You could always pry on the social media for a missing persons list better than the NBI. In social media sites, people are more desperate, more restless on an illusionary effort for a cause. They could accomplish more with a share button than to spring up their asses. That way, everyone can perceive a circulating event, fabricated or not. Hell even if someone made Jesus speak like a self-righteous child with ADHD, people would bite.
I had to jot down every single one of them residing in this city to see where she had been circulating. No doubt she chose a place so congested people will keep walking even if someone’s been abducted from the crowd.
This city is undervalued. You hear a desperate cry and someone answers, jots it down, and shuffles his pockets while he saunters on his way. A creature is preying on us. We are oblivious. How quaint.
I could always choose the slums, more likely the ones where people don’t mind casualties. I had to walk around late night social areas with an array of strip clubs. Somewhere with unlit corners. Someone has to shamble off intoxicated to be a potential prey.
I was impatient. I had to grasp it, that small, wafting whiff of her that told me she exists. If something goes wrong, we can always die desperate.
I had a skateboard with me when I walk, fastened securely in my backpack. It could always turn into a makeshift bludgeoning tool when something goes amiss.
The street lights flickered. I stopped and waited. You could always expect some something uncanny when that happens. They’re like supernatural train sirens, or an assumption of that. I could always try.
I walked on. Next to me is an unlit alley leading to closed malls. The next streetlight was in front of a heavily metal sheet-hedged area. I had to stride.
“Cal.”
I presumed the voice was in my head, like a light delusional poke. I still had to stop.
“You’re here.”
She emerged from the shadows, zipped up in black leather, black pants, platform boots, a hood over her head. Everything to conceal herself. “Either you want a knife against your throat again,” she went on, “or there’s something else you have in mind.”
I remained still. I was in a highly illuminated spot. If I wanted to behold every feature of her face then she had to step forward. Her voice was deeper, no longer the voice high-pitched pubescent fourteen-year-old. More likely someone my age, that of a fresh adult.
“Marcy,” I said, “it’s been so long. It’s been twelve years. You were gone. Everyone thought you’re dead.”
She seemed to have rolled her eyes. “Marcy, Marcy, Marcy...” she chanted, “that name, more like a squeak, so friable and naïve, no wonder it shrivels that easy.”
“But you’re alive,” I said, “Marcy, you’re fucking alive.”
“Marcy is dead, Cal!” she hissed, “Say that name again! Wave it on my face like a fucking prodding iron, make me regret that hadn’t killed you when I had the chance.”
She turned, looked lastly down at me, enraged and glowering, then walked off as though she wished to tear herself from our clasping membranes of memories. I left the light and followed her.
“You didn’t kill me, why?” I asked.
She replied, “You were drunk, too drunk to comply.”
She kept walking, drifting away. I hastened my strides, pulled up the straps of my backpack. She was only playing the role of a predator over a dead possum. I meant nothing at all, not even a spur in her recollection, an encounter. Still I couldn’t let her go. I needed to pry in her sentiments, make her cling, make her believe that she does need me.
“You’re sloppy,” I said, “I can tell you’re alone. You constantly feed on areas you’re familiar of. Twelve years, Marcy, I don’t know how long you have been feeding but you wouldn’t last a hundred years if you’re dying to send a lynch mob on you for being too consistent.”
I stopped, squatted down and caught my breath with hands propped against my knees. “And I swear I should have fucking told the NBI that they’re looking for a female serial killer around these areas.”
She stopped. I was gaining on her. It was fear, the gaping hole of vulnerability under a deity’s coat, the palpable reality unraveled before her eyes. She was frozen on her feet, and I hit her hard.
She sighed, turned to me and said. “You want to be grateful, Cal? Tell me who to kill. One more day and I feel closer to being dead. I'm as cold as death. I want to feel warm again.”
We came to a street directing to a route familiar to university students. The slums area was right across. Where we loitered, there were nothing but dilapidated two-story structures no one would care to bring down yet many would endure to reside into. There were no streetlights, no cameras, it was enough security that several would busy the streets on a curfew.
“A lot would complain here about muggers,” I told her, “there’s a repeat offender flashing himself in front of any college girl who happens to pass by. He’ll probably come from a small alley right there,” I pointed to a narrow street beside two antiquated buildings, one housing a small store, “if you walk by he’ll probably take advantage and pursue.”
She strode quickly, then decelerated as she passed the small alley. A man emerged, wearing nothing but loose, frayed jean shorts hanging from his hips and exposing his underwear. He stepped forward, swaying as he trailed her. She let him pursue for a while, then stopped until their eyes met. She then directed him into the narrow alley where he came from, seized him by the neck and slipped in.
There were no cries from him. I wondered, in that moment he felt himself dwindling, writhing to a corpse, in that intimate moment of her consuming him, I wondered if he enjoyed it. Hell, he was perverted, sick in every fiber of his being. Death by a woman could be rapture for him.
I saw a spark from the alley, like a brief echo, crawling away then dying completely. I tapped loose a stick from my pack of lights and lit. She came towards me, slipped her hands in my pocket and helped herself with a stick as well.
“Spontaneous human combustion,” she said, “turning the body heat against itself. It’s tweaking the vibrations in his body until it collapses. I’ve spent years gaining proficiency in that method.”
“What are you?” I said, flicking my lighter a few inches from her face.
She puffed, then leaned against the wall beside me. “You know what I am, after everything you’ve seen.”
“Well, at first, it’s like seeing everything from a keyhole,” I replied, “then now I saw everything clearly.”
She nodded, cigarette between her fingers. Her other hand hung down at her side. I was a head taller. The way I could feel the skin of her hand is to extend my finger down, trail it across the back of her palm. She was warm. Perhaps that’s how it worked. She’s a dull engine ignited again by a strong current. Newly fed, her cheeks flushed to its color.
“They called me Sin,” she went on, “I was Sin before I was turned, I became Sin from then on. To creatures like us, names were nothing but representations, thus we became notions, impressions and not even qualified as representations of man. It would be easier, knowing that we are no longer human.”
I grinned. Creatures like her, I guess this is their way of coping with their own nature. A notion, a copy, anything to identify themselves in a way they no longer serve as human. I guess Marcy’s completely dead, I don’t mind. That dull, nauseating expression, that mop of hair, everything about her is completely gone. “Will I see you again?” I asked.
She closed her eyes, shook her head and looked at me, pained and dejected. “If ever I changed my mind,” she replied, “I’ll look for you myself.”
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