Succulent Prey by Wrath James White

by Wrath James White

  Trent written on it, fol owed by the phone number and address to the State

  Hospital for the Criminal y Insane. He

  rol ed the slip of paper over and over in his hands as dark shadows slithered

  through his mind.

  "What did he do to you?"

  "You don't want to know."

  "Maybe not, but you need to tel it. I can see that you're hurting. It might help to talk."

  Joe didn't want to talk to her anymore. He didn't want to get too close because he was stil planning on murdering her, but maybe talking about these horrors

  would be just the distraction he needed. Perhaps it would calm him down until he could get her alone.

  "I was riding my bike when he attacked me. I turned the corner and he was just standing there, grinning at me. I tried to turn the bike around and run. I could tel that he was going to hurt me. Of course, I had no idea how bad. I thought he was

  going to beat me up and steal my bike

  or something. Then he grabbed me by

  the throat. He squeezed so hard that I

  couldn't even scream. I couldn't breathe. I felt like I was going to pass out. Then he threw me in the back of his pizza van." Joe took a deep breath and rubbed his

  bare arms to warm himself as chil s

  raced the length of his spine.

  "It's okay. You don't have to continue if it bothers you."

  "When we got back to his place, he undressed me. He started punching me.

  Then he started stabbing me. He

  stabbed me dozens of times, raped and

  sodomized me. I remember him licking

  my wounds, lapping up the blood like a

  kitten licking milk. His eyes were al

  glassy and vacant. He kept me down in

  that basement for days, feeding on me.

  Somewhere along the way I passed out.

  Then he put me back in the van and

  dumped me back in the park. I was the

  lucky one. I was his first victim. He got much more violent with the next ones

  before they caught him. Those he kept.

  They never got to see the sunlight again. They died down in his basement."

  The librarian was crying when Joe

  looked up. Joe reached out and brushed

  a strand of hair from the librarian's face, cupping her cheek in his hand and

  leaning in to peer into her sad eyes. He wiped away her tears with his thumbs.

  Something about her sorrow was

  reawakening the monster, turning him

  on. He could feel the drive roiling like a furnace, burning at the root of him, hard and insistent.

  Joe thought about Alicia, stil chained up back at the apartment. He thought about her magnificent ass. The soft sumptuous mound of tender fat and al the things he wanted to do to it, to her. Al the things he would do if he didn't curb his appetite with something else. Something like this librarian.

  "I want to kiss you."

  The librarian jerked away, shocked by

  Joe's forwardness. It was Joe's firm

  belief that when most women ran it was

  because they wanted to be chased. He

  seized her face in his hands again and

  pul ed her toward him. Greedily he

  sucked and bit at her lower lip as he

  kissed her aggressively. She never

  struggled or made any attempt to resist him. Rather, her body melted to his touch as if it had been locked stiff with tension released the moment their lips touched. She responded to his kiss with her own, the desperate hungry embrace of a

  woman starved for affection, in need of a man's love.

  She was out of breath when Joe leaned

  back in his chair and picked up his

  coffee. He stared at her with those same rapacious eyes that had long intimidated her as he sipped the scalding brown

  liquid. Emma trembled with want.

  Embarrassed, she reached for her own

  coffee, lifting it up and then placing it back on its coaster. She looked back

  into Joe's terrible, wantonly sexual eyes and felt another wal crumble. She

  closed her eyes and let out a long sigh.

  "What do you want, Joseph? What do you want from me?"

  The air between them became hot and

  thick with a palpable lust. Joe licked his lips. He was recal ing the taste of Alicia's nipples when he'd eaten them and

  imagining what it must be like to

  consume a woman's entire breast.

  "I want to make love to you."

  "You just want to fuck me," she sighed, looking down into her lap. Then she

  looked back up and her eyes were

  furious with lust. "But that's okay. I think I want to fuck you too."

  She leaned forward and took his hand.

  Together they rose from the table and

  walked out into the parking lot.

  "You'l be gentle with me, won't you? I haven't been with anyone since my

  husband and I divorced five years ago.

  You'l take it slow, won't you?"

  They were almost to her car. She pul ed out her keys and opened the car door.

  "Promise me you'l be gentle with me."

  "No," Joe said.

  His huge powerful hands clenched tight

  around her throat and jerked the librarian up onto her tiptoes. As he closed his

  fingers tight around her windpipe she

  kicked and scratched, dragging her

  manicured nails through the skin on his forearms and punching at his face. She

  raked his throat with her fingernails,

  breaking off the plastic tips in his flesh before she blacked out. Joe stuffed her into the car and drove her across town to the apartment building on Folsom Street.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Alicia lay on the semen-and sweatstained bed contemplating her fate, entangled in a confusion of emotions. A few hours ago she had been confident

  that she would survive this. She had felt like she was connecting with her captor, like she understood him a little and that perhaps he understood her as wel . Then she'd woken up with his hands locked

  around her throat and his eyes vacant

  and sad, looking through her at some

  tragedy from his past. Yet he was stil

  strangling the life from her. She'd struck him repeatedly but he hadn't seemed to

  notice. She had nearly passed out

  before he final y snapped out of it as if awakening from a dream.

