Succulent Prey Read online

  Succulent Prey

  Wrath James White

  Succulent Prey

  Wrath James White

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Joey tasted nickel and copper. Blood.

  His mouth was fil ed with his own blood lying thick on his tongue. He tried to spit it out but the duct tape strapped across his face made it impossible. He had no choice but to swal ow it, gagging as a wad of blood and phlegm slid down his throat in a warm lump. Joey tried hard to keep from crying. He'd been crying for hours and it had done him no good. The fat kid seemed to enjoy his tears.

  Why me? Why is he doing this?

  It was a pointless question with no answer that would have made a bit of difference. He was suffering and he would continue to suffer and there was nothing he could do about it.

  At first he had been confident that his parents would rescue him and punish the fat kid. He was sure that as soon as they realized he hadn't made it home from school they'd be kicking down every door on the block looking for him. But that had been many hours ago and no one had come for him. Now he was afraid that no one would ever find him; that he would die down there in the dank basement.

  The rusted fiberglass-on-steel tub in which Joey lay was rapidly fil ing with blood. Joey splashed about in a river of red, slipping farther down into the tub. He'd heard that you could drown in three inches of bathwater and wondered how many inches of blood were already in the tub. He knew he was bleeding to death. His flesh had been split open like overripe fruit and was leaking in a steady sluggish drip down into the large bathtub.

  Joey didn't know how many times he'd been stabbed and cut. Slashes crosshatched his thighs and buttocks, many of them going clean through to the bone, yawning wide like toothless smiles fil ed with bleeding pink gums. He could see the red muscle fibers and stringy sal ow fat boiling up out of one particularly deep wound in his upper thigh. Luckily his genitals had been spared the fat kid's attentions. His anus, unfortunately, had not. He'd cut him there too and then he'd done worse. Joey tried his best not to think about that pain.

  Several times now the fat kid had come, dipped a glass into the tub, fil ed it with Joey's blood, and brought the glass to his blubbery lips to drink. His squinty little eyes would flutter in absolute ecstasy as he gulped down the red liquid, making sickening smacking noises. Even through the pain Joey found amusement in knowing that he had pissed himself in the same tub from which the fat kid was drinking.

  Time stal ed as Joey slipped into and out of consciousness. The basement was a perpetual night, an endless nightmare from which he could not awaken. The windows along the tops of the basement wal s were spray-painted black. Faint glimmers of light leaked between the cracks in the frames and cast eerie shadows on the damp wal s. The only genuine il umi nation came from the fluorescent light at the bottom of the basement steps and that was only turned on when the fat kid came down to play.

  Joey was beginning to fear that light. In the dark he was alone. Safe. Whenever the light came on the pain started al over again.

  Joey's throat was raw and hoarse from the agonized shrieks that had torn their way up from his bel y and out into the moist, stagnant basement air. Even after the fat kid covered Joey's mouth with duct tape he had continued to scream at every thrust and slash of the knife, scalpel, sharp steel pins, and needles. Not to cal for help, but to drown out the pain with noise.

  Joey lost track of how many times the fat kid came down to torture him or drink from his wounds. The image of the teenager's chubby cheeks splashed with

  Joey's blood, his eyes glazed and sparkling with hunger and lust, made chil s dance along Joey's skin. He wondered if the kid was a vampire.

  Vampires were supposed to be thin and beautiful and this kid was al lumpy and misshapen with pimples exploding al over his acne-scarred face, but he had drank an enormous amount of blood.

  Only a vampire could have drank that much blood without getting sick. But if that kid was immortal then he was fucked because that meant he'd have to look like that forever.

  Maybe he just thinks he's a vampire?

  Joey wondered. Or maybe he is a vampire but just a different kind than the ones in the movies. An uglier kind.

  The basement door creaked open again and sunlight spil ed down the stairs, il uminating the cobwebs and rat droppings and chasing away the cockroaches that had come to lap at the blood splattered around the outside of the tub. A few tepid rays of sunshine struck metal and cast their gleam farther into the room. Joey's eyes fol owed the sun rays back to their reflection in the stainless surgical steel and he shuddered.

