Appetites

Before you read the story let me say this, first of all. This (very) short story was written in 1991, way before glittery vampires and soft, plushy werewolves became the fashion. It’s not cuddly and it’s not glittery. It doesn’t have any vampires, but it might have a werewolf. Some might find it a little graphic.

Are you sitting comfortably?

ONE

It waits.

It is hungry…

And impatient.

Crouched in the bushes besides the park’s main path It shifts Its powerful frame. City night noises drift across the fields on a silk soft breeze. It hears them. It knows that cities mean people, mean prey. Like a spring uncoiling in slow motion It relaxes and wolf-like lopes across the grass; a phantom of black on the bone-white of the moon-bleached ground.

TWO

All senses tingling, It lurks in a darkened doorway off a side street. Prey is moving near It, but too many and too brightly lit.

Footsteps…

Tensing into a spring-steel crouch It prepares. Down the narrow street someone approaches. As they draw nearer it sees and smells that the figure is female, a girl. ‘Pretty.’ It thinks, half-remembered appetites stirring. But It has other lusts to sate this night.

Forty feet…

Thirty…

Twenty.

It leaps, heavy body slamming the girl to the ground with rib-cracking force. Before Its prey has a chance to draw breath to scream It has dipped Its head and finger-length, vicious, yellow fangs have ripped out the virginal whiteness of the young throat. Throwing a blood-flecked muzzle towards the moon, sending a sanguine spray through the air, It howls Its kill-call.

The city that hears pauses, shudders and then carries on.

Head dipping again, to plunge eye deep into the scarlet froth bubbling from the savaged flesh. After several minutes of greedy lapping Its thirst is sated. A satisfied, thrumming growl emanates from deep in Its throat.

Shifting position It pauses, then, with a deft sweep of a powerful forelimb, tipped with iron-hard talons, It lays her open from sternum to groin. With an almost puppy-like sound of pleasure It buries Its head in the warm, soft, quivering organs. Massive jaws gulp great gobbets of tender offal. Deftly It hooks the pink, spongy lungs from within the ribcage. The girl’s heart, rich with fresh blood, burst like an over-ripe plum, filling Its mouth with that familiar, salt-sweet, metallic taste.

It moves to the girl’s head, enveloping it in Its fangs. Tensing slightly It brings Its jaws crushing together. The skull implodes like an egg, the rich grey matter – mixed with splintered bone – filling Its mouth, bringing It a savoury experience so intense it is almost sexual. Searching, It grasps the cortex firmly between Its incisors. With a swift tug, then another, It rips out the spinal cord, nerve braches severing with a sound like wet muslin tearing. This last delightful morsel relished, It turns and vanishes into the darkness with silent, bestial grace.

THREE

Groaning, I curse the radio alarm that has wrenched me so violently from sleep. An all too cheerful voice defiles the hallowed sanctity that exists before ten in the morning.

The News…

Something about a horribly mutilated body in an alley.

‘Some silly bitch walking home alone.’ I muse.

Rising, body protesting vociferously as I drag it from its warm sanctuary, I stumble to the shower. The blood tinges the water pink as I scrub. Memories float back to me now.

The taste…

The smell…

The thrill of the hunt.

You see, I fully realize what I am. I also enjoy being what I am.

Shame about the girl though. She was pretty enough to satisfy appetites other than that for blood. Which reminds me, I’ve got a date with my lady later…