  As she gasped for air, Joe had looked at her with a mixture of confusion and

  embarrassment. Then he'd turned away

  and when he turned back he had the

  restraints in his hands. The look on his face had been one of defeat and

  resignation. She was now afraid that he would give up on trying to cure himself and would decide that he was too far

  gone to be saved. If that was the case, then she was a dead woman. She had to

  get him to try. At the very least, she'd have more opportunity to escape once

  they were traveling on the road than she had locked in this little room.

  The front door opened and Alicia heard

  a sound like something heavy being

  dragged. Joe stalked into the room

  looking excited and agitated. He was not alone. Alicia looked down and saw a

  frightened woman, naked and trussed up

  in duct tape, at his feet. She was big and fleshy, zaftig like Alicia herself, only older and white, pale as a newborn. The

  woman looked up at Alicia, at the chains around her wrists and ankles, the bal

  gag, the dried blood caked on her

  mutilated breasts, and she began to

  scream against the duct tape secured

  over her mouth.

  Joe turned toward Alicia with a wild

  expression on his
face and an erection

  pressed urgently against the fabric of his pants. He was panting heavily and his

  pupils were dilated so wide that very little of his irises were visible. He looked like a speed freak wired out of his skul .

  "This is for you, Alicia!" The handsome young man knelt down and peered into

  the Spanish girl's horrified eyes. He

  wiped her curly raven black hair out of her face and stared at her for a long

  moment in that peculiar way he had that made her feel like something on a

  dessert tray.

  "The hunger is just so strong. I was afraid I'd kil you tonight if I didn't do something. So I'm going to use her to

  get me by until we can find the cure

  together."

  Alicia didn't want to know what he meant by "using her" but she could guess. And what she guessed brought tears to her

  eyes and made her stomach flip. She

  wanted to try to talk him out of it but he hadn't removed the gag from her mouth

  and she suspected that was deliberate.

  He undid the chain that secured her to

  the wal and dragged her into the

  bathroom.

  "I don't think you want to see this," he said as he closed the bathroom door.

  The door latch didn't catch and the door creaked open just a crack. Alicia wished that it hadn't because she couldn't

  prevent herself from looking, no matter how terrified she was.

  She watched as Joe removed al of his

  clothing. Once again she marveled at

  how finely sculpted his body was. He

  walked out of the room and came back

  with a long skinny knife, a fil eting knife. The woman began to squirm as Joe

  knelt down over her with the blade.

  He cut the tape from around the

  librarian's ankles and knelt down

  between her thighs. Alicia felt a twinge of jealousy as she watched him lick and

  suck at the woman's fat pussy. The

  woman ceased her struggles. Her legs

  spread wider and her hips thrust forward to meet his tongue. Suddenly, her body

  began to buck and convulse with what

  could only have been an orgasm. Then

  her flesh began to run red.

  Alicia could hear the savage snarls and the hideous sounds of ripping flesh as

  Joe tore at her delicate flower, tearing into her labia with his teeth and

  devouring huge chunks of the tender

  flesh. He seized both her thighs, one in each arm, as she began to kick and

  struggle. The tape fel away from her

  face and her screams came pealing

  through the room.

  Joe lifted his head for a moment and

  Alicia could see the rapturous

  expression on his gore-streaked face as he chewed the bits of vagina he'd torn

  from the librarian. The woman was stil

  screaming when Joe crawled up her

  body and began biting at her breasts.

  He was not nearly as tender with her as he had been with Alicia. He bit deep into the meat of her breasts, tearing off her nipples and devouring the tremendous

  mammaries in huge gulps of sweet

  sal ow fat streaked with red. He used the knife, sawing away her breasts to get

  more of the woman's tender flesh off her chest and into his gul et. The woman's

  anguished cries were more terrible than anything Alicia had ever heard.

  Alicia turned away when she saw Joe

  amputate the woman's entire left breast, exposing the gleaming white bone of her rib cage. He brought the quivering

  mound of flesh up to his lips and

  voraciously consumed it. Blood washed

  over his fingers and down his arm,

  pouring from his mouth with each bite

  and dripping off his chin and down his

  neck. He licked the blood from his lips between bites like sweet nectar, like he was eating a mango or a papaya and

  not human flesh.

  The woman's screams were subsiding,

  becoming moans and whimpers. She

  was in shock and dying from the

  massive loss of blood and the traumatic damage done to her. Alicia turned back

  to look as Joe turned the woman over.

