Where the Wild Things Are:

Nemesis Is Hungry

In the first few minutes of his life, Nemesis (AKA Nemmy) found himself craving Subway.

The bad news was, the location of his corpse in the underground lab didn't allow him access to the option to track down a cold cut combo. So instead, Nemmy was forced to eat a terrible meal of dog food and stale bread. This was the beginning of his first trip to the rage that came with being a monster.

People often spoke to him as if he were stupid. They would speak slowly, indicating he was suffering from mental retardation, and often elongating syllables as if he were a foreigner.

"Do you want eat?" Asked the ugly scientist girl with the pig tails. "You want more num nums?"

She waved the tray of dog treats at him as if he were a dachshund. Did she expect a trick? "You good boy want treat treat?"

She was the retarded one, not him. He hated her stupid smug face. How dare she treat him as thought he were of inferior intellect?!

To teach her a lesson, Nemmy slapped the tray from beneath it and over turned the treats all over her. She panicked, shouting in fear, and he was shocked repeatedly with rods until he fell down.

This was step two on Nemmy's day of rage.

After eating, but still craving food he'd never again eat, Nemmy found himself led like the dog they thought he was to a gun range. He was handed a big machine gun and instructed, "No shoot DOCTORS ok, big guy? Just aim down at the STARS."

Stars. All over the far wall, stars danced happily.

But not stars in the sky. Not the ones you wished on, since Nemmy was no longer blessed with any of those, but the kind who'd often made fun of him. The worst of the lot, Albert Wesker, stood tauntingly on the wall with his sunglasses down the ugly blade of his nose.

Nemmy raised the gun and blew him away in a spatter and scatter of blasted concrete blocks. The nerds all cheered. They gave him another tray of dog food as a reward.

He roared in rage and slapped the tray again making the girl run away shouting. This time, he was ready for the rods. He caught the first and shoved it against the man who ran for it. The second backed off.

Nemmy, meaning to explain why he was so pissed, shouted, "STARSSS!"

And realized he had limited dialogue options. Apparently his mouth wouldn't form more than a few words. He wasn't missing anything intellect wise, but he was devoid of the physical ability to speak. He was, it seemed, almost a mute.

He spent the morning at the tree by the water watching the ducks swim. One perched on his leg and quacked. He hugged it sadly and wished for the life he'd known before - a toilet would be a gift over the dog food degradation he suffered.

By a week in, he was so lonely. He began to make friends with the animals in the woods. He had squirrel pals and sang off key to them as they lingered at his feet.

The dog food was so awful sometimes that he gagged and roared.

He killed targets and took no prisoners, but he failed his first attempt to kill a living thing. They put him in a ring with a bunny. They called down, "Eradicate rabbit."

He refused.

They sent the men with shock rods.

He killed them instead.

They rewarded him with more dog food.

He was ready to kill someone for a sandwich.

They brought him Hardee's one day. He ate it, but he roared his rage at the heavens, "STARSSSSS!" The paper wrapped and that stupid star on it stared up at him, tauntingly.

Nemmy got bad gas from the dog food. He farted so much that his forest friends stop hanging around for a few days. He roared his loneliness at the night sky. "STARRRRS!"

He named the bunny he refused to kill Mortimor. They spent afternoons in the ring sharing carrots.

One afternoon, Mortimor went missing. Nemmy tried to ask after him, but he couldn't find the words. But that night they served him ground rabbit.

Nemmy killed three of them.

They rewarded him with more dog food.

All he wanted was a sandwich.

Finally, one day a man came and showed him a picture of a woman with two slices of bread on her head, giggling. He said, "This is Jill Valentine."

Nemmy stared at her until he was nearly blind. Like that, laughing, trapped between buttery wheat bread...she looked...just like...a sandwich.

A Jill Hoagie...no. That sounded wrong. But the right food was in there somewhere.

And it got better. Because the man said, "She is a member of S.T.A.R.S. I want you to find her and eradicate her."

Nemmy licked the picture, twice, but he couldn't taste her sauce. He could hardly wait to find her. First, he would hug her - just to feel a woman against him once more to appreciate the joy of it. After she stopped struggling, he'd kill her, and then? He'd make her his own Jill Sandwich.

Maybe then he wouldn't be so darn hungry.