Succulent Prey by Wrath James White

by Wrath James White

  lust, or just hunger, no one had ever

  looked at her that way before, with such passion and desire. No one had ever

  needed her like that. She leaned forward and kissed him and once again they

  made love as Frank lay in the back of

  the van moaning in agony.

  "I'l try to fight it. I'l try for you," Joe whispered in Alicia's ear as he lay atop her, inside her, with his erection slowly diminishing after their combined

  orgasm. He crawled back up into the

  front seat and drove off without putting her gag back on, though he did handcuff her again.

  They talked al the way to Seattle as if they were little more than a couple out for a drive in the country.

  "Do you stil think this is just some kind of disease you have? You stil think that you can cure yourself by kil ing this guy?"

  "I'm actual y getting more and more convinced by the moment."

  He pointed up at the sky, at the big

  luminescent face of the ful moon

  hovering just at the end of the road.

  "Ever since that moon rose, the hunger has been almost unbearable, just like the werewolf legends. I can feel changes

  inside me. My canines seem to be

  getting sharper and longer."

  He looked up into the rearview mirror

  and bared his teeth. Alicia looked at his teeth in the reflection and shrugged her shoulders.

  "You may not notice it, but I can feel them growing. "

  He turned to her and stuck out his

  tongue. There was a smal red gash on

  the tip.

  "I cut my tongue on my own teeth. They don't fit the same in my mouth as they

  did just last night. And look at my jaw. It's like the muscles are getting bigger,

  stronger. I feel like I could crush bones with my mouth now. Like soon I won't

  even need a knife. I'l be able to rip a person apart with my teeth alone."

  "You're starting to scare me again, Joe."

  "Nothing's changed between us. I

  promise not to hurt you again."

  "But what about him? Are you going to kil him?"

  "I don't know if I can stop myself. It's a long drive to Seattle and I don't even

  have the desire for regular food

  anymore. I can smel his blood. It's so rich. I wish you could experience it the way I do. The taste. The smel . It's like I can experience his entire life through his flesh. I can absorb it al . Al his joys and agonies, his passions and sorrows. It's al there in that smel . It's maddening. I feel like I can smel his thoughts. You know, when I ate that librarian, it was like I absorbed her. Like she became a part

  of me. Everything she was assimilated

  with my flesh. I can stil feel her inside, in my blood. That's how I know that kil ing Damon Trent wil cure me."

  "Why? I don't understand."

  "Because I know that he can feel me inside of him too. Because I can stil feel him inside of me."

  Frank stirred in the back of the van. He was regaining consciousness again.

  "Eating Frank is different," Joe said, glancing back at him. Half of the man's buttocks were gone, as were most of his genitalia. The rest of him was mostly

  skin and bones and hard muscle. None

  of the tender meat that Joe hungered for. There wasn't a whole lot on him left to eat. He looked back over at Alicia and

  tried not to think about how wonderful

  she would taste.

  "There's no fear in him. I mean, his fear is different, more sensual. He enjoys it. He can feel the communion, us joining

  together as one. He wants it. I can feel it. He wants to become a part of me. I wish you could feel it too. The way he does. I wish you could see how beautiful it could be." His eyes crawled over Alicia's voluptuous hips and thighs and lingered on her big heavy breasts. The monster

  stiffened in his pants and Joe's eyes

  glazed over, sparkling with hunger as his jaw creaked open and he instinctively

  licked the tips of his canines before

  dragging his tongue across his lips.

  Alicia shuddered and turned away from

  his ravenous gaze.

  "Joe, when you talk like that it doesn't sound like you want to be cured."

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Damon Trent stared out the barred

  window and tried to tune out the

  pandemonium of the other patients as

  they fought over the TV remote. The

  television flipped back and forth

  between Tyra Banks and Sesame

  Street. He tried to quiet the cacophony in his mind as his own lusts spoke to him, seducing him with images of blood and

  flesh. Damon's mind swirled as the

  cocktail of antipsychotics and antidepressents in his bloodstream mired his thoughts. He could barely feel the lives he'd consumed over the narcotics. Their whispering echoes were indecipherable

  to him now. They had faded like yel owed photographs worn away by time. He

  barely noticed them anymore and with

  the drugs he could no longer feel their warmth.

  At times he imagined that they had never been there at al , that he'd never

  slaughtered and bled them dry, never

  drank their blood until it sloshed in his distended stomach, pregnant with life

  force. At times he imagined that that

  their blood and souls had final y worked their way through his system and passed through his bowels.

