The Hunter
by Ratwoman

Adrian entered the goth club but stayed at the door, letting his gaze travel over the ambiente. It was dark, of course, and 
the walls were decorated with gigantic vampire faces of old black and white horror movies. Some of the people here really 
looked like vampires, faces painted white, wearing  velvety costumes decorated with frills and laces.

Others were from the industrial scene, wearing plain black shirts and pants and black docks. Some in leather descended from the SM scene, with 
chains and handcuffs at their belts. Some were a curious mixture of all of it.

Adrian passed a long haired, fat goth boy in black shorts. The boy was wearing a big smile all over his round face, while he 
was talking to two other goths. He was definitively not what Adrian was looking for, unless the happy goth was hiding some 
deep sorrow under his funny facade. But it would be much harder to find the sadness in him than in other goths here, if 
there was any. 

Adrian was a vampire, but he didn't feed on blood. He fed on sadness. He could find loads of sadness in this place.

Dark as the music was, you couldn't blame it for making goths sad. Adrian had his own theories why he could find so many 
victims in the gothic scene. People with depressions naturally felt drawn to it, as they didn't need to pretend that 
everything was fine.

Of course, some people just liked it. Some people just wanted to be non-conformists, to rebell against the fun-society. 
Others liked the irony of non-conformist wearing the same color. Most people were a bit of everything.

  Adrian stopped at the dancefloor,  watching the goths dancing to the hard beats of Rammstein's "Ich will". 

The little dominatrix looked like a suitable victim. She moved very stffly as if she had bought her sexy leather costume only 
yesterday. But although she was very pretty, she didn't look sexy: she seemed cold, though that probably was not what she 
intended. Adrian was sure that she tried to level out her little self-steem by erotic clothes, and that she thought no man 
tried to talk to her because she still wasn't attractive enough.

Adrian wondered how to approach her. She might be the suspicious, or self-inhibiting, type who would run away.  Once one of 
his victims had escaped him just by a self-inhibiting mechanism. He had successfully chatted the girl up on a party, but,
suddenly, maybe incited by a fear of being hurt, she had grabbed her jacket and run away. Probably she had cursed herself 
afterwards, not guessing that she had just saved her life.

Adrian had half-decided to step to the dancefloor to approach the dominatrix, when his gaze fell onto another possible 
victim. He was a couple of years older than the dominatrix and on the very first gaze he did look very self-assured, not 
just because of the tight leather trousers and the net-shirt accentuating his muscular body, but becasue of the space taking 
way he was dancing. But one only had to look at his naked arms to read the signs that laid bare his self-hatred. Fresh red 
scars, clearly not from an accident but from a knife or razor blade he had used to hurt himself in a moment of despair.

Adrian tried to count the scars, but not only was he moving too fast, there were also too many. It was clearly the worst 
signs of auto-aggression Adrian had seen in a century. 

But how catch him? Adrian's expert gaze told him that he was not gay, so he couldn't take the romantic seducer method he 
often used with women or gays. For obvious reasons this wouldn't work here; he'd have to become his friend to gain his trust,
which took much longer than becoming his lover. 

Maybe he should take the little dominatrix tonight and simultaneously try to start a friendship with the auto-aggressor? 
Someone with such a deep depression definitively was worth the effort of a slow approach, because his sadness could feed him 
for weeks.

Then Adrian noticed that the perfect victim was someone else. A girl in a long black dress was dancing further behind, her 
eyes closed, her face cramped in a way that looked as if she was fighting back tears. She radiated sadness in a way people 
did at the lowest point of a depressed phase. 

There were two possibilities how she could react to an approach: she could withdraw completely, not willing to let anyone 
close to her, or she could use him as a lifebelt, clinging to the next person who offered some support, and run into her 
ruin.

She certainly was worth a try. If he took her that night, he'd have fed enough to spent a few nights getting close to the 
auto-aggressor, maybe taking the dominatrix if he got hungry before the auto-aggressor fell for him.

Adrian slowly approached her, dancing to the sinister sound of Depeche Mode's "It's no good".

The girl noticed him in time to the second stanza:

"I'll be fine
I'll be waiting patiently
Till you see the signs 
And come running to my open arms"
They already danced closer to the words:
"Do we have to wait till our worlds collide?
Open up your eyes
You can't turn back the tide."
Adrian got more daring, forming the words of the chorus with his lips:
"Don't say you want me
Don't say you need me
Don't say you love me
It's understood.
Don't say you're happy
Out there without me
I know you can't be
Cause ist no good."

The girl stared at him with her huge dark ezes, not knowing whether she should feel frigthened or delighted. But definitively
 lost.

Adrian smiled inwardly. How fitting this Depeche Mode song of a fatal love was right now.

Soon afterwards they left the club together and took a taxi to the hotel he staYed in. They didn't talk much on their way. 
He didn't even ask for her name.

She looked lost when they arrived in his hotel room, and playing the noble gentleman he offered to take her home if she had
 changed her mind.

"No," she said quickly. "I don't want to be alone tonight." 

"You look so sad. I wish I could help you." he lied. If only she opened herself up, showed him her sorrow... that was the 
moment he could attack her, suck out all her sadness. Unfortunately for his victims, their sorrows were a vital part of them,
they couldn't survive without it. When he fed on them, he always left them empty and broken. He didnt feel remorse. They 
didn't want to live anyway, did they?

She started cryíng. "No one can help me!" she answered. One more step... Adrian took her into his arms, letting her cry at 
his shoulder, but his embrace became a trap when he started absorbing her sadness.

But before he could start enjoying it he felt a sharp pain between his shoulderblades. Adrian gasped, his grip weakened and 
cramped at the same time, when he felt the same stabbing pain in his back again and again. He sunk to his knees, a red veil 
blurring his sight. Looking up, he saw her standing above him, in her hand a peg red with blood. With his blood.

"But...", he stammered. A piercing pain in his puntured lung made every word a torment. "Why?" he coughed, spitting blood.

"Why I killed you? Why I'm sad?" she said. Tears had left grease of her black eye make-up on her cheeks. "One of yours 
killed my twin sister. Now I'm trying to get you all!"


Adrian's last thought was how ironic it all was. He had always thought of himself as a predator. He had forgotten that 
predators sometimes got killed by hunters.


XXX