Chapter 9: The Tainted Truffle Pig

Elias sat in his kitchen at 6:47 AM, staring at the blender that had become his lifeline once again.

The protein shake inside was the same beige color it had always been, the same consistency, the same medicinal taste that had defined twenty-seven years of his existence. But everything else had changed. His hands shook as he lifted the glass to his lips—not from weakness or hunger, but from the weight of what those hands had done in the morgue's sterile darkness.

The shake went down like liquid chalk, his restored human digestive system struggling to process even this simple sustenance. His body, returned to its original configuration through unspeakable means, seemed to reject nourishment of any kind. As if it knew what price had been paid for its restoration and found the very act of eating tainted by association.

He forced himself to finish the shake, then immediately prepared another. And another. Building the walls of his old prison one careful sip at a time.

The apartment bore no trace of his week-long transformation. While he'd been hunting in the morgue, some vestige of his human consciousness had driven him to clean obsessively upon his return. Every surface scrubbed, every remnant of consumed furniture replaced with items ordered online and delivered with suspicious efficiency. The delivery drivers had left everything outside his door, unwilling to face whatever they sensed lurking within.

Now his living room looked exactly as it had before the car accident, before Dr. Henley's revelation, before everything had gone so catastrophically wrong. The same threadbare couch, the same scratched coffee table, the same portrait of his mother holding him as an infant, her arm bandaged from some long-ago injury he'd never understood.

But Elias could see the differences his human eyes had missed before. The careful positioning of furniture to create clear sight lines to all exits. The way his mother's expression in the photograph wasn't just tired but watchful, protective in a way that suggested she'd been guarding against something specific. The heavy curtains that blocked outside observation, the locks that were more sophisticated than a minimum-wage worker should have been able to afford.

She had known. Somehow, Eleanor Vance had known what he could become.

His phone buzzed with a text from Stevey: Haven't heard from you in a week, man. Everything okay? Cookie's asking when you're coming back to work.

Elias stared at the message for long minutes before responding: Feeling better. Food poisoning. Should be back Monday.

The lie came easily, automatically. He'd spent a lifetime lying about his condition, about his limitations, about the careful restrictions that defined his existence. What was one more falsehood added to the foundation of deception his life was built on?

But this lie felt different. Heavier. Because now he knew the truth behind all the other lies, understood the real reason his mother had enforced such rigid dietary controls. He wasn't sick—he was dangerous. The careful liquid diet, the isolation, the constant vigilance—it had all been designed to contain something that should never have been allowed to wake up.

Another protein shake. Another careful sip of the beige solution that tasted like surrender.

The hunger was different now. Not the savage, transformative need that had driven him to consume everything from furniture to human flesh, but something more insidious. A constant awareness of potential, of possibilities, of the thin line between restraint and catastrophe. Every scent that drifted through his windows carried information his enhanced senses had learned to process. The fish market three blocks away. The restaurant dumpsters behind Murphy's Tavern. The cemetery where he'd learned the true cost of reclaiming his humanity.

All of it food. All of it transformation. All of it just a moment's weakness away.

He prepared his fourth shake of the morning with mechanical precision, each motion a ritual of containment. Protein powder measured exactly, water added to the precise line on the blender jar, thirty seconds of mixing to achieve the proper consistency. The same routine that had sustained him for over two decades, now serving as a barrier against the monster he knew he could become.

The doorbell rang at 10:30 AM.

Elias froze, protein shake halfway to his lips. He hadn't ordered anything else, hadn't called for any services. The rational part of his mind suggested it might be Stevey, worried enough about his weeklong absence to check in person. But his enhanced senses—still functioning despite his restored human form—detected something else entirely.

The scent was wrong. Not human, but not quite animal either. Something that existed in the spaces between categories, in the grey areas where classification broke down.

He approached the door cautiously, his bare feet silent on the wooden floor. Through the peephole, he could see a figure standing on his landing—a woman in her fifties, unremarkable in every way except for the intensity of her gaze. She stared directly at the peephole as if she could see through it, as if she knew exactly where he was standing.

