The moon limns the sidewalks in silver, competing with the orange sulfur wash from the streetlights. I walk through alternating pools of water and fire, careful where I put my next step. My car keys are clenched between my manicured fingers.
I have no particular destination, but I continue walking. Most of the city sleeps quietly and in peace. But here, in this district, the windows flash with multicolored lights and music booms dully behind them. Crowds of tipsy people hover around full patios and linger outside doors, sharing cigarettes and laughing. I’m occasionally jostled by someone walking past me; a woman in a sequined top bumps my shoulder, turns, and apologizes with a smile before continuing. I smile back at her and murmur something friendly. Seconds later, a man reeking of beer fully collides with me in the middle of the sidewalk, laughs, and pushes his way past me. I tense my jaw and continue on my way. It’s not worth it. Someone else will be better.
It’s been a slow night, nearing two in the morning now. My worn-in sneakers beat steadily against the pavement; something will turn up. Someone will slip. They always do. Every night since I started this routine eight years ago, someone has made themselves a target.
Of course, the location hasn’t been as consistent as the routine itself. Chicago, Baltimore, Denver, Seattle, and Philadelphia: they all have the same people. Everyone likes to think they live in “one of the Good Cities,” or that it could never happen where they live, but at the end of the day, they’re all the same. I never stay longer than a couple of months in any one place; any longer than that and the cops start to catch on, start poking around. I’m long gone before they can start putting pieces together, causing chaos in some other city. I don’t make friends, and I don’t form attachments. I try to be invisible, a shadow, a specter beyond notice.
The crowd thins as I walk on. A door opens on the block ahead of me. A triangle of light, then a rectangle, is broken by a woman-shaped shadow. She has honey-blond box braids that contrast wonderfully with her dark skin; she wears them pulled back in a high pony. Her heeled boots match the leather jacket that hangs off her shoulder. She’s turned back towards the doorway as she exits, laughing and yelling a final joke before she flips her hair and closes the door behind her; the motion sends a vanilla-scented puff of air towards me. By this time, I’ve nearly caught up to where she is, and she starts as she hears me approach. I hear her heart spike for a moment, but when her eyes meet mine, she drops her shoulders, and the fear in her features dissolves into the relief that only women feel when they find the threat they imagined is in fact another woman. I smile at her, nod once. She smiles back—dazzling, that smile—and giggles a bit.
“Geez, you scared me!” she says, hand pressed dramatically to her chest.
I smile again. She’s beautiful. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
“You’re good!” she says brightly, waving a hand to dismiss the apology. “Have a good night!” Then she turns to head in the opposite direction.
I walk one more block before I cross the street and double back.
I follow the sound of her boots clicking against the pavement. The blue glow of her phone lights up her pretty face, glinting off the small gold hoop in her nose. My heightened senses pick up her soft giggle at something she reads, then her acrylic nails clacking on the glass as she types a response. I am careful to stay out of sight, well behind her, avoiding the pools of light from both the streetlights and the moon. My all-black ensemble hides me well in the shadows as I track her.
The girl walks for a long time, threading her way through small crowds of people at various levels of intoxication. Eventually, she plugs her ears with headphones, and I roll my eyes behind her; stupid, stupid. Walking alone in the dark is stupid enough, but adding headphones? Dulling yet another sense? She’s making it too easy. I quicken my pace to keep up with her, cross the street again, and close the distance between us just a bit.
She turns a corner, then waits at a crosswalk under an orange lamp. She takes her phone out again and stares at it, the red hand above her keeping her pinned on this side of the street as Ubers and taxis rush past. I stay back against the wall of the bank on the corner, watching her through the windows. She is the only one waiting at the crosswalk, and she doesn’t notice me.
A man joins her, and a thrill of excitement shudders through me.
He swaggers up to the lamppost and leans against it—for support or to look casual, I’m not sure. I immediately scan him for marks, scars, tattoos, anything unique that could identify him later. He is tall, white, with dark hair, and has an average build. He has a skull tattoo on his hand, in the soft flesh between thumb and forefinger, and something else on his neck that might have once been a rose. I can’t get a good look at his face; with his back to the streetlight, the details are obscured by harsh shadows. He’s wearing jeans and a plain t-shirt with heavy work boots. From this distance, he carries a strong stench of alcohol mixed with sweat and cheap cologne, something with sandalwood. The man stands a bit too close to the young woman in the leather jacket.
She doesn’t notice.
