There's a reason you're told throughout your life not to go outside when it's dark, but it's not for the reason you think it is. Not the reason you were told as a kid. Far from it. Far, far from it.
The more isolated, the better. Otherwise we would have a mass murder on our hands, and we wouldn't want that now, would we?
Well...
I watched her. I watched her look both ways before crossing the road. I watched her check her phone for messages, then slip it back into her pocket. I watched her shadow lengthen and shorten under the streetlights as she walked. And she was aware of nothing. None of the 10 ways I had planned to kill her already. What you don't know can't hurt you, right?
I lit a cigarette. Nasty habit.
"You look lonely," I called out to her. She turned, her eyes frightened, her fear already pulsing around her like a white halo. I ran to catch up with her, the cigarette bouncing in my dry lips. As I reached her, I took a drag from it, pausing and then lightly exhaling it into her face.
She coughed, fanning herself and leaning away.
"My apologies." But we both knew I didn't mean it.
My dark clothes reeked of alcohol, leather and smoke. That should make her fear me just a little.
"Where are you going, girl?" I asked calmly as she sped up slightly, yet I had no trouble keeping pace with her.
"Home." Her voice was sharp. Quick. The white halo grew. I could hear her heart through her chest, see the shadowed skin of her throat pulsing faster and faster.
I licked my lips, catching my sharp canine on the soft pink skin, tearing, releasing my own scarlet blood. I left it to slide from there, drip onto my chin, then fall, like a single rain drop, to the floor. "Can I come with you?" I asked.
She laughed to hide her fear. "No."
I slammed her frail body against the brickwork, grabbing her soft throat, her head flinging back, cracking against the wall.
A blast of her white fear hit me. I took a drag from the cigarette.
She whimpered as I lent in to her ear, exhaling. I heard her cough be compressed into a squeak. I smiled. "Here," I used my free hand to take my cigarette from my mouth and hold it near hers. "Have a cigarette. It will help you to relax."
She squirmed away from me. "Come on, just the one." Leaning in, I whispered in her ear. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."
She turned away again. I began to curl my fingertips in, tightening, digging my sharp nails into her neck. Pushing them into her until she cried, tears down either side of her face, blood down either side of her neck. I pressed the cigarette lightly into her parted lips, then released her. She slipped to the floor.
"What are you going to do to me?" She cried as I knelt beside her, tipping her chin up to face me so I could look into her eyes.
"Whatever I like, sweetheart. You're fear tastes too beautiful to waste."
The cigarette trembled on her bottom lip. "Tastes?" She stuttered.
"Didn't you ever hear that predators can smell your fear? Well..." I let my lips touch her cheek, the burning ash at the end of the cigarette falling onto my skin. I let it smolder there. "I can taste it." She whimpered. "I can see it all around you as a white halo. It shimmers with your fragile heartbeat."
Her breath shuddered, huffing into my ear. My lips parted, sliding down to her bleeding throat, coating themselves in her scarlet liquid. I sighed in pleasure at the white of her fear.
I feltalive.
My sharp teeth pinched her throat, breaking the skin's protected seal once again.
She cried out again, her words rushing at once. "Just kill me!"
I smiled, the girls fear peaking and her racing heart compressing painfully with the effort.
Adrenalin was like electricity to me.
I replied calmly to her. "As you wish, beautiful girl."
I leaned away, the cigarette still shaking in her mouth, the ash falling onto her blood stained jumper.
I reached out, resting my hand on her tear streaked cheek. From there, my nails curled, running down her face, down over her chin, over her strong jaw bone.
She cried out, tears mixing with the blood down her face.
I smiled again.
Four cuts down her face, down her neck, down to her fragile heart, where I stopped. I smiled. I compressed a laugh of delight. She cried. She shivered violently.
My fingers curled over her white heart. Breaking the skin there too, piercing, straining.
I could feel her ribcage.
I pushed harder, hearing her cries, but mostly her shattering bones as I forced my hand further into her chest.
Blood ran across the pavement.
I reached her beating heart, feeling the compressing of it, the strength of her. Feeling her soul. Hearing who she was. Who she would become.
Her white was fading. Fading into the bliss of blood loss. Of unconsciousness.
Ending this, ending her suffering, ending her, I pulled her heart from her chest.
In my hands, it beat once, twice, three times, before stopping, warm and wet.
After a second, I slid her over until she lay comfortably on the floor, then put her heart next to her.
I stood, her blood all over me.
I reached down again though, pulling the still burning cigarette from her bloody mouth and placing it lightly in mine.
I felt powerful again.
"Goodbye," I whispered, taking a drag from the cigarette and turning away from her. "And thank you for a wonderful evening. I hope to see you again."
I exhaled the smoke into the cold night air. Placing my hands into my cold jacket pockets, I began to walk again.
