CHAPTER 2: WHETHER YOU BELIEVE IT OR NOT

...in which we learn who/what Iggy is and what he gets up to in his spare time. Along with a friendly... warning. The mind games have begun. Nervous looks over the shoulder are optional.

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His name is Ash. I like it; it’s a beautifully gloomy name, the kind of name that a doomed lover has. He lives two blocks from me, in the ‘good’ part of the housing area. I walk him home on the pretence of doing some inane project on where my classmates live, see him enter an unremarkable door to an unremarkable house. No suspicious mounds of earth in the backyard. No tortured screams from the basement window. Not even a respectably spooky tree to wave ghostly branches over his window in the wind.

Happy now?

Fine, you’re right. He’s a nobody. I’m still hungry.

I know. We hunt tonight.

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Your name is Stan, or at least that’s what your nametag says you’re called.

Hello, Stan.

Hush, don’t interrupt. This is serious stuff.

And you... don’t you stare at me with those accusing eyes.

What kind of eyes were you expecting? Adoring ones?

Shut up. You know you’re supposed to go to sleep when I feed.

Spoilsport.

Stan, my man... you’re still staring. If you want to blame someone, blame yourself.

I mean, what were you doing, cruising down that part of town at this time of night with your window down?

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And why’d you slow down when you saw me in my tiny tight shorts and fishnet vest?

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You were the one that opened the passenger door to let me in.

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You were the one that took me to that numberless room by the unlit fire escape.

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And it was nobody else but you that put the Rohypnol in my soda that I pretended to drink.

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Ditto the one that brought out the cuffs and all your other interesting little toys when I’d ‘passed out’.

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It’s no use, you know, struggling against the leather. The more you wriggle, the tighter the neck strap gets.

You want to ask me if this is a joke. You’re desperately hoping that I’m just being naughty and not... homicidal? Yes, I know you’d be able to express yourself much better if I took out the ball gag. But it’s more interesting like this, trying to read your conversation from your eyes. They’re rolling around their sockets one moment, fixed on me in stark terror the next. Very interesting, those eyes of yours, Stan.

Yes, that’s right. Be afraid.

Your fear is deliciously piquant. I savour its intensification. It’s like... a symphony that’s building up to the crash of drums in the finale. Or the gradually changing aroma of a stew slow-cooked for hours. My, you sure are drawing out the poet in me!

What, not there yet? I read somewhere that slow suffocation can cause a rush of pleasure in certain regions of the body. Is that what’s happening?

Oh yes... I can taste it now.

Dirty lewd thoughts flavour the substance of your desperation. Something like that rotten fish sauce that some people are so addicted to.

Don’t you think it’s a little, well, inelegant, getting off on the thought of imminent death?

Your fear and want have combined into decadent chocolaty molasses that’s sucking me down into the forgetfulness of abandon. Be careful, Stan... you’re making my bloodlust rise.

I’m almost drooling physically at the intensity. In fact, I think certain parts of myself are getting a little rude as well.

I don’t want that. Lust soils the clarity of your pain and dulls the edge of your torment. I want to enjoy every exquisite moment of that unadulterated anguish.

Tell you what. I’ll share my life story with you while you thrash out your last moments of sanity. Just to help me calm down.

You don’t mind, do you?

I thought not. ... Let’s see now...

Well to begin with, I am not the only one of my kind.

We are the nameless things that live in darkness, born with the first man. We are the monsters on which humankind blamed—correctly, more often than not—the slaughter of their kin when night fell. You have been battling us ever since. When you found fire, it became your strongest ally. But still we came, killed, fed, and grew stronger on your despair. We were always on the winning side... until the Great Dying Out, when you harnessed electricity and created artificial lights that burned through the night.

We died in numbers too great to count.

We were almost exterminated.

For a while, it seemed that you had won the war.

The inherited bitterness of near-defeat remains, Stan. Every one of us is born with it. Just talking about it makes me want to rip, tear, violate... oh, sorry, did my claws just slip into view? How careless of me. Oh wait, I’m supposed to be telling my story. Right then... so we were almost exterminated, yada yada yada...

