Blood and Water (The Hitchhiker)

Reaching out to touch it, the thrill of first contact still hasn't worn off. Adoring the skin before me, wondering at its chill silence, its whiteness under the slivered crescent moon, at the luminosity of sanguinary stains in that same silvery radiance. Around me the dead man's screams still echo, as if he still breathed, lived, but he doesn't, of course. My knife has made quite sure of that. His spirit, though, hasn't seen fit to leave. Of course, it can't. My fetish made quite sure of that.1

My lizard-like tongue flicks between my reddened, wolfish incisors, loosening bits of meat and gristle trapped between the sleek, gently serrated ivory cutting surfaces. All five claws on both hands are fully extended, buried up to the topmost knuckle in my prey's shoulder blades. The way each tip slips gracefully through the muscle to slide like an ice-skater across not-quite-dead bone shivers an incomparable ecstasy through me. As I often do at this point in a hunt, I begin to reminisce about the last few hours, seasoning my triumph with memories of how it came to be. 2

---3

I wasn't as careful with this one as I am sometimes. I wasn't as picky. I usually do research, but this time I let my Gift, my special finding Gift, do the work for me. I trust my instincts. I trust my Mother. I trust my Gift. So I went and walked, and found myself on the side of the freeway. I stuck out my thumb, and a car soon stopped.4

I can come across however I want to certain people. Some people are too aware, too thinking, and they stop me, they feel me, they notice me deeper. But most people don't think, and I can fool them. I made him pay attention to my face. To my "exotic" phenotype. I made him think I was willing to have sex with him for money. I made him think I was attracted to him. (It wasn't hard. I was, after all, or I wouldn't be eating his gluteus maximus right now.) 5

I worked especially hard at making him think I didn't notice him glancing at the glove box. There was a gun in there. There usually is.6

He told me his name, with a sick eagerness in his eyes that revealed his earnestness. He was too caught up in the fantasy of the pickup to think of a fake name. 7

"Good to meet you... Jason," I repeated, my golden-bronze eyes locking with an alluring intensity to his. "Let's get out of here." 8

He was speeding most of the time on the way. That part is too easy.9

He drove me to a deep part of the forest, a remote part, where only Gaia and the Moon could see us. Where no human voice could hear us no matter how we might cry.10

I made a show of reaching for my jeans, but I kept my eyes on his face. My genitals throbbed painfully at the deer-in-headlights look that dropped over his poor stupid face when the knife came out instead of my penis. He didn't even think to lunge for his gun. Maybe he was new at this. 11

I took the keys and the gun, too. Holding him at point with his own gun, I noticed rope in the backseat.12

"Oh, we had some special plans, did we?" His eyes were twin coals smoldering in well-stoked hatred, and he did his damndest to burn a hole in my heart with them. Poor fool. He didn't seem to understand that, while I do indeed have a heart, I hadn't brought it along with me. Its services were not required for tonight's festivities. 13

I ordered him out of the car before standing up myself. This is the trickiest part of the game -- if you don't do it right, if you take the muzzle off the toy for just one instant, they can bolt and you'll lose 'em.14

Fortunately, I am quite dexterous. My hostage did not believe that I could indeed fire a gun accurately with my tail until I used his pretty little .32 to blow his patella off. His gurgling collapse made it very difficult for me to tie the complex knot I had in mind, and I ended up giving up with a sigh of annoyance. "You know, Jason," I commented as I dragged him by the rope now fastened around his neck, "you're a lot more trouble than the look on your face is worth, no matter how big the boner it gave me is. You'd better hope you taste good, or I'm going to be quite disappointed in you."15

Jason was too busy choking and squealing and tearing at the rope to respond. Some people are just congenitally incapable of multitasking, I've observed.16

I dragged him away from the car, to a place where the soil had washed away, revealing the bedrock below. The trees around were bent and gnarled with heavy wind and hard living. My knife sang in my head, begging for its chance, but I told it to be patient. Not yet.17

I made him lie still, supine and spread-eagle. The knife, grumbling, sliced his clothes roughly away. I closed my eyes, enjoying the caress of wind and moonlight against my back. Placing my knee on his stomach, I leaned forward, fixing my teeth around the helpless would-be killer's throat. My lizard's tongue flicked down, pressing, seeking -- yes, there it is. 18

There's nothing sexier than feeling a panicked pulse against your tongue with the scent of terrified hate in your sinuses. 19

I regretted the necessity of leaving my pants on.20

It took a lot of effort, but I allowed myself to bite down only gently. The blood ran free in rivulets, trickling. Just a sample. Oh, glorious wine. Nectar of life. Ah, but still, the red liquid remains but foreplay...21

