Deeper Hunger

DISCLAIMER:  The following contains scenes of a graphic nature. Consider yourself warned.

The woods were still thick with the stench of his cruelty, as he stalked his next victim.  She walked alone.  It was as if she…wanted to be found.

Too easy.

This time, his appetite for human flesh far exceeded his need for mere sustenance.

With the stealth only a predator such as he possessed, he tracked her path, sometimes behind, sometimes ahead…sometimes just a few steps beside.   With razor sharp senses, he slowly pieced together a thorough knowledge of her; touching every part of her with his cold canine eyes, and breathing  in the essence of his prey.   Nostrils flared, he drank in the perfume of her fresh womanhood, igniting his baser instincts.   He bared his deadly fangs as hot saliva began to drip from his mouth.   She poured into him, and like fresh blood from a kill, intoxicated his mind and body so that he was enslaved with hunger for her flesh.

No!  Not this way!

With all the remaining  power of his still potent mind, he cooled his instincts, easing the cursed grip that had so ferociously choked out nearly all semblance of humanity from his beastly form.  He ached for more in her than just another hot meal.   He ached–and hungered now–for her beauty, knowing that he may never know beauty in the world again.    And he wanted to be more to her than her death.  He wanted to be her entire world before the end; her awakening, her ecstasy, her love, her life, her agony, and ultimately, her death.

Then she stopped in her tracks, neither turning nor trembling.  She let him approach her.

“And where are you going, little girl?” breathed the wolf onto the hood of her crimson red cape.

Still not turning, breathing shallow and quick, she said, “I’m looking for my lover.”

“You needn’t search any longer.  Your lover is dead,”  he growled.

Still she stood with her back to him.

“And you’re not afraid, my lady?”

“Yes!” she gasped, chest heaving.  “Yes, I’m afraid.”

Again, he drank her in, deeply, searching her thoughts and feelings.

“As well you should be, little girl.  Do you know who I am?”  he crooned.

“Yes! Yes,” she replied, her words catching on her breath.  “I know who you are. ”

His croon grew into a low growl.  “And yet you stand before me…alone…in the woods.”

Cunning girl.  She fears me, yes, but why doesn’t she run?

So close now that the lingering death on his breath caressed her fair cheek,  and she shuddered…or trembled.  He would gain full power over her flesh before it was over.

“Come, my child,” he breathed, “come with me to where the fragrance of flowers will adorn your beauty.”

And then she turned to face him.  She beheld his beastly form with both fear and awe, and….

And what’s this?  What’s this I see in beauty’s eye?

Never had he stood face to face with his prey.  Never had he looked into the eyes of his victim and seen anything but mortal terror.

How dare she behold me in such a way!

Exploding in a thrust of carnal rage, he seized her and tore through the wilderness to the bed of flowers that awaited his feasting in the silvery meadow.  The moonlight poured onto the vile scene of the beast throwing his prey down onto the damp earth as he raised his inhuman snout to the source of his power–the mistress of his curse–and cut the night with his wild howls.

She lay before him, still gazing directly into the eyes of certain death, further enraging him.  His lips curled over his murderous teeth as he snarled and pounced.  With three swipes of his merciless claws he shredded her clothes from her body leaving her naked and oozing with crimson, writhing in agony.

With all of her remaining strength, she raised her face once again to meet his eyes, now even more boldly than before.

“YES!  WOLF!”  she screamed.  “YES!!!”

She taunts me?!!!!

As her life slowly drained from her body, he plunged himself between her legs with violent power.  He commanded her flesh.  Her screams penetrated his beastly heart.  He intoxicated himself with the aroma of her terror and ecstasy as he tore into her, devouring her, piercing her,  destroying her.  Her body spasmed as his saliva dripped into her wounds.  He snorted and growled and howled, caught in the throes of his hunger for both flesh and beauty.

After his final, terrible thrust, she lay beneath him, nearly lifeless.  Silence fell upon the meadow.  Moonlight bathed her limp body lighting what few patches of milky white remained unstained by blood as she groaned and gasped for life and for death.

“I am yours, ” she breathed.  “I am yours.  I found you.  Oh my love, I found you.”

With her final breath, the words remained formed on her lips.

And so she had.  She had found him there in the woods.  She had been searching for him.

And now she lay dead before him.  In horror, he sensed the last shred of his humanity well up in his pounding heart.

Hunched over her, he beheld the faint remnant of her beauty, and read the final words on her lifeless lips.   With a rush of anguish and pain he again split the air with his howls.  But instead of screams of violence, he raised a new song for all the forest to hear.  He howled a long, mournful cry, and something deep in him began to quake and throb.  Something deep and aching and ancient and beautiful.  His howls echoed through the lonely woods…

and he wept.

He wept for his lost love.  In that moment, the object of his beastly desires had become the object of his human love.

His tears mingled with her blood, washing it slowly away from her pale body before he collapsed into a deep sleep among the fragrance of flowers and death, dreaming far into his murky past, before curses and murder to a time when beauty reigned in his life.

He awoke to the long forgotten sensation of flesh on his own human flesh.

Where is cursedness? The thought grew brighter in his dim mind.  Where is cursedness?  And what is this?

He awoke to beauty.

“Beauty,” he croaked. “What happened to us?”

And she spoke.

“I found you.”