Wrath White - Succulent Prey

He stripped the meat from the man's arms and legs, wrenching loose his flabby biceps and triceps from his humerus and tossing them to the floor, tearing his huge fat enclustered vastus muscles and hamstrings from his femur as Damon tried to force a scream up through his blood-clogged larynx.

Damon passed out from the pain, blood loss, and shock of seeing his body so recklessly unmade, yet Joe continued to rip into him with the scalpel and his own bare hands until large hunks of warm wet meat lay al over the floor around the bed.

The room was now a gruesome abattoir.

The sterile white wal s and ceiling ran red with Damon's depleted life. The mattress upon which his savaged carcass lay was a blood-drenched sponge that squished beneath their weight, leaking more blood down onto the tiled floor. Joe's anger began to ebb. He stared down at the ruin he'd made of the corpulent pederast and felt muscles uncontracting and relaxing for the first time al over his body, as if he'd been flexing for years and hadn't been aware of it. Joe let out a long sigh and it felt as if he'd been holding his breath for a decade. He stabbed the scalpel down through the pederast's rib cage, impaling his heart, and then climbed off the bed, continuing to stare at the corpse as it voided its body fluids.

The floor was littered with flesh. Blood poured from the mattress in long sheets, covering the linoleum in a shimmering blanket of burgundy-wine red. Joe had never seen so much blood come from a single person. It was as if al the blood the child kil er had sucked from his victims' wounds had stil been in him and had only now been freed. He imagined the souls of al the children Damon had consumed pouring out of his bloated corpse on that endless river of dark plasma.

Joe stared intently at Damon's face as the pederast's life fled his mutilated carcass, hoping to see some sign that the curse was over. He half expected the man's body to col apse into ash like the vampires in the movies, but instead the fat freak simply expired. Joe studied the man's features for a while longer, recal ing the long hours he'd spent cringing in a damp basement as that pudgy face leered at him from behind a mask of Joe's own blood. He didn't know for sure if the curse had left him, but he had no desire at al to feast on Damon Trent's fat vulgar corpse. He walked out of the room, quietly shutting the door behind him.

Joseph was drenched head to toe in Damon's blood. The lab coat he'd appropriated now looked like a butcher's smock. It was plastered to his skin, the blood already beginning to coagulate.

Joe had to peel himself out of it, as if he were removing the skin from a particularly wet and juicy piece of tropical fruit. Blood-soaked meat always reminded Joe of mangoes and ripe peaches, when you opened it up and it flooded your mouth with its sweet nectar. Joe thought once more about Alicia as he dropped the lab coat to the floor. She had been the sweetest fruit of al. He had to find a way in to see her. But they wouldn't let him anywhere near her saturated in blood, especial y once the two corpses were located.

The polo shirt Joe had been wearing underneath the lab coat had already been red, but now the darker, truer red from Damon's arteries stood out clearly against it and even more so against his blue jeans. Somehow he had to get a fresh lab jacket or something to cover his clothing.

Joe walked into the bathroom and stared into the mirror. Even though he had not fed, his face was covered in blood from where Damon's severed veins and arteries had sprayed him as he worked the meat free from his bones. The eyes that stared out at him from that grisly crimson mask were feral, the eyes of some ravenous beast. Joe ran water into his cupped palms and splashed it over his face again and again. He lathered his arms, face, and hair with liquid hand soap and washed it away until his handsome Clark Kent face reemerged from that gory fright mask.

He took a deep breath and watched as al his features settled down, the beast within him slipping away, leaving him alone in the bathroom of a hospital room with a child murderer's eviscerated corpse bleeding out on the mattress and his own clothes stil dripping with blood.

"I've got to get the hel out of here." He slipped out of the bathroom and out of Damon's room, casting one last look at his mutilated corpse before shutting the door behind him.

"Rot in hel, you son of a bitch." Before anyone could notice his grisly hulking form tracking blood across the immaculate hal way, Joe slipped into another room directly across from where Damon's corpse lay bleeding out onto the floor in great bucket-loads. He was lucky to find an obese elderly woman lying catatonic in her hospital bed. With considerable effort, straining beneath the weight of rol s of bil owy fat, Joe rol ed her over so that he could remove her hospital-issue dressing gown.

Suppurating bedsores had leaked their pus onto the mattress, forming a gooey adhesive that stuck her loose, moldy flesh to the even moldier bed. There was a wet, sticky, ripping sound when Joe peeled her off the bedspread, leaving bits of her flesh stil clinging to it. The back of the dressing gown was caked with pus and gore and stained with urine and feces. Joe peeled it off of her. In this filthy gown he would fit right in. Joe faked a lumbering stagger as he made his way down the hal. There was an emaciated teenager with tufts of hair missing and black scabs al over his scalp where the hair had been yanked out by the roots. He staggered down the hal in a similar fashion just ahead, and Joe caught up to the disoriented youth and linked arms with him. Together they made their way up the hal toward the reception desk.

The kid smel ed as bad as the dressing gown Joe was wearing and his eyes were dul and flat as if his mind had long ago fled and his body was merely fol owing a preprogrammed ritual back and forth through the antiseptic hal ways. The only indication that he was at al aware of Joe's presence at his side were the occasional giggles, his left hand firmly planted on Joe's rock-hard buttocks, and the erection growing beneath his gown.

The guard was no longer in front of the elevator. The nurse was not at her station either. Joe heard a radio squawk and an excited voice shouting breathlessly.

"We've got a 187 on the third floor!

Officer needs assistance!"

Joe stumbled down the hal and looked down the adjoining hal way where he had left the janitor's body. He could see that the blood had seeped out into the hal way, which had no doubt alerted someone that there might be something amiss in the closet. The door was open and two corrections officers were kneeling in the blood, leaning over the body as if there were anything they could do for him now. Three nurses, including the one from the front desk, stood around gasping in horror and chatting in excited whispers as they peered in at the janitor's corpse, unable to resist their own morbid curiosity.

The guard was looking up and down the hal, searching for something out of the ordinary. A suspect. Joe clutched the haggard teen tighter as they continued past. The guard had luckily looked right past him, assuming he was just another patient. As soon as they reached the other side of the hal and were out of sight of the guards and nurses, Joe let go of his teenaged camouflage and sprinted for the elevator. He pressed the down button and the door opened right away. The hal way was stil empty when

Joe slipped quickly inside the elevator. The mauled and murdered janitor was apparently too fascinating for the guards to tear themselves away.

Joe tried to catch his breath as he rode the elevator back down to the first floor. Adrenaline dumped into his bloodstream, lighting his nerves on fire. His muscles were bulging through his clothes as if he were about to burst out of them like the Incredible Hulk. He looked completely insane. If the doors opened right now, anyone with half a brain would know he was a kil er. He had to calm down.