Instead of tearing out his throat with my teeth, as I desperately wanted to do, I stood up, still holding the rope, and kicked him over onto his back, exposing the backs of his legs. I contented myself with ripping into these with my teeth instead, enjoying the ambrosia of his agonized, pulsating revenge-lust reverberating in the air as I chewed the major tendons of his legs.22

With my evening's entertainment thus immobilized, I set to work. I like some atmosphere when I discharge karmic debt. I don't know what the bacon brigade thinks of the incense ashes they find at my crime scenes, or the burnt-down candles... probably "Satanic rites" or some crap. Piffle.23

I had no opiates to center myself, however, and as soon as the smoke was in the air, my self-control wavered. Feeling its loving kiss, I shivered at the abyssal gulf that yawned wide inside in response. Something, anything, had to be done.24

I turned to my sobbing prey and lunged. Claws punched through spinal column, jaws plunged into buttocks and tore -- Was Fish right? Are they the sweetest part? Not wanting to end the fun just yet, I ripped my hands free before they went too deep into the spine, stretching up to embed them in the shoulder blades instead, where I could rip and dig down to the bone without ending his life too soon.25

Then jealousy like a golden thread pierced my awareness, and I lifted my head, jaws dripping with shreds of long pork. 26

My knife, howling for its turn. 27

How can I deny my faithful companion its pound of flesh, I ask you? I rested upright for a moment, enjoying the scene and reminiscing. 28

And now I open my eyes again, returning to the moment with a greedy snap of my jaws.29

The prey is still making fitful, restless, keening sounds, and desperate shuffles of movement, as if unaware of how much damage has already been done to his pitiful flesh-shell. 30

Ignoring his futile efforts, I roll him onto his back again, revealing a tempting expanse of thus far untouched and oh-so-white skin, glimmering in the moonlight like a corpse's as blood loss drains it clean.31

Friend Jason is not a corpse yet, however; there is still work to do.32

The knife enjoys its time out of the sheath thoroughly. Slitting between each rib is one of my favorite games, and I treat my newest playmate to it now, running the slim blade oh-so-carefully through his flesh so as to split his flesh without damaging anything essential underneath. I'm not ready for him to die yet.33

Only after I decorate his abdomen with a nine-tiered spiral -- engraved in his skin with the knife, of course -- do I turn my attention to his sputtering, gasping need to decease. 34

"Selfish thing," I tell him, poking his throat with the tip of the blade. "If you could, you'd just take off right now, wouldn't you? And where would that leave me? With soggy, dead, tasteless meat. Not that you give a damn." I poke him again, taking only small satisfaction from his panicky, gasping shrieks. The noise is beginning to wear on my nerves. 35

"Far-Bite," I smile, addressing the spirit of the knife. "Time to do your thing." The knife assents, its awareness curling lovingly around my own. 36

An instant later, I plunge the blade into Jason's upper chest. Empathically, the knife tells me when its blade pierces the galloping muscle in the man's left chest, and at that instant I twist the hilt, wrapping the dying organ around the blade, pinning it down within its own cavity, trapping it within the pierced pericardium.37

Now, only now, do I allow my jaws to fly to the throat. Just before the last beat shudders into silence, I lunge, and almost crush the whole neck in my jaws in my eagerness to taste his last heartbeat, to breathe his final breath. And, best of all, to feel his true death. The body-death is only the beginning.38

I love using my knife on those who really deserve it. It's one thing to kill and eat an evil man's body; it's another thing to kill and eat an evil man's soul.39

Far-Bite jumps in my grip as I lift my head, chewing happily on my mouthful. This bite tastes a little dull, too matter-heavy, but I can tell from the fetish knife's report that the spell has worked. The soul has discorporated and achieved decoherency. I close my eyes, imagining the corrupted spirit's terror as it would soon discover it could not flee its own dead body to be reborn, as it felt the fetish knife slicing up its very essence, felt itself break apart into insentient motes of energy to be reabsorbed into the very flesh it struggled to abandon.40

Sick-sexy-sensational.41

My stomach roars at me, suddenly, breaking my reverie. Crimson pulses in my vision as the hunger reasserts its dominance, screaming for satiation. 42

I obey. And, at the same time, I play. Halloween is always a night for play.43

Time disintegrates, breaking into tatters and swirling away, lost in a symphony of cannibal gluttony and dead prey's soul-cries. I crack each bone, licking it clean of marrow, and crush the skull to bathe my claws in the brains just for the fun of it. 44

I spear each eyeball on said claws, like olives, basking in the heat of blood as it soaks through my fur to dry on my underscales. I love when it trickles through the cracks and touches my skin. 45

Only blood and water ever really touch me.