People don’t sound like that– they shouldn’t sound like that.
But she did.
Locked in the small room, her mews tore at the little heart I had left. I was searching for dinner the first time I heard them. The hunt that night had led me to a sketchy part of town. Run down apartments with so many boarded windows and doors, I assumed they were abandoned at first.
There were flickers of lights here and there though and the sound of regular living: clinking dishes that spoke of dinner rituals and family. Things long lost to me when I joined the creatures of the night but I rarely missed them. There was no adrenaline rush to sitting down at a dinner table, scarfing down the same overcooked roast you ate two night ago.
I didn’t miss human life.
I loved the hunt; loved the thrill of the chase and the scent of the prey as their hearts pounded away and the fight or flight chemicals coursed through their veins. I relished that first bite.
She distracted me from the hunt though.
Have you ever heard the sound of a newborn kitten as it roots for his mother’s tit? This is what she sounded like, a low mew that vibrated through my chest on and on and on. I followed the sound to a small back room and peered through the window to see her huddled in the center of the room on a bare mattress.
Watched in surprise as the pole slammed against her skin.
Again.
And again.
And again.
It must have smacked against the fragile skin of her nude body 20 times in five minutes. Her body vibrated with each impact, but her cries never rose above the pitiful mew.
I am a killer. It is my nature and I have no sympathy for my prey. There is no rhyme or rhythm to my selection and those I kill often die with a question in their eyes. There is no reason; just my whim. But this is my nature, the nature of all the dark ones. I lost my humanity and my empathy for others pain so long ago, I don’t remember.
But the man who beat her–He was a monster.
There was no blood lust driving him, no curse of insatiable hunger… not even a sadistic pleasure in giving pain. He beat her as one beats a dirty rug, like a distasteful chore that must be completed to a certain specification. It was to prove a point, to crush the soul housed within the fragile body.
And he did it regularly, just as one cleans a home or takes out the trash on schedule.
That is why he had to die.
