Succulent Prey

Chapter Five

The tweed-wrapped and bow-tied professor busily scribbled on the huge blackboard at the front of the lecture hal. Flashes of multicolored young flesh whisked by as students hurried to take their seats. Smooth chocolate browns and tans. Creamy whites and yel ows.

Joe tore himself with effort from the entrancing glimpses of bare arms, slender necks, and naked thighs and calves to give attention to the names the professor had scrawled across the board.

Andrei Chikatilo. Ed Gem. Gary

Heidnick. Jeffrey Dahmer.

Heidnick. Jeffrey Dahmer.

"Al of these men are murderers.

Signature kil ers with a very unique signature."

Joe recognized the connection between those four names before the professor even spoke and he immediately perked up, suddenly very interested. They were not just serial kil ers. They were kil ers who had at least partial y cannibalized their victims. Each of them had tasted human flesh. Many on more than one occasion. Some, like Dahmer and

Chikatilo, were famous for it.

"Al of these men murdered, butchered, and ate their victims."

A shudder ran through the lecture hal like a group wave, fol owed by a moan of utter revulsion. Joe smiled. This is what he had come here for. He'd been delighted when he'd seen the course offerings for criminal psychology. It had taken a fight to get into the class due to its overwhelming popularity but as soon as he had read the title of the course"Abnormal Psychology: Serial Kil ers and Why They Do It"-and seen who the professor was, he knew that he had to sign up.

Joe knew many more names he could have added to the professor's list. Ed

Kemper, Albert Fish, Issei Sagawa, even Ted Bundy had engaged in mild cannibalism. It was a common final stage in the evolution of the serial kil er. Some of them just got there sooner than others. Some were caught before it ever advanced to that stage. But Joe's theory was that al serial kil ers, if not apprehended first, would eventual y escalate to cannibalism. It was a progressive disease and he feared that he himself might have been infected.

Professor Locke was one of the leading authorities on forensic and criminal psychiatry. He had worked with the FBI back in the late eighties, developing serial kil er profiles in their Behavioral Sciences Unit. He had authored many books on serial murderers, sex and cannibal kil ers specifical y, before he came to end his days teaching the next crop of psychiatrists and criminologists. He was the reason Joe had come to this school.

"So, why do they do it? Any thoughts?" Joe's hand crept slowly into the air before he'd even ful y decided to raise it.

"Ali! The footbal player. You have a theory?"

"Actual y, I'm not in the athletics program. I'm a psychology student."

The professor peered over the top of his thick bifocals at the enormous young man in the front row, looking him over with new interest. The kid was huge. He was at least six feet five inches tal and nearly 260 pounds, al of it apparently muscle. He would have been a terror on a footbal field.

"Wel, let's hope you are not wasting your talents. Tel us, what do you think makes them do it?"

"I think it's a disease. Not just a mental deficiency but a contagious, transmittable virus."

Everyone in the room began to giggle, including the professor. He held up his hand to silence the other students.

"No, let's hear the boy out. Go ahead." Joe hesitated but couldn't hold himself back.

"I think it's a progressive disease that in its initial stages may manifest as only the need to inflict pain and humiliation but eventual y builds to murder, mutilation, and final y to necrophilia and cannibalism. It may in fact be the very disease that spawned the werewolf and vampire legends. Perhaps it's transmitted through saliva or blood, like with a bite or a scratch just like those legends say. Maybe even through semen or vaginal secretions like AIDS. Perhaps you're most susceptible to the disease during childhood and it has a long incubation period, maybe decades. That could explain why most serial kil ers are in their late twenties and early thirties. And why almost al of the real y violent ones experienced some type of trauma or abuse as children. I think that at some point in their youths they exchanged bodily fluids with another kil er or perhaps just a carrier and they acquired the contagion themselves."

"That's a very interesting theory, son. Very interesting. I'm not sure it has any merit, but I'l tel you what. Why don't you pursue that. Research it and turn something in to me at the end of the semester. Everyone has to do a paper for his or her final grade anyway and this is what we are here to try and find out this semester: what makes these monsters do it. You convince me of that one and you are guaranteed a 4.0." Joe was encouraged by the fact that Dr. Locke hadn't shot his theory down completely. The man seemed to be honestly intrigued. Perhaps he was on to something after al. But Joe wanted more than a perfect grade. He wanted the professor's help in isolating the serial kil er virus and finding a cure.

Joe sleepwalked through the remainder of his classes that day. His desire had reached a feverish intensity and he was having a hard time concentrating. His head swiveled like a gun turret as students passed in shorts, tank tops, and miniskirts, a buffet of luscious bodies whose every movement was a maddening temptation. He could smel the sweat on their skin, the musk of recent sex between a woman's thighs, the coppery twang of menstrual blood, the acrid bleachlike aroma of semen drying inside them, the humid sweat beading beneath the hairy scrotums of the jocks. The most maddening aroma was that of their youthful spirits. Joe could smel their souls burning beneath their skins like an unseen inferno as furious as a forest fire. He wanted to tear into their flesh to get at it. To devour that energy and make it his.

With effort Joseph Miles wrenched his eyes from the heaving bosom of a passing coed. Joe could almost see the light of her soul swirling like a rainbow and exploding like a nuclear blast. It made him dizzy just looking at it. The scent of it was even more radiant, like fruit and wine and meat and blood al combined into one delirious fragrance.

Life. He wanted to taste it so bad it made his stomach cramp. He was so thirsty for the taste of her blood that his throat felt parched and dry. His saliva felt thick and tacky in his mouth.

A riot of emotions swirled through Joe's mind. It had only been recently that his passions had taken such a morbid turn.

Before it had been enough to fuck anything and everything he could get his hands on. But lately the normal suckand-fuck rituals had begun to bore him. His typical fantasies of multiple sex partners had turned to blood-soaked orgies of torn and ravaged flesh. He could no longer even masturbate without imagining biting into a woman's tender buttocks or engorged breasts. He knew there were places on the Web where he could talk freely about his desires, where they were appreciated. He had sought them out when he first discovered his predilection for the taste of human flesh. He'd been surprised when he'd discovered how many professed cannibals were out there stalking cyberspace for human prey and even more surprised when he discovered that there were women and men who sought these cannibals out, offering their bodies for consumption. Al he could think about now was going online to seek solace in his fel ow perverts.