| ����������� Cruelty had never felt so abundant. As the wind began to kick up dust, he turned his face back to the dark ally where he had found shelter for the destructive rays of the sun...as well as the eyes of the streetwalkers. ����������� The hunger stirred in his stomach. It twisted and climbed the walls of his abdomen like a caged animal, and he winced at the pain it was offering. His breath became rapid and the terror returned to him. ����������� "This hunger.." he thought "is so very strong. Never in life had I felt such a craving! It will surly destroy me if I do not find another victim." The thought of once again subduing to the cursed act of draining the blood from another man or women--or child--grappled his tainted heart and brought a chilling sweat to his forehead. ����������� �The dirty streets had offered no comfort to him during the past nights. However, his mind had created a confusing pain that tormented him to the point where he cared little for his environment at all. ����������� Devon never thought much about death. He wasn't the type to ponder the existence of a pearly, majestic land of paradise, nor could he contemplate the idea of fiery damnation for all eternity. He couldn't even grasp eternity. It always slipped into a choice of faith that he never could muster the effort to answer. ����������� His concept of time without limit was still transparent, however Devon did believe that damnation was real. This new existence of hunting and death had proven to him that evil and despair could be felt--and tasted! ����������� He clutched the side of the wall as the monster within his body growled and clawed again at his sanity. "I must feed..." he roared. A second pasted and the boy stood terrified of what he had said. He couldn't believe that this new creature he was becoming had forced him now, as he stood beneath the smog and stars, to crave the blood of another life. ����������� How long had it been? Three weeks now? He couldn't remember. Perhaps the change in his mind had affected his memory. He could only recall the darkness that had consumed him late on the evening he last felt human. ����������� It had been raining that night. He was cursing himself as he drove through the sheets of sharp rain that were crashing down on the glass of his front window. The squeak of the wipers as they tried in vain to rush the blurring weather from his vision furthered his frustration. He was twenty minutes late to pick up Jessie, a girl he had met over a tall brass pitcher at the Green Cup--his Friday night indulgence. She wasn't really that attractive. She wore glasses, which he did remember, but for some reason he didn't find her face or her body something he wanted. Still, he agreed to take her out again with the hopes that he?d find something about her he did want. She would be waiting for him now, soaked and disappointed. "No woman should be stood up"; he remembered thinking as he spun around another corner sloppily. Devon hadn't seen whoever it was standing there, but the dark form was indeed standing. It made no effort to dodge his dark red Chevy, and simply collapsed on the hood as the bumper sank into his kneecaps. Devon could remember screaming and crushing the break petal violently. It took a whole six or seven seconds, but the car did end up halting and the body flew like a torpedo onto the street, tumbling and rolling until coming to a rest near the curb. Anger, surprise, and fear all grabbed Devon in that instant and dragged him into the street after the body. His boots kicked up dirty water which splashed against the legs of his jeans, and he nearly slipped and tumbled as he hurried to inspect the stranger he had innocently attacked. The body was lying huddled and defenseless like a man who just got a swift kick to the crotch. Devon found himself panting and shouting into the rain "don't be dead, don't be dead. Please don't be dead." He had hit an older man. He could see the slivers of silver in the man's hair, which dangled defeated and soaked over his face and down to the ground. The old man's figure reminded Devon of the scary old creep that used to live down the street from him when he was a kid. The chubby kids he hung around with in those days called him Ronald the Elder, and said that he was so old, he had actually fought in every war the United States had been in. This man was not soldier though. Age had draped him in a lost sense of frailty, and Devon was growing more and more convinced that he had killed the man--shattered each and every one of his ribs like dried twigs beneath a sturdy camping boot. "Should I call the police? What if he wakes up? What would he tell them? I can't go to prison." The thoughts in his head were screaming at him, and he paced before the limp body, trying to silence them. They came to an abrupt halt when Devon noticed that the body was no longer limp: it was moving. Relief and terror met in his chest as Devon dove into the body, shaking it in an effort revive what he had thought to be lifeless. "Mister, mister are you okay?" He was saying the words more in anger now. "You scared the shit out of me, man" he thought, "how you dare do such a thing like get hit by me and make me think that I was going to jail." Devon wasn't sure what happened next. Somewhere between his own agonized scream and the sinking heat that had pierced his throat, he realized that not all was well in the river that flowed down the street he had come to a screeching halt on. The man's head had moved so fast, Devon thought he had been shot. Maybe a street punk had picked that moment to strike at the helpless looking pair on the side of the road. But no, the pain that Devon felt now was not from any bullet. It was immediate and draining. He could feel the jaws of the stranger tighten as his own blood gurgled from his jugular into the open. He felt it spilling all over his chest as it was being sapped from his neck. Through a blurry ringing in his ear, Devon could hear the slurping and grunting noises as the newly arisen road kill mealed on his blood. The sounds passed... in time everything had. Devon shivered as his memory went from that dark day in his past to all the incidents he had committed the same act. The first time had been the worse. A lost Saint-Bernard had awoken him painfully during what must have been the night of his attack. He returned to consciousness with a disaster in his head with the magnitude of several hangovers and an aneurism. All he could clearly focus on was the hunger--the searing, red hot pain in his chest and stomach that cried to be filled. In his mind, there was no second guessing; nor was there the slightest thought to the condition of the sniffing morsel that was now barking at him. He feasted on the canine's corpse after wrestling with it for several minutes. As if possessed, he had consumed the ruby fluid of the stray's flesh at an inhuman rate, and afterwards, he sat staring at the mutt's carcass, which lay like the remains of a shredded Thanksgiving Day turkey. He was terrified of it. His mind couldn't wrap around the idea of what he had done. It was as if his new diseased mentality had erased any clue that he was responsible for the filth and death before him. The tears rushed from his eyes, and flowed downward across his scared face, mixing with the dog's blood as it reached the corners of his lips. The following three weeks had been a nightmare of cold nights attacking and murdering stray animals in the park. However, the hunger within him grew. Eventually, the minuscule amount of blood he could manage to drain from the woodland creature in the city park was replaced by a deeper need--a need for the blood of his own. He had taken his first human life in the silence of the most horrific night of his life. The homeless man, who had been sleeping soundly beneath two torn jackets and the sports section of the paper, surrendered his life just as Devon had surrendered� his to the stranger he thought he had ran over. Devon coughed as his thoughts were pulled back to the hunger that he was only too familiar with. He spotted a jogger, hurrying past the railroad tracks and towards a slimmer waist. Devon recoiled in painful agony as the hunger drove him to desire the young women's blood. He was no longer afraid to take the life of another soul to satisfy his own wants. He started after her, terror mixing with exhilaration as he chased his new prey. He knew that she would not be the last to die for him. Deep within his blackened heart, a festering growth of pleasure was seeding in him, and with each meal he consumed, it grew until Devon was no longer rooted in the moral world of sanity... but rather a child of evil that would never refuse the hunger within. |
| Dan's Notes: Another little short story with no real direction or solid character development. I think my descriptive writing is coming along nicly though, but I will leave that judgment up to you. |
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| This is my writing. If you want to rip it off, there really isn't much I can do to stop you, but you will be shunned in your next life. If you have something to say about it or want to comment, critisize, or question something, then head to the guest book and speak your mind there, or e-mail me personally. |
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| My e-mail: [email protected] |
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| Warning: I was aiming for juicy, scary splatter-punk here. I may not have succeeded, but just in case, know that there is some violence here! |
| The Hunger (C) Copywritten 2002 |
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