"Elias Vance," she said, her voice carrying easily through the door. "We need to talk."

He didn't answer, didn't move, barely breathed. But somehow she knew he was listening.

"It's about your mother," she continued. "About what she did to protect you. About why it didn't work."

The words hit him like physical blows. His mother's secret, the carefully maintained deception, the bandaged arm in the photograph—this woman knew. Somehow, impossibly, she understood the truth behind his transformation.

"My name is Dr. Sarah Chen," the voice continued. "I worked with Eleanor twenty-seven years ago. I'm the one who told her not to breastfeed you."

The protein shake slipped from Elias's nerveless fingers, splattering across the floor in beige streaks. Through the door, he heard the woman's soft chuckle—not cruel, but knowing. Understanding. Familiar with the weight of terrible knowledge.

"You've fed recently," Dr. Chen observed, her voice clinical but not unkind. "I can smell it on you. Human flesh, processed through a system that was never meant to handle such... complexity. The restoration worked, but it's temporary. You know that, don't you?"

Elias pressed his back against the door, his restored human heart hammering against his ribs. She was right—he could feel it already, the subtle changes beginning at his cellular level. His digestive system adapting to handle more complex proteins. His senses sharpening beyond normal human ranges. The careful balance his cannibalistic cure had achieved was already starting to shift.

"The hunger will return," Dr. Chen continued relentlessly. "Stronger than before, because you've shown your system what it's truly capable of. What your mother spent her life trying to prevent is now inevitable."

"Go away," Elias whispered, his voice barely audible through the door.

"I can help you," she replied. "But not if you keep pretending you're still human. Not if you keep believing that protein shakes and self-denial can contain what you've become."

She was quiet for a moment, and Elias thought she might have left. Then her voice came again, softer but somehow more terrifying:

"Your mother tried to save you by starving the beast. But starvation only made it hungrier. When it finally fed..." The pause stretched like a held breath. "Well, you know what happened at the morgue. You know what you did to those poor people."

Elias slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor, knees drawn to his chest like a child hiding from nightmares. But the nightmare was inside him now, integrated into his cellular structure, written into his DNA through acts that could never be undone.

"I'll be at the harbor," Dr. Chen said, her footsteps already moving away from the door. "Pier 7, when you're ready to learn the truth about what you are. What your mother was. What your father became."

The footsteps faded, leaving Elias alone with the spilled protein shake and the crushing weight of revelation. His father—the man his mother had never mentioned, never discussed, never even acknowledged existed. Another piece of the puzzle, another secret layer in the web of deception that had defined his entire life.

He sat there until the protein shake dried to a chalky film on the floor, until the sun moved across the sky and shadows began to lengthen. His stomach cramped with hunger—real hunger, not the mechanical need for sustenance that had driven his transformations. His restored human body demanded food, but every option carried the risk of triggering another change.

Another shake. Another careful measured portion of beige solution. Another step back from the edge of becoming something that the morgue had taught him he was capable of being.

But as he prepared the mixture, his enhanced senses caught the scent drifting up from the street below. Fresh fish from the returning boats. Grilled meat from Murphy's kitchen. The complex biological signatures of the people walking past his building, their heartbeats audible through the walls, their body heat visible through the windows.

All of it potential. All of it calling to something deep in his cellular structure that protein shakes could no longer fully suppress.

The tainted truffle pig was home in his pen, but the scent of what lay buried in the harbor district's soil would never leave his enhanced senses. And somewhere out there, Dr. Sarah Chen waited with answers that might be worse than the questions they resolved.

Elias drank his shake and tasted ashes. Outside his window, the world continued its oblivious routine, unaware that a monster walked among them wearing a human face, sustained by liquid meals and the terrible knowledge of what lay beneath his carefully maintained facade.

The mask of normalcy had never felt heavier. Or more necessary.