run hunt

There is a theory that humans, who as a species are oddly good at long-distance running, in fact evolved to hunt at pace. The theory is that we could carry water and run all day, hounding some poor speed-built gazelle, and eventually they would just lay down and submit.

You have been running for an hour and a half. Once you had to sprint to force the young man who is your prey to turn away from a path that would lead to dwellings, but otherwise you have been steadily persuing him into wilderness. You selected your quarry carefully: late night, slow and unaccustomed runner, a little bit of weight to make the catch worth it. He wears air pods and you can see his hi-vis running trainers limp along in the middle distance.

You feel your fat massage itself as you run. Each powerful impact on the ground jiggles your arse like the surface of a swimming pool. Swiveling hips set your belly wobbling from side to side, and your tits even moreso, more or less rhythmically except when you have to adjust to avoid a tree root or something.

Tortoise and the hare. He took one glance at your fangs and the unearthly red energy coruscating along your arm and ran like the devil were after him. You jogged, and when he tired, would always catch up. He has stumbled and fallen from exhaustion three times, burning through energy reserves and muscle and willpower in a private battle to survive. You, meanwhile, have kept focus. Managed your energy. Sharpened your hunger. Reserved the energy to pounce.

So when he stumbles and does not even raise his head to check where you are, some lupine instinct rises in you. Your tread quickens, and redoubles, and redoubles. His shoulders shake and he hides his face: he has accepted his place as your meat. Only not enough. When your sprinting footsteps come near he turns and scrambles to his feet.

Too late. Three more steps and then you leap. You hit him with all your weight, bowling him over from half-way standing to flat on his back. Clawed hands clamp down on his face and his flank. You bring your weight down onto your knee on his belly to pin him. The breath is knocked out of him so he can’t even beg as you tear his lycra running top from his chest and lower your open jaws—

Like biting into steak. His living meat parts around your closing teeth and fills your mouth and your brain with blood. Red. You see red, you smell it. He is your kill even though he is not dead yet. With bloodlust exaultation you close your teeth in his deltoid, at the top of his arm. A great gobbet of flesh comes away, gloriously heavy in your mouth. You swallow it and howl, showing the moon a crimson throat.

The site of the wound is a shallow puddle of hot blood, steaming in the cold air. Like a hound you lap it up then bite again. Your teeth this time are pincers, seizing the ruined remnants of the large muscle. It twitches and squirms as your prey fights, but he has no leverage. When you tug, tendons creak and then pop as they fail. Slick muscle comes away in one anatomical structure and is consigned to the hellish pit of your stomach. You’re ripping into his chest before it even slides home.

With depleted strength and no voice, your prey bucks and fights beneath you. But he’s not a person, and he’s certainly not a fighter. He is meat that has not laid down yet.

More, more, more. The chest is frustratingly difficult to bite into. You tear away mostly skin and switch your hold. A knee on his neck holds him down while you rip away running shorts, exposing thrashing legs.

With your fangs levered into his flesh you can tear out more than you can bite. After one jerk of your neck it’s like his quads have been attacked by a great melon-baller. Rich muscle marbled with fat is channelled into your throat and devoured.

You’re almost done with the whole leg before your bloodlust dims to a quiet determination to satisfy your hunger, and before his strength truly begins to fail him. You no longer need to hold him down, and can take the luxury of easing suddenly-stuffed guts with a raucous belch: ~kuh-bwoooaAAauUghrp~. Gulping down wads of flesh in a frenzy does that to a girl’s digestion. His lolling head turns to look at you as you reach to the sky and crack your back.

You look down at him, eyes just slits, blood-painted face stained black in the moonlight. Modern humans don’t have to worry about such deaths. To him you are an ancient nightmare made flesh.

In a casual gesture you part the skin below his ribs and penetrate his abdominal cavity. You lick the claw clean then ruin your good work by seizing the lip of the wound and yanking it wide.

There. Ignoring coils of intestines or mysterious yellow things—is that a pancreas?—you reach in and tease his liver out from its lifelong nest. It flops over your palm, slick, slightly mottled but mostly a burgundy to rival your lips.

Lips meet it in a kiss. You suck slightly to draw some of the offal into your mouth, then bite without fuss. A slab comes away cleanly, carrying deep, brassy notes of complex liver flavour. The pain is lost on your prey in a flood of other pain. He only pushes impotently at your head and you let him while you take another bite.

He’s unconscious by the time you eat your way down to the hepatic artery. You need the blood more than the organ now minced in your belly so you latch on and drink everything his failing heart pours down your throat.

When it stops, you go on. There is much more to eat. Arm and leg to finish off; others not yet started. Heart, lungs, sweetbreads, chest. The back muscles are tough: you chew them like jerky. Waste is anathema to you. Do you consume his entrails? His skin? His genitals? I know for a fact you crack open the large bones and suck out rich, fatty marrow. Do you also crack open his skull?

You’re heavy and very tired when he’s all gone. It’s a long walk home. You wash in a stream you noted during the chase. The woods hold no danger for you except indigestion, stitch, and gas.

It’s been a couple of days since poker: I’m probably healed and keen to see you. You fish out your phone from your bra. I pick up on the third ring. You idly heft your belly as you speak, feeling the dead weight of the runner.

“Hi, Andrew. Could you pick me up? And run me a bath when we get home? I’ve been for a run…”