  Several cruel-looking implements were laid out on a metal table a few feet from where Joey lay bleeding. Razor-sharp scalpels, knives, and needles, arranged the way surgeons did on TV-in order of practical use. They were al stained with Joey's blood.

  The basement door closed again and the lone fluorescent light at the top of the basement steps flashed on. The bulb was broken and flickered continuously, casting eerie shadows around the room.

  Joey cringed as the fat kid came back down the stairs, backlit by the strobelighting fluorescent bulb. He was just one great malformed shadow.

  The fat kid was naked. His pale flesh was stained with Joey's blood, including his short, fireplug-shaped cock, erect and straining beneath the weight of his low-hanging gut. Joey began to whimper as the kid's gore-streaked smile came swooping down at him and he felt those clammy hands and blubbery lips, that slimy wormlike tongue, and blunt little teeth worry at him, probing and digging into his wounds, ripping them wider. He began to scream against the duct tape sealed tight to his lips as he was turned facedown in the tub and he felt the pain lance through him again in rhythmic thrusts, drawing more blood.

  Joseph Miles woke up with his heart thundering in his chest, his lungs sucking in air and forcing it back out in rapid bursts. His old scars screamed as if they'd just been made. His eyes slid back and forth, sweeping the room, looking for the fat kid. He reached out and stroked the large powerful forms of Hades and Beelzebub, his guardians, nestled beside him in the bed, one on each side. The rock-hard muscles coiled beneath their fur reassured him. They would've torn that fat kid to pieces.

  Anyway, he was locked up now. He'd never hurt Joey again. Stil, Joey was grateful for his two guardians.

  He squinted against the harsh invasive glare of the morning sun lancing through the cracks in his vertical blinds and tried to wil the clouds to shield him from it. Hades and Beelzebub did not appear to mind the sunlight nearly as much as he did. Joey found that surprising. Weren't monsters supposed to fear the light?

  That's what the books al said. But the fat kid had snatched him off his bike in broad daylight and Hades and

  Beelzebub loved the sun. They lay snoring steadily in the warm morning light.

  Their heavy rumbling breaths vibrated through the mattress like a revving engine. Joey could stil smel the meaty steel-and-copper scent of flesh and blood in each exhalation. He cringed, remembering their last meal.

  Joey stared at the two massive beasts, admiring their fearsome jaws with the savage, lethal-looking canines. Their mouths could easily have crushed the largest bones in his body. Their necks were as thick as his waist and their legs and shoulders were broad and muscular.

  The combined weight of the two monsters was nearly three hundred pounds, three times his own weight, and with them lying on the blanket he was trapped beneath it, unable to move.

  Beelzebub was the first to notice that the young boy had awakened. He leapt up and ran to the head of the bed where he began happily licking Joey's face.

  Hades woke up next and soon Joey was being covered in saliva as the two huge beasts showered him with affection.

  Joey hugge
d them, running his hands over the smooth black fur coating their muscular bodies, and began to cry. He knew that if anyone found out what they'd done they would destroy the two beasts and he'd be alone again. Defenseless.

  It had been over a year since Joey had been attacked and nearly kil ed. That's when his parents had brought home the two monsters to protect him. For the last six months Joey and his friend Mike had been teaching the two predators how to kil from a book they'd ordered from

  Soldier of Fortune magazine on building prey drive and a Schutzhund video on bite work. Using a dummy they'd made of old clothes, they'd taught the two dogs to leap up and rip out a man's throat on command, how to dive for a man's legs and crush his ankles or rip off his quadriceps or hamstring muscles with their massive jaws to bring him down, how to rip open a man's bel y and tear out his intestines. They were learning quickly. Joey had been dying for a demonstration of their abilities.

  Right up until Hades and Beelzebub split little Mikey like a wishbone, Joey had been confident that he could cal the dogs off before they went too far. The fountain of arterial red that splashed his face moments after giving the attack command had proven him wrong.