  But he knew they were stil there. Their blood was forever bound to his. He felt like Renfield, Dracula's little acolyte, only the souls that Damon had devoured

  were not those of spiders and flies or

  even rats and birds. He was in many

  ways much more like Dracula himself

  than Renfield. Damon had fed on human

  lives. Uncorrupted innocent lives, too

  young to have been sul ied by the world, too young to have acquired the taint of lust and hatred. Years ago he had

  gorged himself on them, on their waterpure essences, until his own blood had burned like molten lava in his veins,

  searing with their memories and

  emotions. He had felt like a force of

  nature then, like a walking, breathing

  world, like a god. But that was long ago. They were old lives now, withered and

  decayed. They no longer burned in his

  blood like electricity as they had when he'd first drunk their souls through the holes he'd cut and gouged in their flesh. They were dead now. Ghosts. They

  fluttered listlessly in his empty stomach like butterflies, or rather the protoplasmic phantoms of dead butterflies. Their

  voices were a tepid draft that raised

  goose bumps on the back of his neck.

  Only one life stil warmed him as it

  traveled his circulatory system. It was only a tiny spark, yet compared to the

  ghosts it was as radiant as a star and

  growing stronger. It was from the one

  he'd only taken a tiny piece of. The one he hadn't kil ed. The one who was stil out there becoming just like him, acquiring lives just as Damon had done himself

  before they had locked him up and

  chemical y castrated him. He could feel his last living victim drawing closer like a minnow lured by the glow of a

  luminescent lure right into the jaws of an anglerfish. Only this was no min now. It was another predator and it wanted to

  consume him. He knew. But he would

  consume it first. He needed it to warm

  his stale blood.

  He stuck out his tongue and tasted the

  air.

  "So close," he whispered. He could sense the man drawing nearer, dragging

  other souls with him. More souls to warm Damon's blood.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  They had been on
the road for more than ten hours, driving al day and wel into the night along Interstate 5. They stil had at least another five hours of driving ahead. It was pitch-black now but morning was

  fast approaching.

  Frank was delirious with shock. He lay in the back of the van, slipping in and out of consciousness, ranting incessantly

  about past lovers and injuries and, most disturbing to Alicia, he kept quoting

  recipes for the consumption of human

  flesh. Everything from testicles ceviche to fingers in lemon butter. It was making her nauseous and it seemed to be

  her nauseous and it seemed to be

  turning Joe on. Frank regained

  consciousness for a moment. His eyes

  cleared and his mind swam through the

  miasma of pain and fever to reach the

  surface for a moment. What he had to

  say was even worse than his ranting.

  "Joe? Joe? I know you can't take me to Seattle with you ... not like this. My

  wounds are infected and I'm stil

  bleeding. I'd stick out like a sore thumb. I know you're gonna have to kil me before you get there. Please, just do me one

  favor and let me go the way I want to go, the way I've always dreamed of dying."

  "And how is that?" Joe asked. Alicia couldn't believe she was hearing this

  conversation.

  "I want you to roast me alive on a spit, and then I want you to devour every

  piece of me. Don't leave a single scrap. Promise me that if you do this you won't leave until you've eaten al of me. I don't want the worms and coyotes picking at

  my remains. I want to become a part of

  you. I want al of me inside you.

  Joe had read long pig fantasies on the

  Internet for months, and being roasted

  on a spit was the number one fantasy.

  For al their talk and al their teases and come-ons, he'd always doubted that any

  of the message board masochists had

  the nerve to go through with it. It was hard to imagine that even such a severe masochist as Frank would real y want to undergo something so brutal and painful. Joe had read al the sweaty dialogues

  between long pigs and eager chefs with

  skepticism. Who would seriously offer

  their flesh up to be consumed by a

  stranger they met on a message board?

  And to be roasted alive at that? Yet here was one of them-and he was absolutely

  serious. Joe was positive of the man's

  sincerity and he was certainly wil ing to give the little man his fantasy and fulfil his own in the process.

  "I promise."

  "No, no, no! You can't do this!" Alicia said. "You can't be serious! You can stil get him to a hospital. He can live. You don't have to do this. This is crazy!"

  "It's already done. He's right. I'd have to kil him anyway."

  "How the hel are you going to cure yourself if you keep giving in to the curse and kil ing people?

  Every time you eat somebody it'l only

  get stronger and harder to quit."

  "This isn't a twelve-step program. Every time my stomach growls or my dick gets

  hard you're both in danger. And the more I fight it, the more the hunger grows, the more I'l need to eat to calm the hunger when it eventual y overcomes me. Like I said before, it's either him or you. And in a few hours I'l be hungry again. I'l be very hungry. I've been fighting it for hours already. A decision has to be made

  soon."

  "Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God." Alicia rocked back and forth with her

  knees drawn up to her chest and her

  handcuffed wrists tucked tight between

  neck and shoulder, staring at Frank, who seemed to have slipped back into

  dreamland and was grinning stupidly as

  he once again began quoting recipes.

  She imagined him with a skewer going

  through his ass and out his mouth,

  twisting on a rotisserie, and her stomach heaved.

