The day he ran away from his family’s manor by the sea, a wind storm followed him across the fields, gray and green, textured with the features of his father’s scowling face. He left behind the gnarled trees, the cliff face dropping down to the rocks and breakers, the family plot of graves, the wrought iron fences, the decaying house, his home.

He didn’t have a good reason for doing it. He had a beautiful life. But sometimes beauty leaves a void in its wake. He wanted to experience the rough and ugly to give distance and meaning to his passions and emotions. He wanted to be a common man.

Out past the fields and through the forest line of trees, he found the freight train line heading east and hopped a box car, unprepared for the frigid cold the night would bring. He trembled there, finally knowing what trembling was; and he didn’t like it. So he thought he must be doing something right. The countryside swept by him like bedroom apparitions. The kind that only appear in the shadows of clothes formed when the last light is snuffed out for slumber.

A patrolman caught him a few towns over and threw him in jail for the night. That is where he met her. Huddled in ragged clothes, half dead in the corner of the jail, they shared the bread run through with maggots and mold. They swapped stories through the dank, dark nights, and he lied to her about who he was.

When they were let out and tossed into the gutter, they teamed up and took to the woods. She first produced a dirk from a sheath and slit it down their palms. They clasped their hands together and felt the raw sting of old blood shed and new blood formed.

When there was nothing to eat, they feasted on the carrion of beasts deep in the woods. She had filed her teeth down to fangs. There was something sacred in the way she chewed.

When they needed money, they stole it from carriages passing down the highway paths. And when they had the urge to escape the forest, they rode the trains off into the country.

In a nearby city, they assembled a band of thieves and waited for travelers by the roadside to slit their throats and plunder their possessions. They drank brandy and wine and slaughtered livestock on nearby farms, where they feasted by bonfires in the thick of trees and howling animals.

And one night, after making love to her, he stayed up in his makeshift tent and stared at the full moon. Across the campsite, a lantern was on, and he could hear one of his comrades crying. He was speaking to his mother like she was there. And he thought about his own mother. It slowly began to rain. He could make out her face in the bark of the trees, and he knew it was her tears.

I’m ready to grow young again, he said to himself. But he knew there was no going back. So he became consumed with anger.

In the dawn, they woke to shrill wails of pain. A roe doe was giving birth to a fawn in the brush. Its birth was the most brutal sound he had ever heard. And when it was over, there was a vulnerable creature lying there, collapsing on its legs; awkwardly trying to stand. He watched the tired roe deer suffer, half dead from giving birth. And he hid amidst the leaves and moss while she chewed the flesh of the placenta.

They had little success on the highway for quite some time. They began eating carrion again. He fell sick, and she took care of him. Where there once was a lover, he now saw her face irreplaceably as his mother’s. She began to resent him. When he reached to kiss her, she sank into his mouth with her fangs, drawing blood.

On the last day they spent together, they attempted to rob a carriage. But these locals had been informed of their whereabouts in the woods. Before they could even pull them over, the driver produced a gun. Likewise, the passengers produced them from their windows. He watched all five of his crew blown off their feet, and a bullet pierce his lover’s neck. He shrieked in fear and crawled on his hands and knees off into the brush. Like a coward.

When he returned to the roadside, he retrieved his lover’s body. He dragged her to their campsite and wept. He talked to her dead body like it was his mother. He apologized, but it was more so out of self-pity.

In the morning, he was so hungry that he began to feast on her carrion. He brushed aside the maggots like he had picked them out of the bread in his jail cell. And with her, he shared one last transfer of blood and energy.

It took him a month to find his way back home. The manor by the sea was the way it had always been. Stoic as a tombstone. His father had passed in the years he was gone, and his mother greeted him with a face full of tears.

She looked haunting as a widow. Pale. Weathered.

He looked around the house of his youth, feeling like an imposter. He could return to this life as he pleased, whereas for his companions, the life he chose had been a curse.

With his mother’s approval, he went to university in the city. This time he rode proper, in a passenger car, with a steamer trunk and service staff. His clothes were pressed and fitted. One might have mistaken him for a gentleman.

He enjoyed the academics but he could not relate to his peers. With his life experience, he was alienated from the ones he was supposed to relate to. With his social status, he was alienated from the street urchins that he had always wanted to be. He had led the idiosyncratic life of an obscure fool. Even in the frigid boxcar, he had never felt so alone.

His mother would travel to meet him in the city. They would eat at restaurants and sip port and cordials. They would catch up, kiss goodbye, and go back to their respective lives. He missed his childhood by the sea. But he missed his lover more. Every time he saw his mother, he tried to see that woman’s face in hers.

Sometimes at night, he would sneak out of his dormitory and crawl hands and knees through the city gutters and alleys searching for dead rats and birds, to feast on raw carrion like days of yore. Often, he’d pause mid-chewing, flesh and maggots dangling from his lips, and stare up at the loveless moon, and remember that man crying in the forest by lanternlight while it rained.

He could never be a common man. His privilege was always masked. He stayed up in the darkness, considering what this meant.

By the morning light, he had filed his teeth to fangs.

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Adam J. Galanski-De León is the author of the story collection, “The Laughter of Hyenas at Bay” (Raging Opossum Press), and the novella, “Intrepid” (Alien Buddha Press), among other books. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and his novel “Szarotka” is the winner of the Buffalo Books Prize in Fiction 2022 from Kansas State University. Adam lives in Chicago, IL with his wife, daughter, and four cats. He maintains a website at http://www.adamjgalanskideleon.com.