Succulent Prey Read online

  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.

  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 tub. He brought her back over to the bed and chained her up again.

  Joe scrambled some eggs and made bacon and toast but Alicia would not eat it so he left it by the side of the bed along with fresh water. He emptied the bucket that sat alongside the bed and replaced it, just in case she needed to use it while he was gone.

  "I have to go. I'l be back later." It was far too early for class so Joe walked across campus to the gym, getting there just as the wrestling team was finishing up their weight training and the footbal players were starting to pile in. Joe was bigger and stronger than most of the players on the team. He knew they thought he was crazy for not playing, but he had more important things to do than run up and down a field chasing a weather-beaten pigskin.

  Ignoring the loud laughing and joking from the players, Joe began stacking weight onto the bar. He loaded 225 pounds onto the weight bench to begin his warmup and then proceeded to do two sets of fifteen reps with it. He ended by bench-pressing 405 pounds, doing nearly five hundred on the decline press and 365 on the incline. He then did some curls with 180 pounds and finished with five hundred stomach crunches.

  With every grueling set of exercises

  Joe's mind went inexorably back to

  Trent. He couldn't get that damned pedophile out of his mind. He had to find him and kil him and that meant he needed to get a car, preferably a van so that he could transport Alicia without having to lock her in a trunk. He had the librarian's wedding and engagement rings and about forty dol ars from her purse. The engagement ring was a huge solitaire, at least three carats. Her last husband had probably purchased it for four or five grand. Joe thought he might be able to get seven or eight hundred for it at a pawnshop but more than likely he'd have to settle for five or six hundred, an eighth of its value. That meant some very cheap transportation. If he went to a used car lot it would probably be enough fora down payment.

  Joe grabbed a forty-five-pound weight and placed it on his chest as he groaned and strained his way through another fifty crunches. When he stood, his abdominal muscles were wound up tight and starting to cramp. He stretched backward as far as he could to loosen them up before he went to hit the showers. By the time he had undressed and stepped into the shower it was empty. Everyone had hurried to finish washing before he stepped in. He made them nervous. Joe knew that as soon as someone found the librarian's body he'd be the first suspect.

  He doubted that anyone had seen him going in and out of the abandoned apartment building. The building was located in a commercial area that closed up at night and he never went there during the day. There were nothing but derelicts and drug addicts down there at night after al the businesses closed and they would not be inclined to speak to the police. That's why he had chosen it. He didn't have to worry about nosy neighbors. Stil, everyone knew he stayed at the library late almost every night and he was sure Emma had told others about the type of stuff he read. Besides that, he just hadn't done a very good job at concealing his sexual peculiarities.

  No one knew for sure just what his malfunction was, but the general consensus was that the huge psychology student definitely wasn't quite right. His sexual deviancy shone like a beacon whenever he stepped into a room. In many cases it had worked for him, attracting women looking for a new thril, but now he was sure it would work against him once they found Emma's half-eaten corpse in the apartment next door to the one he was squatting in.

  Everyone would point the finger at him. Before he left for his trip, he would meticulously wipe down everything in the little apartment and then burn the whole thing to the ground. Everything would be okay. By the time the cops sifted enough evidence from the ashes to connect him to the crime he would be long gone.

  Joe started to whistle as he made his way across campus to his psychology class.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Everyone turned to look at him as Joe walked into the room. The cops had been there. He could tel. They had been asking questions about the librarian and his name had come up. That meant they would be back.

  Joe slipped down into his seat and stared defiantly at the professor, waiting for him to begin his lecture. They had nothing on him, not yet anyway, so he stil had every right to be there. The professor stared back at him with an expression that was ful of questions and suspicion. His hand shook as he raised it to scrawl on the blackboard. it to scrawl on the blackboard.

  The eyes of his fel ow students crawled over Joe's flesh. He imagined he could feel each of their curious stares like a legion of worms trying to wriggle their way into his mind to harvest his thoughts. It made him itch. He scratched the back of his neck as if to rake their stares from his skin. The professor kept looking back over his shoulder at him as he wrote on the chalkboard. Joe knew he had burned that bridge. It was obvious that everyone, including Professor

  Locke, suspected him of having done something to the librarian. Professor

  Locke had spent most of his career profiling and apprehending serial kil ers. If anyone could spot the monster in their midst it would be him. There was no way the professor would help him now.