Yet the strongest and most adaptable of us survived. We conquered our bloodlust. We moved from the corporeal to the undying. We evolved to put off our outer shells when we matured, and thus freed ourselves of the need to feed constantly. We changed our very nature to consume the darkness that skulked and festered in human hearts and minds rather than your warm living bodies; less satisfying perhaps than rending flesh with tooth and claw, but much more filling. Thus the darkness that once cloaked us became our sustenance instead.

The shared memory of the supremacy of my race... it makes me so happy that it makes me want to preen my beautiful razor-edged, poison-tipped feathers. Such a nice greenish sheen to them, don’t you think? I beg your pardon, I AM sometimes a little vain. Anyway...

We launched a massive counter-attack. We were no longer mindless beasts but beasts that invaded minds, whipping up the darkness within to a fever pitch until the thread of sanity broke and released a feast of rich, dark madness. We began to glory in all that is dark in humanity, having made that the source of our strength.

Stan, my man, the long and short of it is...

As the world of man grew brighter and their hearts grew darker, we thrived.

A drum roll would be in quite in order here. Or maybe the three-note duh-duh-DUH that they use in old movies before the villain makes his entrance. Ah... this is life. Food in plenty. No foes. What more could I ask for? Except maybe... it’s probably a little greedy of me to say this, but...

Once in a while, we would miss the crunch of bone and the springy bounce of living flesh well-seasoned with the iron-salt seasoning of blood. But as long as we’re careful, and practise moderation... a few humans less don’t make much of a difference to the general population.

Wait, is that what you think I’m going to do to you? Oh, don’t worry... I haven’t bitten anyone for at least a year. Now... where was I? Ah, yes, our relationship with human beings.

Granted, we can’t do without mankind altogether. We still use human bodies as birth vessels, and for the first few months of our infancy, feed with this body on other living bodies. I am no longer an infant, of course. So you’re quite safe from my nice sharp teeth. My Voice is all that is left of my birth vessel. When I am mature enough, I will lose my Voice and gain my true form – shapeless, boundless darkness. But for now, I keep a physical form to feed myself with. Although I find the female version a little more effective for that purpose, I prefer to take the male form. Why? Oh, just for the heck of it, I suppose. In this case, it has turned out to my advantage, hasn’t it? With you, I mean... Oh yes, Stan, I’m far enough inside your head to know ALL about your fondness for angelic-choirboy-types.

The same goes for Ash, the stalker. You don’t know him, do you? He’s my... oh, never mind.

Ash... craves for me. But he is confused, because I have the same outward form as his gender. He is ashamed of his desire. The longer I stay out of his reach, the more twisted the sweetness and purity of his attraction becomes. As his feelings grow stronger, they become ever more polluted. I tease, confound, and flit into his grasp only to flee again in an intricate Paso Doble towards his doom. To my careful tending, he is a maturing fruit ripening in the black of night, deliciously, perfectly tainted.

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Are you listening, Stan?

Your terrified horror lies on the cusp of the crescendo that marks the descent into madness. BUT...

I think I have to stop here. You’re twitching a little too much. I don’t want to actually kill you, just drive you crazy. But it looks like you’re going to have a heart attack or something before we get there.

There goes the main course. I guess I’m not going to get fed tonight. Too bad. That appetiser was really lip-smackingly good.

Oh, relax, Stan. You should be smiling, not crying. You get to live! AND keep your sanity... what’s left of it anyway.

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I leave the still-breathing body with the leather outfit still on. I can see the headline in tomorrow’s local news: “Man found trussed up after kinky night.”

Oh, for.... Get dressed!

Why? Do you think the shorts and vest do something for me?

I am SO going to give you nightmares tonight.

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AND I’M STILL HUNGRY.

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Maybe I’m two cents short of a buck.

Maybe I’m having you on.

Possibly I’m just trying to get your attention.

Could be I’m one SICK puppy.

Or maybe... just maybe... I’m really warning you.

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Be good now. Keep the door shut, don’t let the darkness in.

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Whether you believe it or not, we’re here among you.

Next Chapter: The Games We Play