Succulent Prey (20 page)

"I want to watch you consume me. I want to see the pleasure on your face when I become a part of you."

Frank swal owed a fistful of Rufinol and in minutes he was drowsy and sluggish.

Joe shrugged his shoulders and rol ed

him over on al fours. He spit on a finger and then slid it into the man's anus to lubricate it as best he could.

"This is going to hurt," he said as he slowly began threading the sharpened

steel bar up through the man's rectum.

Frank began to scream, thrash, and

convulse against his restraints as the bar forced its way into his anus, tearing the soft tissue and ripping deep into his

rectum, puncturing his smal intestines and leaking septic fluid into his

bloodstream, throwing him into

anaphylactic shock. Blood and fecal

matter began to spray out of his

vandalized asshole like a faucet,

drenching Joe's arms and chest in a

chunky brown and red deluge. Ignoring

the explosion of excrement and gore,

Joe shoved harder and the rod pierced

Frank's stomach as it plowed through

him.

Frank was hyperventilating. His blood

pressure rose quickly and then began to plummet as bile and stomach acid

poured into his thoracic cavity and

began eating away at his liver and lungs. He tried to curl up into the fetal position but the rigidity of the steel bar would not al ow him to bend.

"I can angle it toward your heart and kil you quick."

"No! Don't!" Frank said as he began to shiver. His pulse rate dropped further. He was dying from shock. His eyes were

now fixed and dilated as the gutwrenching agony assailed his nervous system in response to the gouging,

puncturing, and tearing of his vital

organs. Then the Ruffles went into ful

effect, dul ing the pain only marginal y but enough to stabilize his blood pressure

and heart rate. He was slowly coming

out of shock though he was now

completely paralyzed, unable to offer

even the slightest resistance even if he'd been inclined to do so. It was a good

thing too. The next part would be the

worst.

Joe angled the bar to the right and

slightly up and shoved with al his might. The steel rod slid along the inside of

Frank's rib cage, narrowly missing the

heart and lungs before exploding out of the top of his shoulder. Frank's eyes

went wild in lieu of the scream his

paralyzed vocal chords were unable to

form.

It was nearly half an hour before Joe

returned to the van. His arms and chest were covered in gore. But not his face. He hadn't eaten yet. He reached in and

grabbed Alicia, lifting her onto his

shoulders. That's when she smel ed the

smoke permeating his clothing. Hickory

smoke, like a barbecue.

Joe carried her almost a mile into the

park before she spotted the fire. The big carnivore had dug a pit and fil ed it with charcoal as if he were roasting a Khalua pig. Frank lay across the open pit with the piece of rebar going straight through him. His eyes were glazed in horror but he was stil alive and in agony. His skin baked and sizzled as the flames licked

at his flesh. The hickory smoke wafted

from the open pit. Alicia began to cry, then her stomach growled in hunger,

reacting to the delicious smel of roasted pork, and she regurgitated in revulsion.

"Oh my God! You're cooking him alive!

He's in so much pain! Don't let him die in pain!" Alicia sputtered out as vomit and bile burned its way up her throat and out onto the cool grass. She began to fight against her handcuffs, trying desperately to reach the agonized man burning on

the flaming pit. She wept uncontrol ably and screamed out to the night. Joe

stalked over to her and grabbed her by

her jaw. His piercing blue eyes burrowed into her skul as he turned her head to face him.

"Look at him, Alicia! He's already dead!

This is how he wanted to die. You can't save him. He's already been saved."

"Then kil him quickly! Don't just let him suffer!"

"He'l be dead soon enough. But first he'l get his wish. I promised him, Alicia. I owe him this much. Let him have his

fantasy."

"His fantasy? This isn't about him. Al of this is about you! It's your fantasy! You're the one kil ing him. You're the one who's going to eat him! And what about me?

What about me, Joe? Is this what you're going to do to me? Truss me up like

some pig and roast me on a spit?"

"Alicia-"

"You're evil! You're just fucking evil! You don't want to be cured. You just want to stay a monster! You're enjoying this! How could I have possibly thought I loved

you? After al that you've put me through. How could I have possibly thought that

you wouldn't hurt me? That maybe you

loved me too? You're going to kil me just like al the rest!"

"I-I-" Joe let her go and turned to look at Frank. The man was suffering. His entire body convulsed as the flames boiled the blood in his veins. But al Joe could think about was how delicious the man

looked. How good he would taste. Joe

knew then that his humanity was almost

gone. The only person he stil felt

anything for other than hunger and lust was Alicia.

Alicia curled up on the cold wet grass

and began to sob. Joe felt her pain

reach out to him and he crushed it

before it could lodge in his heart. He

knew that his increasing attachment to

Alicia was becoming a hindrance. His

massive muscles tensed beneath the

fabric of his shirt as he stared down at the helpless woman weeping at his feet

and pul ed the knife out of his ankle

strap.

She looked so beautiful in the dark, her black hair shimmering in the campfire

and starlight. So innocent and

vulnerable. The predator in him howled. His monster leapt to life. He imagined

fucking Alicia hard in the grass and his stomach roared in response. Quickly the fantasy changed to one of him sawing

off her calves and quadriceps and

greedily cramming them into his mouth.

There was now no difference between

the two appetites.

Frank's eyes were glazed in shock and

rapturous anguish. He was far away,

barely alive. Joe leaned in to saw off a piece of his hamstring with the serrated diver's knife.