  "There have been many theories that have tried to link the compulsion to kil to brain abnormalities. There was once a theory that murderers possessed an extra Y chromosome. This was, of course, disproven. There have
been theories that have sought to link early head trauma to violent criminal behavior. Neurologists have even presented CAT scans that actual y showed increased brain activity in the limbic region of violent sexual offenders and decreased activity in other areas of the brain. They have found that most signature sex murderers were themselves victims of physical or sexual abuse or at the very least mental y abused, but then there were others, like Ted Bundy, who had very normal and happy upbringings. And then there are, of course, people who have been abused, who have had brain traumas, and who have active limbic systems that don't grow up to murder strangers. So what makes them do it?" The professor turned to look directly at Joe.

  "Are they just evil?" the professor asked. Joe raised his hand and he felt the students on either side of him flinch.

  Professor Locke stared at Joe's rising arm then looked around the room as if seeking the class's approval before cal ing on him.

  "Yes, Joseph?"

  "Is it possible that it is an evolutionary mutation?"

  "A what?"

  "An evolutionary mutation, part of natural selection. Man is the only creature on the earth without a natural predator, except other men. Perhaps as our population explodes Mother Nature has felt the need to select certain individuals to act as population control. Perhaps giving them drives and instincts that other humans don't have, which genetical y predisposes them to mass murder-to cul the herd, so to speak. In the wild the weak and the helpless would have died off, kil ed by other animals, other predators, but civilization and our technological advancements have made for the possibility of even the weakest human beings surviving and flourishing. As a result, a world that was adequate to support smal tribes is now populated by nations of mil ions, smothering the earth and draining it of al its resources; kil ing it like a cancer. Just three hundred years ago there weren't even a bil ion people on the planet and now there are six bil ion. There are more people alive right now than have ever lived. Perhaps nature is just seeking a remedy for the plague. Isn't it possible that murderers are the natural antivirus?"

  Joe didn't care about the stares and the whispers. After today he would have to get out of town. This would probably be his last opportunity to pick the professor's brain before the cops came knocking on his door.

  "Wel, Joe, if what you suggest is true and signature kil ers are just men who are higher up the food chain than us, not a glitch but an advancement in the natural selection process, then there would be no hope to cure these individuals. There would be no need for the psychiatrist, only the policeman and the executioner."

  "Perhaps that's why no one has ever cured one," Joe replied.

  "I think I liked your virus idea better. At least that one contained a little hope."

  "Yeah, I liked it better too." The class ended and Joe left the lecture hal and walked quickly to his sociology class. He scoured the campus for signs of police. They had no evidence that the woman was even dead, just that she was missing. Someone probably cal ed when she hadn't shown up for work and they couldn't get an answer at her apartment. He'd parked her car down in the projects at Hunter's Point and caught the bus back home. By the time they found it the car would probably be completely stripped and they would assume she'd been the victim of a carjacking. Except that half the fucking campus was probably tel ing the cops that Joe hung out at the library every night and he was sure a few of them had seen them at the coffee shop. If they somehow found his apartment they'd find the body. But by then he'd be in Seattlekil ing Damon

  Trent.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Joe's sociology class seemed to be exploring darker and darker subjects.

  His constant questions were certainly a major impetus behind the trend but he could not take sole responsibility for it. They'd begun by talking about Indian folklore and the subject of the Wendigo had come up.

  "Both the Chippewa and Ojibwa tribes tel a similar story of a fierce warrior who would cut off a piece of his enemy's flesh after defeating him in battle and eat it to gain strength. This warrior soon developed a taste for human flesh and began to prey on his own tribe. He began to prey on his own tribe. He ceased to hunt animals and sustained himself solely on other humans. So the

  Master Of Life, the Great Spirit, decreed that if he chose to live as a savage beast then he would forever appear as a monster and transformed him into the

  Wendigo. Now he is said to prowl the forests and frozen wastelands of North

  America, starving for human flesh.