  He had been standing next to Mikey in the park. They both had their shirts off and Joey kept catching Mikey staring at the scars on his chest and stomach from where he had been attacked. He knew that Mikey was about to ask him about them, that he would have to remember that horrible night spent in Damon Trent's basement tasting his own blood. The last thing Joey wanted was to remember. He whistled and pointed at his friend. The two rottweilers turned in unison, baring their fangs. Hades was the first to attack. Mikey had his arm wrapped in a bite sleeve made from a stolen leather jacket and two thick pil ows, but Hades ignored it. Mikey's eyes widened in fear as the massive beast charged. He held out the bite sleeve and she dodged it as if it were a gun, just like she'd been trained to do. She went straight for his throat. Joey couldn't help but be impressed as he watched that thickly-muscled instrument of destruction launch herself into the air like a missile, leaping nearly three feet off the ground, her fangs bared. Her jaws clamped onto Mikey's throat and she brought him down to the park floor in a cloud of dust. She began thrashing and jerking her head from side to side, snapping Mikey's neck and tearing his esophagus to shreds. Blood erupted from the boy's throat and soaked the animal's snout. Blood from

  Mikey's punctured carotid artery and lacerated jugular sprayed al over the ground and doused young Joseph in a shower of red. He licked his friend's blood from his lips and a shiver vibrated down to the root of him, giving him an instant erection.

  Beelzebub was just seconds behind his sister. He dove into Mikey's stomach and began ripping and tearing at his abdominal muscles, burrowing his way to the boy's organs.

  Joey's legs trembled. His jaw fel open and his eyes widened in shock. He reached out his hand toward the dog but hesitated. Something about the sight of the blood, the torn flesh with the white bone and pink-and-purple organs gleaming through, the sound of muscle and tendons being ripped by those merciless fangs, transfixed him. It was so horrible… so beautiful.

  The boy stood frozen, staring as Hades attempted to tear Mikey's head from his shoulders. Joey tried to shut out the rattling whistle coming from Mikey's mangled throat as the boy continued trying to suck air into his lungs even as Beelzebub tore into him. Joey clapped his hands and yel ed for the dogs to stop.

  "Down! Down, Hades! Down,

  Beelzebub!"

  When Hades unclamped her jaws from

  Mikey's throat the boy's head was twisted at an acute angle. There was little doubt that his neck had been shattered. His pupils were fixed and dilated and his chest had ceased its rise and fal.

  Joey looked down at his murdered friend and began to cry. He hadn't meant to kil him. His sorrow rained down on him like a summer storm. He was relieved by the immediacy and intensity of it. Joey knew a lot about serial kil ers. He'd read about them, had almost been kil ed by one, and had an irrational fear of becoming one, becoming like the perverted freak that had kidnapped him and carved him up in his basement. But he was relatively sure that serial kil ers did not feel remorse for their victims. As long as he could cry he was sure that he was normal, even if his tears were more for the two massive rottweilers than for his dead playmate. He knew they would be put to sleep once the police found

  Mikey's body and figured out what had happened.

  Two days later the dogs were destroyed, but not before Joey had taken them back to the park to watch them feed on

  Mikey's remains.

  When they arrived at the spot where the attack had taken place the boy's savaged corpse was stil lying in a heap on the park floor just where Joey had left it. Only now it was seeping fluids other than blood and myriad insects had begun making a meal of him. Joey found himself becoming aroused as he watched the two dogs bite off and devour huge chunks of the boy's flesh.

  He masturbated to his first climax as

  Hades devoured Mikey's genitals, adding his own virgin seed to the bloodsoaked earth.

  Chapter Two

  Ten Years Later…

  Joe sat in his art class staring at the nude model posing unenthusiastical y atop a wooden stool. Her breasts were much smal er than what Joe preferred.

  Her hips, ass, and thighs were likewise barely existent. She was proportioned very much like a prepubescent girl rather than a grown woman. Not at al the type of woman that normal y roused the beast. But something about her was getting to him. Her big, vulnerable, doelike eyes, the seductive smirk turning up the corners of her thick lips or the up the corners of her thick lips or the way they seemed to be constantly puckered as if blowing a kiss.