  Where her vagina had been was now

  just a ragged hole ringed in torn and

  lacerated bits of flesh. Her breasts were completely gone down to the ribs. Bits of meat lay puddled on the floor amongst

  the pools of blood. The woman landed

  on her bel y with a wet sticky swap! that caused her rotund ass to jiggle. Alicia knew what was about to happen next.

  Joe took more time and care here. This

  most luscious piece of meat, the most

  prized delicacy, he would not squander. This was to be savored. He be gan

  slicing the thick fatty meat of her ass in thin cuts and sliding the tender slivers of meat into his mouth. This lasted for

  nearly five minutes before he could no

  longer restrain himself and dove

  headfirst into her ass, ripping into it just as he had done her breasts. To Alicia it seemed to go on al night.

  When the sun rose, Joe lay in a pool of coagulating blood draped across the

  vandalized corpse of Emma Purcel like

  a bloated tick, fat off her blood and flesh. He'd completely consumed her breasts,

  most of her ass, chewed away her

  vagina and even cut her open and eaten

  her ovaries, liver, and kidneys. His

  crowning act of barbarity had been to

  saw through her sternum, crack open her rib cage, and cannibalize her heart.

  Drunk off blood and heavy with

  halfdigested meat, he rose drowsily from the floor and turned toward the locked

  bathroom door. Only it wasn't locked.

  In the two-inch gap between door and

  door frame, Joe spotted two almond

  eyes wide with shock. He started toward the door and heard Alicia scurry away

  toward the back of the bathroom. She

  was terrified.

  Joe passed his reflection in the mirror and saw the ghastly, loathsome thing that stood naked in his bedroom, a ghoulish

  grotesquerie caked in dried blood and

  gore from head to toe. He smiled and

  the hideous abomination smiled back at

  him with teeth blackened with old blood and raw flesh. No wonder Alicia was

  afraid of him. He no longer bore any

  semblance to a human. He had

  transformed the previous night, become

  whatever detestable monster the virus

  within him was morphing him into. But

  what had he become? A vampire? He

  looked at the blood that covered half the room and drenched his own skin and

  doubted a vampire would have been so

  wasteful. Joe stared down at the

  remains of the librarian. He'd never

  heard of a vampire doing that to its

  victim. Serial kil ers do that ... and

  werewolves.

  Joe walked into the next room and into

  the kitchen. He used dish detergent and a sponge to wash the blood from his

  face, hair, and body. When he was done

  he mopped the already splintered and

  warped hardwood floor. He emptied the

  contents of the bucket and refil ed it with more water and PineSol, added some

  bleach, then dragged the bucket into the bedroom. He thought it would be wise to clean up a little before trying to drag Alicia out of the bathroom. He didn't

  know how much she had seen through

  that little crack in the door, but he could at least spare her the further trauma of seeing the aftermath of his passions.<
br />
  Emma Purcel 's mauled and masticated

  remains disappeared into a plastic

  bedsheet and a cheap area rug. She

  was then dragged into the next

  apartment where her corpse would sit

  and decompose until Joe could figure

  out what to do with it. Al evidence of her death in that dingy little bedroom was

  scrubbed with ammonia and washed

  down the sink. When Joseph turned

  toward the master bath door, the room

  looked even cleaner than it had before

  he kil ed Emma. The acrid pungency of

  ammonia and bleach had completely

  masked the smel of fetid blood.

  The beautiful Spanish girl with the ful red lips, the caramel skin, the luxurious

  mane of curly black hair, thick meaty

  hips and thighs, ful breasts, and fat

  perfectly rounded ass, sat in the bathtub shivering. She rocked back and forth

  moaning quietly.

  "Alicia?"

  At the sound of his voice she began to

  scramble like a trapped animal, trying to claw her way through the shower tiles.

  Her wrists were stil bound but somehow she had gotten her arms from behind her back to the front. Her shoulders were

  turning blue and Joe suspected that she had dislocated them. Cautiously he

  approached his traumatized victim. He

  reached out and careful y removed the

  bal gag from her mouth.

  "Alicia ... I'm sorry that you saw that. I didn't mean for you to-"

  "You ate her! You ate that woman! She was screaming and you just kept biting

  her!" She began to tremble convulsively as the image of this gorgeous man that

  she'd once been so excited about

  sleeping with, cracking open that

  woman's rib cage and ripping her heart

  out as if he were shucking an oyster

  from its shel flashed through her mind. She recal ed his face, covered in an oily red mask of blood and tissue, his eyes

  wild with an unfathomable bloodlust. This man who she'd almost forgiven for

  chaining her up and biting off her

  nipples, who she'd begun to fantasize

  about curing of his psychotic dementia

  and living happily ever after with.

  "Alicia, I'm trying so hard not to hurt you. I don't want to hurt you, but the hunger was getting so strong. I-I was afraid I wouldn't be able to control myself. I had to do

  something!"

  Alicia curled up into the fetal position at the bottom of the tub and began to cry. Joe reached in and lifted her from the