  "They say that anyone who commits the sin of cannibalism wil likewise be cursed with the spirit of the Wendigo, becoming a monster that must now eat other humans to survive."

  The students were silent as kids sitting around a campfire listening to a real y good ghost story. They seemed to be waiting for the traditional shock ending. Most of them were looking at Joe as if expecting him to suddenly grow hair and fangs.

  "Once you become one of these monsters, how do you reverse it? Does it say how they're cured?" Joe asked. The professor shook his head in exasperation and sighed deeply.

  "They aren't cured, Joseph. Once they cross that line and become cannibals, they remain monsters forever."

  "But that can't be! There has to be a cure!"

  "Settle down. It's only mythology. No need to get yourself al worked up." Prudence was not one of Joe's strong points and he had once again drawn the snickers and stares of his peers. He lowered his head and crossed his arms over his chest as he settled back into his chair.

  The professor continued. "Wel, then. Normal y in Native American folklore, the ability to take on the shape of animals was used for purposes of spiritual enlightenment, healing, and personal growth. Even evil shape-shifters didn't general y attack and eat humans. This horrific trait was solely that of the

  Wendigo, and the legend of this creature appears to have been used to warn against the practice of cannibalism."

  "Was there any truth to the legends? I mean, did anyone claim to have actual y seen one?"

  The professor closed his eyes and cupped his forehead in his hands, trying to maintain his composure.

  "It's an old legend. And though I'm sure there were a great many who believed in it a century or two ago, "Wel, maybe they should," Joe replied.

  He fel silent, his eyes daring the professor to inquire further. The professor stared back with the unasked question lying flat on his tongue.

  Did you kil that woman?

  Suddenly Joe felt claustrophobic in the little classroom. He stood quickly, nearly flipping his chair over as he snatched up his backpack and made for the door.

  The professor flinched when the huge sophomore stormed past.

  "That's a very disturbed kid," he whispered as Joe left the room and the door shut slowly behind him.

  I'd be surprised if anyone gives it much credibility nowadays."

  Chapter Twenty

  Alicia trembled as she lay on Joe's filthy sheets, which stil smel ed of blood, sweat, cum, and urine. Her legs were spread wide and bound along with her wrists. She had never been more terrified. The room stil stank of death even beneath the overpowering chemical smel of Pine-Sol and bleach.

  In her mind she could stil see the body of the heavyset woman her captor had devoured where it had lain on the floor. The wood where her blood had pooled and coagulated was now bleached lighter than the rest of the floor. Alicia's ears stil rang with the woman's screams, sending shivers up and down her spine. That woman had died in unimaginable pain.

  Alicia knew she was going to die next.

  No matter how kind the big col ege kid had been to her before he'd left this morning. No matter how he'd tried to reassure her that he would never hurt her that way. The Band-Aids on her nipples said otherwise. She was dead.

  Even if he was right about the serial kil er virus, that it was something like the vampire or werewolf curse, Alicia was stil not convinced they could reverse its effects. Especial y not after last night. Joe had consumed both blood and human flesh. If he ha
d not been damned before he was certainly damned now and that meant Alicia was fucked right along with him. Stil, as long as he believed he could cure himself there was hope for her to escape.

  Her wrists were getting infected where her skin had abraded from her daily attempts to wrestle free of the restraints. They would have time to heal now, though. Alicia had given up on trying to break free. She laid her head down on the pil ow and dreamt about her father. In her dreams he came to her, wiped the blood from her stomach, undid her restraints and told her he loved her and forgave her. He looked younger now, though, stronger, as if death had restored his youth. He wiped the tears from her face and kissed her forehead.

  Then he began to comb her hair. She couldn't remember her father ever being this gentle and nurturing in life. He looked so different now. He looked…

  Just like Superman.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  After leasing the Ford cargo van for their trip, Joe had gone back to the apartment to get Alicia ready to travel. He'd found her in a deep sleep, mumbling to herself. She'd woken up just as he'd started to dress her.

  "Joe! I thought… I had a dream that my dad was here."

  "You looked so happy."

  "I was."