i need a hero
Sometimes, you just have to dance. Getting lost in the music is a pale echo of the pleasure of feeding, but it’s still something you crave.
You spot him by scent, maybe. Cropped blonde hair, eyes like bloody marble. No doubt the woman he’s dancing with sees innocent blue. Your lips twitch down at the corners with distaste. In a room filled with music he is a bum note.
The city is getting a reputation. Disappearances. Ineffective policing, cover ups. Just the other day there was a fire in a rental unit. Thirteen dead, twelve all in one dance space. Two missing.
You didn’t know I’d set a fire. You were busy trying not to give birth to a torrent of ingested blood at the time. It’s not clear if I’ve seen the news: you haven’t seen me in a couple of days.
Thirteen.
But still. You’re out now, and you’re hungry. The tequila and coke is hitting the spot nicely. And now there’s this feral pretty-boy on your turf.
Not to worry. Something to keep an eye on. Oh shit, this is your tune! With time to kill and a pred to watch you still get to cut loose.
Around seven songs in, not counting one drinks run, he and his lady friend have gone. You give an easy, broad smile to the man you were letting believe was chatting you up and bow out with an excuse. He protests but you’re already slipping between dancers towards the exit they were nearest.
They’re nowhere in the club, toilets, stairs or satellite club. A parting glance around the main dance floor, then you’re on your way out, accepting a stamp to the back of your hand. No way are you paying in again if they’ve got away and you go hungry.
Outside you find the momentary dislocation one always finds on leaving a sound-drenched palace of stimulation for a cool night street. A gang of young men hoot and chatter as they swagger towards the bouncers, who eye them up and perform male/female ratio calculations in their heads. A taxi rolls past, but the passengers are two couples sitting uncomfortably close to one another. No sign of blondie.
There. That scent again. Not bad, just out of place. Like a Gregg’s sausage roll in a salad bar. He smells savory and greasy.
You turn upwind, eyes flashing as you check every vantage point. You’re not foolish enough to discount the possibility he’s bait.
A moan from the alleyway. The scene: he’s leaning into his dancing partner. Her slight frame is swamped by a dad bod but his strength is immediately obvious in how effortlessly he holds her two hands above her head with just one. The other is down the front of a skirt, but that’s not necessarily the reason for her moaning. You can hear from where you stand the loud, wet swallows as he lazily gulps down mouthfuls of her blood. Perhaps he’s giving her one last orgasm, perhaps he’s just keeping the blood flowing.
Sometimes an approach requires care and plans and subterfuge. Sometimes you simply stalk up behind someone. Your size makes it astonishing how a silently you can move. He only opens his eyes when you are feet away from him.
Far, far too late. A head cocked to feed presents a neck ripe for biting. You swamp his body with your own fat more voluptuous one. He sinks into you and your fangs sink into his carotid.
The angle makes it easy to look his prey in the eyes as you powerfully suck a mouthful of his blood away. You weren’t expecting this, but it’s like he has physical control over his blood and, rather than let his heart drive it into your gut for you, you must empty him with hard-working lips and tongue. Each mouthful rolls like a living thing against your palate, trying to re-enter his body. It’s thick and rich, threaded through with a leather-like astringency. When swallowed it squirms all the way down. Your belly tickles like a hundred fingers are scrabbling against the walls, seeking a way out.
There is no way out, naturally.
He releases his prey, who must remain pressed against the wall by her would-be devourer, and tries to throw off your grip.. He’s extraordinarily strong but you’ve been gorging and training for months, now. Beneath your flab lie muscles like iron. He roars as you eat him alive.
There’s so much. It keeps pouring out. God, you hope you don’t have to drink every person he’s ever taken. Then the lighter notes of fresh human blood come through on your palate and his growling breaks into gaping. “No! No! I’m one of you!”
Give another two minutes and he’ll be right. There’s only one of you, and the last vestiges of his vampiric core slip reluctantly between your lips. You claim this creature with a final swallow. Earlier on your had worried about what this strange ichor could do inside your guts, but once your excitable stomach began to secrete your digestive enzymes into it, the desperate thrashing began. Something struggling in your stomach told you that everything was going to be alright.
Blondie is finished, rigid as teak and now emaciated, all fat and muscle tone gone. You drink down the several pints of stolen woman’s-blood then stagger back. It takes a moment to get accustomed to your new, front-heavy centre of gravity. Fuck, you’re full. He was like three people. You take a step and squelch internally, a sign of the softening blood-creature still fondling the lining of your stomach.
He falls like a tree to the ground, landing with a sound like bundled twigs. She, shaky but still standing, stares at you as you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand.
“Go,” you say, in between faint burps. Your dying guest churns up air inside your tummy like no one’s business. “Unless you want the same thing to happen to you.”
Clutching her neck, she staggers back down the alley. At the mouth she pauses and looks back. It’s the closest she comes to a thankyou. Then she rounds the corner. A shout shortly afterwards indicates that someone has probably spotted the blood-stained wanderer.
You’re gone anyway. The warm glow of food and a good deed done fills your tummy. You told me once that you believe you are good, despite your hunger. I no longer need to believe that—you are a goddess in my eyes, and your will is sacrosanct. But perhaps you need to remind yourself, on occasion.
The predatory being in your gut shivers and is still. Its future prey will be undisturbed and never realise that fact. The world is a safer place because of your hunger.
For today, at least.