Hunter (Slight Re-Write No.2)

Hunter.
By Stephen A Abell.

No. Of Words: 2210

There was no way of getting away from the fact. He was bored. The day had been a wash out.

It all started at seven thirty that morning with the ringing of his alarm clock. He slammed his fist down, hard, on the off button and the clock fell to the floor. Blurry eyed, he stumbled out of his warm sanctuary to search for the annoyance that had brought him out of his slumber. His foot found the clock. The glass face cracked and a sliver shot into the underside of his big toe. Suddenly his body and mind were wide awake as he grabbed his foot and yanked out the shard. The rest of the day had pretty much followed the same path of bad luck. The hot water would not flow from the shower. His toast caught fire in the toaster nearly burning down the kitchen before he could dump the toaster in the sink. It had been plugged in so it tripped the cut off on the circuit board plunging him into the darkness of the December morning. The car would not start straight away and when it finally did the heater did not work. Lunch had to be missed because he found that in his haste, to leave the cursed house behind, he had left his wallet on the kitchen table. To top it all, though, he had walked around the town for the last seven hours and had not been able to find what he was hunting for. The conclusion he came to was that this was one FUBAR'ed day.

She walked past him, looking at the freezers holding all the sweet delights. Her perfume hung in the air and he breathed deep of it and of her. There was a musky under current in the odour, he had found her, she was the one. He stayed behind her as she sauntered past the freezers tempting customers to buy and try. Five foot ten he estimated her height and around eight to nine stones in weight. Lifting her would be no trouble at all, should it come to that. The workouts, at the gym, with the weights and the fitness machines had paid off. He was stronger than the impression his wiry frame gave. I am an illusion. The thought pleased him, he smiled and continued his study of the prey. Blonde hair cut short in a bob. Blue eyes behind thin framed gold glasses. Lips, thin, made up with a lipstick that was too red for her pale complexion. She had a beauty mark, a mole, on the lower right side, just under her lip. She was dressed in a business suit. Pinstriped black jacket and matching skirt. A white blouse that would become red when the blood flowed. Over this she wore a heavy cotton coat, black. Was she wearing tights or stockings, it did not matter what they were, they were black also. Her feet were encased in black high heeled shoes, with a gold trim around the top. She was very business like and very elegant.

As she paid for her goods at the checkout he passed by, giving a slight nod to the guy behind the till, walking slow enough so she would eventually catch up. Opening the metal and glass swing door he glanced back and saw her just a few paces behind. Pretending to be the gentleman, he was not, he held the door open for her to walk through. No words of gratefulness were uttered. People are so rude, the thought echoed around in his mind. They're so far up their own arses, only thinking of themselves. They deserve everything they get. He smiled and started walking after the self-centred elegant bitch.

The stories had started a couple of years ago. The papers had reported the killings as just single murders, only later did they pick up on the fact they may have all been related. They may have been the act of a single man. People were dying, men and women were being murdered all around the town and the police had little or no clues to the identity of the killer. Bodies were found torn open, mutilated, some were drained of blood. The crime scenes gave no clues, they were spotless, the killer having meticulously cleaned up after himself. This led the police to the conclusion that the people were being abducted, tortured and murdered elsewhere, then dumped in the town. The victims had nothing in common, except for once being alive and then, later, being dead.

She too had read the stories and knew of the madman on the loose. Only living five minutes from the town centre, where she worked, she decided to walk anyway. Besides what could happen in five minutes? She had reasoned with friends that if she did take her car it would take her fifteen minutes, in the rush hour traffic, to reach her job. They had conceded. She wished that they had not given in so easily as she turned the corner onto Marsden Street and the footsteps and laboured breathing followed her. Why she had not taken the car today, she did not know. It was December after all, cold dark mornings and colder, darker evenings. The street ahead was in darkness. There were no street lights on this little side road and the lights from the offices to her left were extinguished. If only, she thought, I hadn't gone shopping the offices lights would be on and people would be around. The few houses to the right all had their curtains closed. As she walked into the gloominess a shiver ran down her body. All I have to do is make it through the walkway, she enthused, that's all and then I'm on my well lit street and home. The footsteps and the breathing were closer. Her heart beat faster.

The smile spread over his face as she turned the corner because he knew this part of the town and how quiet it could be. His luck had changed, he knew it. Quickening his pace he overtook her outside the Marsden building. The memories of a better time filled him quickly. He had been unemployed and had been sent here on a training scheme meant to get him back into work. All it was though was another way to get people taken off the unemployment figures. Bastards, venom flooded his body. If there was one thing he disliked it was being used. The small car park he came to was empty, that was good. There were no cars parked outside the health centre, on the other side of the parking lot, even its sign was devoid of illumination. Everybody had gone home. The family planning clinic, just a few metres up the walkway, would also be quiet and devoid of life. Thanks to government cuts the place was only open three days a week.