The red hands are replaced by green figures; the girl looks up from her phone, tucks it in her pocket, and crosses the street. He follows her at a trailing distance.
Now this is exciting.
I follow them both. I keep a smaller distance now, maybe a block between us, and I release some of the restraint on my nature. I can smell the vanilla of her perfume mixing with his sweat; my nose wrinkles involuntarily. The farther our little trio ventures, the fewer people clog the sidewalks.
She walks with sure steps, treading what must be a familiar route. Her ponytail swings across her shoulders as she moves, head bobbing slightly to the rhythm of the music in her headphones. She doesn’t hear the doubled footsteps, and she doesn’t notice the shadow encroaching on her from behind as she turns the corner again into a dimly lit park. The man hesitates, looks back over his shoulder, then the other, and turns in after her. I’m too far behind for him to see me, apparently. My hair is already pulled back in a low bun; I tighten the elastic holding it in place and tuck my keys into my pocket, abandoning pretenses.
I roll my neck side to side, stretch my shoulders, and run my tongue across my teeth. Saliva is already pooling in the gap between my gums and my lip. This is my favorite part: the anticipation, the proximity to unknowing prey, the delicious horror of what’s about to come. I’m already picturing the bloodstains, what entrancing pattern they’ll pool into, what intoxicating smells, the sweet tang of copper and iron and fear. Adrenaline courses through me; I flex my fingers, straining to keep myself contained.
The concrete buildings and city sounds are slowly replaced by tall trees and chirping crickets, an occasional frog. Benches line the asphalt walkway, spaced about ten feet apart. A small street lamp is standing sentinel next to each seat, casting a blue-white glow around them. The girl’s footfalls are consistent and steady. She doesn’t slow, doesn’t speed up. He does, though. I can hear his heart start to race as he closes the distance between him and the pretty blond girl.
He hasn’t noticed me behind him. The soft leather of my sneakers masks the sounds of my own steps.
He barely lifts his hand towards the girl, takes a slightly larger step to shrink the gap, another, one more, and his fingers are brushing the ends of her swinging braids.
I am on him in an instant. I grab him by the back of his collar and yank. A strangled cry is cut off before he can fully express it. I quickly let go, step back from him, and raise my hands in front of my chest. He whips around as soon as he is freed, one hand rubbing his throat where a faint red line is starting to appear. My eyes widen, and I allow them to barely flicker to the blonde—she is still walking, no hesitation in her footsteps.
Then she is around the next curve, and the man’s full attention is on me. Anger and hatred mangle his features, which, now that I can fully see them, are nothing impressive. He is average at best, a little ugly at worst, with a dusting of coarse stubble coating his jaw. Perhaps it’s the rage that makes his complexion so mottled, or his eyes slightly crossed. Or perhaps he’s just not genetically blessed. The tattoo on his neck looks more like a rose at this smaller proximity, though it could also be a turkey.
I give him a saccharine smile and drop my hands to my sides. “Hi.”
He looks confused. Of course ,he’s confused. He’s not smart enough to be scared. Not yet anyway. “What the hell?” he barks. “Why did you grab me like that, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
I furrow my brows together. “What do you mean? When you reached for that girl?” I take a small step towards him. “Did you know her or something?”
He swallows, opens, and closes his mouth. I giggle. “You look like a fish. A stupid fish.”
He doesn’t like this. His chest puffs up, and he closes the small gap between us, looms over me in what I am sure he believes to be a menacing way. The stench I caught at the crosswalk is even more foul up close, far more sweat and alcohol than cheap cologne. “Listen, bitch. Who the hell do you—”
Whatever boring insult he was going to throw at me is lost in his throat as my nails dig into the side of his esophagus. Their sharp points pop through the thin layer of skin and pluck delicately at his vocal cords. His slightly crossed eyes go wide with shock—apparently confirming that it is indeed unlucky genes, and not rage, that crossed them—as his blood starts to run between my fingers. The smell of it is enough to overwhelm his natural reek, and my nostrils flare. I revel in the terror that infuses his features for the first time. Darkness swarms around me as I wrench my fingers out of his neck, and he falls to the ground, helpless.
“Puh—please—” he gurgles. His trembling hands clutch at the lifeblood pouring out of the four small, identical wounds on his throat, neatly stacked one atop the other. He coughs, and blood sprays across my sneakers. I stalk towards him, fingers dripping, and delight in the skittering backwards crawl he attempts as he tries to evade me. I bring a finger to my lips, smile, and lick it clean, never breaking eye contact with him. A laugh bubbles low in my throat as he whimpers, and I pounce on him.