  Something about her was arousing him.

  And that was just not good.

  Years ago a psychiatrist had suggested painting as therapy to help Joe deal with the trauma he'd been through. They thought it would be good if the shy young boy learned to express himself creatively. Since then Joe had used his art as an outlet for his fantasies, but as his fantasies had begun to twist and pervert he'd had to hide his work from those who wouldn't understand it. He was now beginning to think this art class might not have been a good idea. It was hard to hide your art in a room fil ed with thirty other students.

  Joe's hand trembled as he dragged the paintbrush over the canvas. More and more red found its way into his palette as he imagined ripping the waifish model open and tasting her insides. It was just one more sign that he was starting to lose control of himself.

  Earlier that day he'd received a cal from his father reminding Joe of how much he was paying for his education and that he'd better not be out partying al night and getting shitty grades like he had his first year in col ege.

  "Don't piss away your chance to make something of yourself by going out every night chasing those col ege sluts. There'l be plenty of time to dip your wick in those split-tails after you get your education. Col ege ain't al about beer bongs and toga parties, boy. Don't fuck this up! I can barely afford to keep you there now. I'd be retired now if it weren't for you-you're the only reason I keep working. But you'd rather get drunk and bang every coed slut you see. Young, dumb, and ful of cum. You'd better control that shit this year, boy! Don't let your grades slip again. You hearin' me, boy?"

  Joe listened halfheartedly. Loans and government grants were paying for his education; al his dad did was send him spending money. He could easily replace that eighty dol ars a week with a job. Even McDonald's paid more than that. But something about talking to his father always made the beast hungrier.

  His dad always pissed him off and the anger seemed to trigger the lust.

  Joe's hands whipped frantical y back and forth across the canvas. His palette was now almost completely red, white, tan, and pink. Blood, bone, and flesh. He was painting the model from the inside out. He was also panting hard and staring at her so intently that she began to shiver as she stared back. Joe could feel eyes on him, in back of him. He could
hear them gasp at the mayhem on his canvas. But he couldn't stop painting. An erection was tenting his pants as he slashed at the canvas with his brush.

  Final y, the model snatched up her clothes and ran out of the room, breaking the trance Joe had found himself in. The room went completely quiet. Joe could stil hear his own breaths coming hard and fast like a steam engine at ful speed. He struggled to get himself under control even as he became aware of the stares of his peers-and the professor. She was the first to break the silence.

  "Uh… Joseph? That was a pretty intense session there. Do you mind if we take a look at your canvas?" The professor was another starving waif with no appreciable nourishment on her gaunt frame. Her skin hung loose against her bones as if someone had already sucked out al the muscle and fat. The bones in her face stuck out prominently and her eyes were sunken back into her skul. Her dried nest of blonde and gray hair hung in a tangled mess down to her shoulders and her hands were perpetual y stained with paint. She had always reminded Joe of a walking, talking skeleton.

  Joe said nothing. He watched stoical y as she lifted the canvas from the easel in front of him. The rest of the class was closing in on him, stepping from behind their own easels and crowding in tight to stare over his shoulder at his masterpiece. The canvas dripped with red. There were gasps al around.

  "This is some very passionate work, Joseph. What inspired you to create this?"

  The woman's voice trembled. She'd be cal ing his counselor the minute class was over. They'd have his ass on a psychiatrist's couch by the end of the week and once they found out everything else that was in his head they'd stick him in a straitjacket and toss him in a padded room. He had to say something to dissuade them from thinking he was crazy, but he couldn't focus. The proximity of his fel ow students was making his mouth water. The air was thick and humid with the smel of warm, young flesh. He stared from one to the other, not looking at their faces but at breasts squeezed tight into little T-shirts and blouses, nipples pressed against the fabric, naked thighs sticking out from beneath shorts and skirts, bare arms, necks, even the shaved calves at the bottom of a pair of Capri pants were arousing him. Joe wanted to scream.