After crossing the empty lot he entered the walkway. It consisted of a four foot wide path with a six foot concrete wall to the left and a five foot brick wall, topped with a black iron fencing to the right. It was the perfect place. He slowed down so that the bitch could catch up with him. His hand slid into his coat pocket, and fumbled the object inside, he smiled. Her footsteps were getting closer. The blood was pumping rapidly through his body in anticipation. As he breathed deep and exhaled slowly, plumes of air misted in front of his face. "Three. Two. One."

The knife sliced easily through the skin on the neck. Suddenly it was wrenched forward, severing vocal chords and jugular vein.

Some thing's wrong, his mind stammered, urgently, this isn't meant to happen. His blood was jetting out of his body and danced in front of his face with the dissipating plumes of mist. The hand that held the collar of his coat let go and he fell heavily to the floor. The bitch walked into his line of sight and slowly licked the blade that had laid him low. Except that it was not a knife any longer. His mind was loosing its reasoning power as quickly as his body was loosing blood. He now thought that she was licking her fingernail, a very long fingernail. As he stared in disbelief the nail shrunk back to its original size.

"All I had to do was get home." Her voice was sensual, sexy smooth. "Why didn't you stay behind me? I wouldn't have hurt you if you'd only stayed behind me." She bent down and he saw a fire burning in her eyes. The musky sent of her now overpowered the perfume. Her body seemed alive with a new purpose. "I am so hungry, baby." She purred and pounced upon his prone figure.

He tried to fight her off but she was strong, impossibly strong, and his strength was ebbing away. Her breath warmed his neck, then her lips were at his wound, she was drinking his life right out of him.

Kicking, screaming, he had been pushed from his mother's womb into the bitter and twisted world. His mother smacked him hard, both as a baby and as a child, especially when he cried. When he was bad she locked him in the his bedroom. She married a man that was not his father. This man also liked to beat him and at night he would come into his room. When he told his mother, hoping for help, all she did was watch and masturbate. He had killed them when he was eight. He had closed all the doors to the kitchen and turned the gas oven on, leaving the oven door open and all the rings hissing, like angry snakes. Mother had come into the kitchen and flicked the light switch before even registering that anything was wrong. She died in the explosion as did the man, asleep, in their bedroom above. He had been sent to live with an aunt and uncle on a farm. His uncle taught him how to kill, skin and prepare animals for food. His cock would get hard when he killed. It was at the age of eleven that he realised how much he loved killing. No animal was safe, he slaughtered anything that he could get his hands on. While away at college the farm closed due to a foot and mouth outbreak. His uncle had taken the shotgun to his wife and then to himself. A one bedroom flat had been his abode while unemployed. He took to walking around the town, turning it into his playground, his territory. Finally he found a job with an agency that allowed him to use his talents and hone new ones, torture and rape were his new favourites.

She spat his blood out of her mouth and into his eyes.

"You're tainted." She hissed. "I've seen what you've done, I know what you are and you're no good to me. I only drink pure bred." She smiled and he saw death in her face. "You're worse than me. You humans think that we are evil, but you should look inside your own souls." Laughing, "I'll be in heaven while you're all rotting in hell." She turned on her heels, picked up her dumped shopping and strode away home.

In the streetlight he noticed that the blood on her blouse was a beautiful red..

He started to crawl after her, not wanting to catch her, but the street was just ahead. The priest saw him crawl out of the walk and towards the road. The habit flowed around his body as he rushed over. The servant of God was a big man and had little trouble dragging him over to the lighted doorway of the church. The light shining from the open church door showed the horror and shock on the priests face.. As the last of his blood dripped from the wound his eyes started to close. "What's your name?" The priest asked. He tried to voice the reply but only gurgled. "Detective Hunter."

As darkness closed in on him he heard the voices, he estimated there must have been around twenty. Two of them were clearer than the rest and he prayed that he was wrong. An orange and yellow light started to flicker in the distance. "Too late for praying now, my little one." His mother said. He could make out shapes, silhouettes against the fire light. They were the people he had murdered. In amongst them he could now see the small figures of cats and dogs, more of the slaughtered. Birds fluttered in the sky. The light and the fire were getting stronger, the heat was starting to burn him. What was worse, though, was he could see the features on the people in front of him. They were distorted, twisted, their teeth were white, their nails were long and looked very sharp. He would find out soon enough, of that he had no doubt. Their wounds and bloodless faces told the stories of his fun. In their eyes he saw that they were ready to play.

"Come to Daddy." His mother's lover laughed.