Joe stared into the dying masochist's

eyes as he consumed his blackened

meat in great gulps and thought he saw

a contented smile cross the man's face

before he shivered one last time and

expired. Joe shivered as wel as he felt the man's essence slide down into his

bel y. That familiar ecstasy washed over him, as he felt al that the man had been merge with his flesh. Joe cut again, tore off large hunks of Frank's flesh with his bare hands, barely even chewing before

swal owing them, singeing his fingers in the broiling flesh, eager to consume

every ounce of the man's dwindling life force. Instantly he felt an entire lifetime of Frank's joys and sorrows, including the voluptuous agony of his death charge

through him like a lightning bolt. It was overwhelming. Joe fel to the ground,

writhing with an orgasm that threatened to break him apart as waves of

excruciating pleasure ignited his nervous system.

From where Alicia lay in the grass she

watched Joe's orgiastic convulsions with awe and confusion. Human flesh was so

much more to him than mere

sustenance. He seemed to be

possessed. He was in the throes of a

passion that defied description as he

ripped poor Frank to shreds. A part of

Alicia longed to know such intensity of pleasure herself. Her mouth watered and a moistness spread between her thighs.

Another part of her longed to inspire it, once again jealous that another person

had given such ecstasy to the beautiful cannibal she was beginning to think of

as her own.

With her arms and legs stil bound she

began to inch her way closer to the

campfire, inhaling the mouthwatering

aroma of hickory-smoked human flesh.

Joe now had his pants down around his

thighs and his enormous erection in

hand, furiously masturbating as he

continued stuffing steaming handfuls of broiled flesh into his slavering mouth. He looked down and spotted Alicia, who

was now almost at his feet. Instantly he recognized the hunger and lust in her

eyes.

After shedding the rest of his clothing he dropped beside her and offered Alicia a piece of Frank's blackened calf muscle. Stockholm syndrome, Alicia thought,

even as she opened her mouth wide to

receive the gift.

Without chewing she slurped down the

hot flesh and felt a chil vibrate through her as the horror of what she had just

done gripped her. This was soon

fol owed by a tingle of arousal at having done it in ful view of her lover and

captor. Joe began ripping off more of

the flesh and feeding it into Alicia's

mouth as he kissed and caressed her

neck and breasts, building her passion. Boiling-hot blood dribbled down her

neck and cleavage as she consumed

more and more of Frank's corpse. Joe

lapped the stream of liquid life from her skin and used his knife to cut the duct tape from around her wrists, then her

ankles, al owing him to kiss his way up her thighs to her moistening sex.

Lost in rippling waves of ecstasy, Alicia blindly reached out and ripped off

another piece of Frank's flesh. Even

without looking at it she knew what she had grabbed as soon as her hands

closed around it. Stil she tugged hard until it tore free. Joe rose up from

between her legs and slid himself inside of her as she brought Frank's severed

penis to her lips. She clenched the

charred organ between her teeth and

Joe bit down on the other end as he

thrust his own hardened flesh deep

between her thighs. They reached a

mutual screaming, snarling release

almost immediately as they shared the

exotic delicacy. Alicia col apsed into the arms of her captor and together they lay in the glow of the campfire, watching

Frank's remains sizzle, crackle, and burn to a charcoal cinder.

Twenty-nine

The two detectives had been waiting al

day for the autopsy report from the body they'd found in that old apartment

building south of Market Street. They

both had a bad feeling about it.

"You think that could be our librarian?" Volario asked.

"No reason to assume that yet," Montgomery said. "That building was pretty far from the campus."

"Yeah, but did you see her shoes?

Kenneth Cole. Not Prada, but not exactly Payless either. Pretty nice for a

homeless woman or a streetwalker."

"Which stil leaves a whole host of other possibilities. A lot of people get kil ed in this town besides prostitutes and

derelicts."

"Yeah, but anybody with shoes like that has to have a job and that means

somebody would miss her if she was

gone. And the only recent missing

person we have matching someone of

that height and body type is the

librarian."

"Height and body type? We don't even know if that was a woman yet. And how

could you tel if she was big or smal with half her flesh missing?"

"The leg. Some slim model type wouldn't have a leg that thick. And she was stil wearing those Kenneth Cole pumps,

which would lead me to believe it was

probably a woman."

"You know as wel as I do that that's no safe assumption in this town."

The phone rang and they both reached

for it at the same time. Montgomery got to it first.

"Detective Montgomery here. Yeah?

Final y! What did you find? And did you get a match? Damn. Okay. I'l be by to

pick up the report later. Thanks for the cal ."

"What? Was that the lab? What did they say?"

"They matched the librarian's dental records to the corpse."

"I knew it!"

"And they also confirmed the presence of saliva in some of her wounds. Those

were human teeth marks. In case there

was any doubt, we've definitely got a

serial kil er on our hands."

"Not a serial kil er. Not according to the FBI. He won't be classified as a serial kil er until he kil s three more people. Right now al we have is a homicidal

sexual predator with one victim."

"You got any doubt that there are more victims out there or that there wil be?" Montgomery sighed. "Nope. You're

right."

"I guess we need to take a trip back to the col ege?"

"We need to talk to that kid they were al talking about. That Joseph Miles.

Everyone we spoke to said he'd

probably kil ed her and that was before we even knew she was dead."

"That's just because they think the kid's weird. He's probably just one of those

death metal gothic freaks that like to act dangerous and mysterious to impress

girls."

"Yeah, that could be. But that's probably what the cops in Columbine thought

about those Trench Coat Mafia kids

before they went on their murder spree. For some of those kids it's more than

just a fashion. Some of them real y are disturbed."

Thirty

Professor John Locke had spent al

morning answering questions from the

police about his student, Joseph Miles.

"You say he was obsessed with serial kil ers? How could you tel ? I mean, this is a course about serial kil ers. One

could say the same thing about you or

anyone else who attends your class." Detective Montgomery was a large,