  In Portland, Oregon, they pul ed off I-5

  onto Patton Road. Joe drove along the

  dark road for a mile before he noticed a gas station under construction and leapt out to search the solemn structure for

  supplies. He came back with a piece of

  rebar six feet long and tossed it into the back of the van. They stopped again at a little store that sold camping supplies and Joe bought two bags of charcoal,

  some lighter fluid, and some hickory

  chips. The hickory chips bothered Alicia more than anything. They had obviously

  been purchased to add flavor.

  They entered Forest Park and the

  darkness redoubled, swal owing them in

  a stygian gloom. Joe drove another half hour into the park before he stopped the van.

  The back of the van was now tacky with

  Frank's blood, urine, and excrement as

  his body evacuated its contents. Joe

  wrinkled his nose as he hefted the little man onto his shoulders and charged off

  into the woods. Before he'd left the van, he'd once again bound Alicia's ankles

  and switched her handcuffs to behind her back so that she wouldn't be able to

  escape. She sat in the dark praying for Frank.

  Joe carried his half-conscious meal

  deep into the park before dropping him

  to the ground in an area that was

  obviously used for cookouts. There were smal metal barbecues bolted to

  concrete slabs next to picnic tables.

  They were far too smal , however, for

  what Joe had in mind. Then he spotted

  the hole just on the edge of the picnic grounds. It was about five feet wide and four feet deep and fil ed with ashes from a charcoal fire.

  Someone had themselves a luau, Joe

  thought as he considered his good

  fortune. He'd have to make it a little

  bigger, but it would work. Al that

  remained was to prepare Frank.

  Joe returned to the man lying in the

  grass and knelt to pick up the rebar. He then walked over to the picnic tables and began sharpening one end of the steel

  reinforcement bar on the edge of the

  concrete slab. It took him nearly ten

  minutes before it was sharp enough for

  his purposes. Frank was wide-awake

  when the huge predator walked back

  over to him.

  "There's some Ruffles in my back

  pocket. Rufinol. It wil dul the pain and slow my heart rate so that I don't bleed to death too quickly. It's in my pocket." Joe reached into Frank's pocket and

  pul ed out a smal box that looked like cold medicine but was covered with

  Spanish writings.

  "You sure you don't want me to kil you first? You real y want to be alive for this?"

  "I want to watch you consume me. I want to see the pleasure on your face when I become a part of you."

  Frank swal owed a fistful of Rufinol and in minutes he was drowsy and sluggish.

  Joe shrugged his shoulders and rol ed

  him over on al fours. He spit on a finger and then slid it into the man's anus to lubricate it as best he could.

  "This is going to hurt," he said as he slowly began threading the sharpened

  steel bar up through the man's rectum.

  Frank began to scream, thrash, and

  convulse against his restraints as the bar forced its way into his anus, tearing the soft tissue and ripping deep into his

  rectum, puncturing his smal intestines and leaking septic fluid into his

  bloodstream, throwing him into

  anaphylactic shock. Blood and fecal

  matter began to spray out of his

  vandalized asshole like a faucet,

  drenching Joe's arms and chest in a

  chun
ky brown and red deluge. Ignoring

  the explosion of excrement and gore,

  Joe shoved harder and the rod pierced

  Frank's stomach as it plowed through

  him.

  Frank was hyperventilating. His blood

  pressure rose quickly and then began to plummet as bile and stomach acid

  poured into his thoracic cavity and

  began eating away at his liver and lungs. He tried to curl up into the fetal position but the rigidity of the steel bar would not al ow him to bend.

  "I can angle it toward your heart and kil you quick."

  "No! Don't!" Frank said as he began to shiver. His pulse rate dropped further. He was dying from shock. His eyes were

  now fixed and dilated as the gutwrenching agony assailed his nervous system in response to the gouging,

  puncturing, and tearing of his vital

  organs. Then the Ruffles went into ful

  effect, dul ing the pain only marginal y but enough to stabilize his blood pressure

  and heart rate. He was slowly coming

  out of shock though he was now

  completely paralyzed, unable to offer

  even the slightest resistance even if he'd been inclined to do so. It was a good

  thing too. The next part would be the

  worst.

  Joe angled the bar to the right and

  slightly up and shoved with al his might. The steel rod slid along the inside of

  Frank's rib cage, narrowly missing the

  heart and lungs before exploding out of the top of his shoulder. Frank's eyes

  went wild in lieu of the scream his

  paralyzed vocal chords were unable to

  form.

  It was nearly half an hour before Joe

  returned to the van. His arms and chest were covered in gore. But not his face. He hadn't eaten yet. He reached in and

  grabbed Alicia, lifting her onto his

  shoulders. That's when she smel ed the

  smoke permeating his clothing. Hickory

  smoke, like a barbecue.

  Joe carried her almost a mile into the

  park before she spotted the fire. The big carnivore had dug a pit and fil ed it with charcoal as if he were roasting a Khalua pig. Frank lay across the open pit with the piece of rebar going straight through him. His eyes were glazed in horror but he was stil alive and in agony. His skin baked and sizzled as the flames licked