme of things. It'd be a waste of time to go from apartment to apartment with strength that was still within natural human limits (not natural for my size, though); I would be better served taking a more unique capability from someone in a more powerful universe. I tried to think of where I could go that would have someone that would be a weak enough target, yet have some special capability that would give me a great advantage.
There was one person that came to mind immediately. I wasn't entirely sure I could take his capability, but the way I felt about it, I'd give it a solid 60% chance.
I'd take it.
The portal opened before me.