He tries to scream as I sink my teeth into the open wounds on his throat, but I shove my fist into his mouth to silence him. Tequila and whiskey mar the taste, but it is delicious all the same. I puncture the throbbing vein on his neck with one fang and let the blood rush even faster into my mouth. Crimson pools in the hollows of his collarbones and leaves spreading stains along the shoulder and chest of his shirt; he starts to go limp underneath me. I release him, lower him gently to the ground, and watch as his blood flows into a puddle around him. The pattern is lovely as ever, rivulets of rubies finding every groove in the pavement until they swell over the pebbles.
He is still whimpering, but much quieter now. “Shh,” I whisper, kneeling next to him. I tear my eyes away from the entrancing pattern of ebbing life and focus on the dying man in front of me. “Hush now, darling. You asked for this, don’t you see?”
He stares at me with horror in his eyes. I stroke his hair away from his face with my fingertips stained red; he tries to move away but doesn’t have the strength. Pinching his chin roughly in my fingers, I yank his face around towards me, forcing him to look at me. Tears ooze out of the corners of his eyes, and my lip curls in disgust.
“You were going to hurt that girl, weren’t you?” I breathe. His mouth opens and shuts again, sobs trying to force their way out of his mouth. He chokes on his blood. “Shh, you don’t need to speak. I know you were.” I give him another candy-coated smile, displaying my vicious fangs, wet and slick with his own blood. “And now you’re going to die for it. Do you understand?”
More tears, more bloody bubbles. I take it as confirmation. His hands bat at me feebly with the little strength he has left. Just for fun, I grab one of his fingers and wrench it backwards until it snaps. Something of a scream bubbles through the blood in his throat and chokes him again; I grin and watch the light fade out of him as he gurgles and blubbers. I hear his heart slow in his chest, his breathing shallow and quick. With a contented sigh, I resume my meal.
By the time I stand again, he is no longer moving. The rose (or turkey) on his neck is shredded beyond recognition. I take a deep breath and run my thumb along my lip, cleaning up the remains of the already-sticky blood. It coats my hands, and a trail of it has traced down my chin. The man’s shirt is relatively clear of blood—at least, below the waist. I kneel down again to wipe my hands across his abdomen, using the hem of his shirt to wipe my face. While I’m next to him, I notice the skull tattoo on his hand again and frown at it. No good; I need the police to think this is a serial killer’s doing, and only a sloppy killer leaves an identifying mark like that.
Fortunately, the man has a small pocket knife clipped to his belt. I don’t want to dirty my hands all over again, so I pry it out and meticulously trace around the thick blue-ish lines. Blood oozes from the cuts, but his heart stopped several minutes ago, so oozing is the best it can do. Once the flap of skin comes loose, I chuck it hard into the trees; a coyote or a hawk will enjoy the snack tonight. Briefly, I wonder if the ink is poisonous to the wild creatures, but the thought comes after the skin disk has already hurtled into the darkness, so I shrug and head for the nearest bench.
I sit on the end of the wooden seat, facing the sentinel light post, and open my phone’s front camera: my hair is wrecked, and I still have a line of blood on my throat. I lick a finger and rub the red stain off my skin, tuck my phone away, and redo my bun. By the time I’ve finished, I can hear crows in the bushes and trees, curious about this new hunk of meat left unattended. I stand, take one last look at the body that was once a man, then turn and run in the direction of the blond girl.
By the time I catch up to her, she is ducking under the awning of an apartment building, reaching up to finally take out her headphones. A doorman out front smiles warmly at her as she approaches, and they exchange a few minutes of pleasant chit chat before the girl waves and enters the lobby.
I continue watching from across the street until the doors to the elevator close over her pretty face. Then I walk away and turn my sneakers back towards downtown. It’s only 3 AM; there could be time for one more.
KB Jackson
KB Jackson is an aspiring writer with a day job as a high school English teacher. Working with students and instilling an appreciation for literature into the next generation is wildly fulfilling; she fears that, even with all the money in the world, she would still be drawn to teach. In her off days and summers, she specializes in writing the uncanny, the weird, and the slightly off-kilter. Greek mythology and folklore continue to inspire and influence her writing. Jackson is happily married, and her little family resides in West Virginia.
Amazing work! It’s a fiction about something completely nonfiction and it is intriguing to read! I hope to see more of KB Jackson’s work! Absolutely Amazing!!!