Succulent Prey

Chapter Ten

Joe walked out of the bedroom in a daze. He plopped down on the couch and stared at the ancient black-andwhite television as if awaiting revelation, but he'd received his revelation back there in the bedroom. The disease was progressing. He'd now mutilated a woman. More than that, he'd eaten some of her flesh and ejaculated while doing it. He had crossed the line. A deep depression settled over him as he considered himself, who he was, and who and what he was becoming. The possibility of kil ing was now more than just a sweaty fantasy haunting his wet dreams. It was very real and very imminent. He had to figure out what to do with her now.

There was no way Joe could release her after mutilating her breasts; not without going to jail. He would face charges of kidnapping, rape, assault, and of course cannibalism. He'd spend a minimum of twenty years behind bars unless he got an early parole for good behavior or pleaded insanity. He considered checking himself in to an insane asylum. He could go right to the hospital and tel them about the girl chained up in the apartment, about how he'd chewed off her nipples and would probably eat the rest of her if nobody stopped him. He'd tel them about how he couldn't look at anyone without wondering how their flesh would taste, which appendages would be the most tender, which organs would melt on his tongue like an extravagant confection.

Perhaps they would give him a nice padded cel, drug him, and give him group therapy sessions with other cannibals and murderers. Maybe they would give him private sessions with a psychiatrist who would listen to tales about his childhood. About how he'd creep down the hal at night to watch his mother and father fuck through the keyhole in the door. How his father would strangle her until her face turned blue just before he came, growling like a wolf.

How he'd once seen his father cut a stray dog to pieces or how he'd been kidnapped and molested by a young child kil er when he was eight. Maybe they would cure him. Maybe they would give him shock treatments or chemical castration or a lobotomy. Maybe they would declare him legal y sane and he would go to prison after al and get raped or murdered himself by some big angry convicts.

Joe shuddered. He did not want to risk turning himself in. He did not relish the prospect of ending his days wrapped in a straitjacket and locked in a padded room, drooling on himself in a near catatonic stupor from a cocktail of antipsychotics. Besides that, he didn't want to release Alicia. He wanted to taste more of her succulent flesh.

Joe curled up on the couch and tried to ignore the whimpering cries coming from the next room. He didn't know what he would do with her, but whatever it was, it wouldn't be tonight. It was already nearly sunrise and he had a class at

10:00 A.M. That left him barely four hours of sleep. He didn't want to be late for class. Joe was convinced that somewhere there was a cure for his il ness and that with the help of the professor he would find it. First he had to convince the man that he wasn't a lunatic with some ridiculous implausible theory by finding the proof himself. That meant a trip back to the library.

Joe knew that he was getting close.

Finding the link between the werewolf and vampire mythology and the serial kil er phenomenon might lead directly to a cure. If he was right, those old myths not only held the answer to how the disease was transmitted but also how it could be stopped. He wasn't wil ing to drive a stake through his own heart and nail himself inside a coffin or chop off his head and fil his mouth with garlic. Those were the last-ditch remedies for those monsters who had progressed to the point where they could no longer be saved. There had to be a less dramatic solution to the cloying hunger that raked at his mind and spirit, beyond al the hype and superstition. He had to find the cure soon. Before he kil ed Alicia.

Sunlight ripped the curtain of night, bleeding morning into the sky just as Joe final y succumbed to sleep. He tossed and turned fitful y on his couch and dreamt of the day he'd been kidnapped from the playground by a budding child murderer named Damon Trent, who'd no doubt intended to make him his first victim. He could stil hear the fat teenager's tittering, high-pitched voice, like an overexcited young girl's, as he dragged him into his minivan and sped off down the street with Joe kicking and screaming for his life in the front seat. Joe stil had the faded bite marks and knife wounds on his ass, chest, neck, arms, and thighs from where the man had abused him.

No one knew why the kid had released him the next morning instead of torturing him to death, as he would with his later victims. Perhaps he had thought Joe was near death anyway and would die of exposure before anyone found him.

Perhaps he'd had mercy. He certainly hadn't shown mercy to his next three victims. He'd torn them apart. Joe could stil remember the feel of the knife plunging into his rectum as the man stabbed him repeatedly, and how he'd screamed like the world was ending, convinced that he was dead.

When Joe woke up, drenched in his own sweat and screaming at the top of his lungs, the sun was already high in the sky and his alarm clock was blaring. It was time for class.

Joe dressed and showered before going back into the bedroom to confront his captive. She looked awful, with blood caked on her breasts and stomach.

She'd urinated on herself sometime during the night, unable to ask to use the bathroom with the gag in her mouth or perhaps hoping that she'd make herself too disgusting to rape. Joe removed the bal gag then lifted her up and carried her into the bathroom where he scrubbed off al the blood and washed her tenderly, lovingly, fighting to keep his mind on getting to school on time. He led her to the toilet and watched as she relieved herself, glaring at him murderously the entire time. He did his best to avoid her gaze. He knew he deserved her hatred. When she was done using the toilet he washed her again.

Joe carried Alicia over to the bed and affixed an other chain to a loop in the ceiling, which he then connected to her wrist restraints. The chain was slack enough to al ow her to move about the bed but if she tried to get off the bed she would wind up dangling in the air 'til he got home. He explained al of this to her and her eyes began to tear up again.

"I'm sorry," Joe said to her as he kissed her on the cheek. "I just can't help myself. I real y don't want to hurt you. I just don't know how to stop."

He turned to walk out of the door.

"You are beautiful, though. So beautiful." Then he left, locking the bedroom door behind him. Alicia heard the front door slam and the dead bolt click into place. Then she was alone. Alone in a madman's apartment with no way to escape.