PARAESTRALS

Volume I

Who ever said a P.I. has to be human!

By S. E. STENNER

Chapter One – Something nasty? Something nice?

My heart thundered like a storm in my chest as my feet raced across the tarmac. Every pounding step my shoe’s made on the road’s surface was amplified as its monotonous sound reverberated off the buildings surrounding me. Feeling every echo crashing down upon my being like a mighty wave, I urged myself onwards. Breathing deeply as I swiftly ran, I hastened a glance behind me. Dual figures emerged from the night’s blanket in my stead and, as I turned yet another bend, I felt them closing in on me. Skirting a corner I found myself at a dead end, trapped between the end of the alley and the two brutes that had pursued me to this point. A solitary street lamp illuminated their features in its dull glow. One man was tall, broad and brutish; the other was squat, fat and balding.

      ‘Come on girly,’ called the tall one, eyeing me up. The man was six foot tall plus, with limbs like rusted iron girders. His clothing appeared weathered and worn and came up short at every hem and cuff. The man also possessed the most hideous face I have ever seen with odd shaped features that didn’t seem to match each other and sat over a mouth filled with chipped, tobacco stained teeth, which smiled a gruesome grin at me. ‘We just wanna play,’ he purred.

     His fat little friend chortled, as if the statement that had just been said was some bad joke. This one seemed to carry most of his size across his girth rather than in his height and his filth riddled attire was stretched extremely tightly across every bit of his chunky frame, like an overstuffed cushion. He had an average enough face until I glimpsed his eyes and found that one wandered off to the right whereas the other stared fixedly at me, showing no ounce of pity.

     Backing myself further into the alley, I stared unblinkingly at my pursers who were blocking my path like two ravenous demon dogs.

     ‘We’re just having a bit a’h fun love. You look like a girl that knows how to have a good time,’ the little creep called, as his vile friend advanced on me.

     My back was hard against the brickwork now. So it had come to this? I resigned myself to the fact that what was going to happen, was going to happen and nothing and no one could stop it. Surveying the two sin drenched souls before me, my heart hardened as I stood my ground. The brutish one was so close now that I could smell his breath; it reeked of fags and beer with the rankest stench of body odour thrown in. It seemed that nothing but the rancid reek of depravity seeped out of this man’s pores.

     It was in this moment that the men suddenly turned really nasty: their words were no longer mocking they were deadly serious, as the larger one leaned in and whispered to me.  

     ‘Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide and no one’s coming to help you!’ he spat looking me up and down lustfully, as his creepy fat friend laughed hauntingly at his words.

     Oh dear, I thought, looking back at them both with pity. They had absolutely no idea what was about to happen. Composing myself a moment, I shot them both a broad grin, which made them stop in their tracks. I don’t know if it was my sudden confidence that had caught them off guard, or the fact that my teeth were slightly off coloured from years of drinking a certain substance. That and two of my teeth in particular were a little longer and far more pointed than the rest. It was in the confused silence that followed when I hissed back at them both. ‘Who says I need anyone’s help?’

     The brutish man, who was stood a mere foot away from me, had not expected me to say this, nor had he expected me to grab him by the throat and sink my razor sharp teeth into the veiny flesh of his neck. The fat one ran of course, but I’d catch him up in no time once I’d finished with this one. I let the man’s bulky frame collapse to the floor, his blood was not an exact delight; it was tainted with alcohol which filled it to the brim, making it rotten to the taste and its substance did very little to quench and quell my thirst. As the man lay in the last of his blood pouring from the wound on his neck like a river, he gawped up at me with the most confused and utterly petrified look on his face.

     ‘Wha’ – what ar’h youuuu?’ he spluttered, almost drowning in his life fluids as his skin drained of all colour.

     Staring down at his pathetic soul lying limp at my feet, I thought, I might as well answer the last question he’ll ever utter from his disgusting mouth.

     ‘I am your murderer!’ I stated.

     He looked dumbfounded; that had not been what he had asked. I watched the man gasping for air at my feet; his breaths faltered unevenly as his whole body convulsed with violent shivers that tremored through the vile man’s core. Seeing the last of his sin tainted blood seeping across the ground, staining it like a grotesque canvas, I crouched down to spell it out to him. With a whispered hiss I uttered the answer he sought and as the words left my lips, his eyes flickered shut.

     He died with my secret and took it along with his black soul to the grave!