Alicia could see the rapturous expression on his gore-streaked face as he chewed the bits of vagina he'd torn from the librarian. The woman was stil screaming when Joe crawled up her body and began biting at her breasts.
He was not nearly as tender with her as he had been with Alicia. He bit deep into the meat of her breasts, tearing off her nipples and devouring the tremendous mammaries in huge gulps of sweet sal ow fat streaked with red. He used the knife, sawing away her breasts to get more of the woman's tender flesh off her chest and into his gul et. The woman's anguished cries were more terrible than anything Alicia had ever heard.
Alicia turned away when she saw Joe amputate the woman's entire left breast, exposing the gleaming white bone of her rib cage. He brought the quivering mound of flesh up to his lips and voraciously consumed it. Blood washed over his fingers and down his arm, pouring from his mouth with each bite and dripping off his chin and down his neck. He licked the blood from his lips between bites like sweet nectar, like he was eating a mango or a papaya and not human flesh.
The woman's screams were subsiding, becoming moans and whimpers. She was in shock and dying from the massive loss of blood and the traumatic damage done to her. Alicia turned back to look as Joe turned the woman over.
Where her vagina had been was now just a ragged hole ringed in torn and lacerated bits of flesh. Her breasts were completely gone down to the ribs. Bits of meat lay puddled on the floor amongst the pools of blood. The woman landed on her bel y with a wet sticky swap! that caused her rotund ass to jiggle. Alicia knew what was about to happen next.
Joe took more time and care here. This most luscious piece of meat, the most prized delicacy, he would not squander. This was to be savored. He be gan slicing the thick fatty meat of her ass in thin cuts and sliding the tender slivers of meat into his mouth. This lasted for nearly five minutes before he could no longer restrain himself and dove headfirst into her ass, ripping into it just as he had done her breasts. To Alicia it seemed to go on al night.
When the sun rose, Joe lay in a pool of coagulating blood draped across the vandalized corpse of Emma Purcel like a bloated tick, fat off her blood and flesh. He'd completely consumed her breasts, most of her ass, chewed away her vagina and even cut her open and eaten her ovaries, liver, and kidneys. His crowning act of barbarity had been to saw through her sternum, crack open her rib cage, and cannibalize her heart.
Drunk off blood and heavy with halfdigested meat, he rose drowsily from the floor and turned toward the locked bathroom door. Only it wasn't locked.
In the two-inch gap between door and door frame, Joe spotted two almond eyes wide with shock. He started toward the door and heard Alicia scurry away toward the back of the bathroom. She was terrified.
Joe passed his reflection in the mirror and saw the ghastly, loathsome thing that stood naked in his bedroom, a ghoulish grotesquerie caked in dried blood and gore from head to toe. He smiled and the hideous abomination smiled back at him with teeth blackened with old blood and raw flesh. No wonder Alicia was afraid of him. He no longer bore any semblance to a human. He had transformed the previous night, become whatever detestable monster the virus within him was morphing him into. But what had he become? A vampire? He looked at the blood that covered half the room and drenched his own skin and doubted a vampire would have been so wasteful. Joe stared down at the remains of the librarian. He'd never heard of a vampire doing that to its victim. Serial kil ers do that… and werewolves.
Joe walked into the next room and into the kitchen. He used dish detergent and a sponge to wash the blood from his face, hair, and body. When he was done he mopped the already splintered and warped hardwood floor. He emptied the contents of the bucket and refil ed it with more water and PineSol, added some bleach, then dragged the bucket into the bedroom. He thought it would be wise to clean up a little before trying to drag Alicia out of the bathroom. He didn't know how much she had seen through that little crack in the door, but he could at least spare her the further trauma of seeing the aftermath of his passions.
Emma Purcel 's mauled and masticated remains disappeared into a plastic bedsheet and a cheap area rug. She was then dragged into the next apartment where her corpse would sit and decompose until Joe could figure out what to do with it. Al evidence of her death in that dingy little bedroom was scrubbed with ammonia and washed down the sink. When Joseph turned toward the master bath door, the room looked even cleaner than it had before he kil ed Emma. The acrid pungency of ammonia and bleach had completely masked the smel of fetid blood.
The beautiful Spanish girl with the ful red lips, the caramel skin, the luxurious mane of curly black hair, thick meaty hips and thighs, ful breasts, and fat perfectly rounded ass, sat in the bathtub shivering. She rocked back and forth moaning quietly.
'Alicia?'
At the sound of his voice she began to scramble like a trapped animal, trying to claw her way through the shower tiles.
Her wrists were stil bound but somehow she had gotten her arms from behind her back to the front. Her shoulders were turning blue and Joe suspected that she had dislocated them. Cautiously he approached his traumatized victim. He reached out and careful y removed the bal gag from her mouth.
'Alicia… I'm sorry that you saw that. I didn't mean for you to-'
'You ate her! You ate that woman! She was screaming and you just kept biting her!' She began to tremble convulsively as the image of this gorgeous man that she'd once been so excited about sleeping with, cracking open that woman's rib cage and ripping her heart out as if he were shucking an oyster from its shel flashed through her mind. She recal ed his face, covered in an oily red mask of blood and tissue, his eyes wild with an unfathomable bloodlust. This man who she'd almost forgiven for chaining her up and biting off her nipples, who she'd begun to fantasize about curing of his psychotic dementia and living happily ever after with.
'Alicia, I'm trying so hard not to hurt you. I don't want to hurt you, but the hunger was getting so strong. I-I was afraid I wouldn't be able to control myself. I had to do something!'
Alicia curled up into the fetal position at the bottom of the tub and began to cry. Joe reached in and lifted her from the tub. He brought her back over to the bed and chained her up again.
Joe scrambled some eggs and made bacon and toast but Alicia would not eat it so he left it by the side of the bed along with fresh water. He emptied the bucket that sat alongside the bed and replaced it, just in case she needed to use it while he was gone.
'I have to go. I'l be back later.' It was far too early for class so Joe walked across campus to the gym, getting there just as the wrestling team was finishing up their weight training and the footbal players were starting to pile in. Joe was bigger and stronger than most of the players on the team. He knew they thought he was crazy for not playing, but he had more important things to do than run up and down a field chasing a weather-beaten pigskin.
Ignoring the loud laughing and joking from the players, Joe began stacking weight onto the bar. He loaded 225 pounds onto the weight bench to begin his warmup and then proceeded to do two sets of fifteen reps with it. He ended by bench-pressing 405 pounds, doing nearly five hundred on the decline press and 365 on the incline. He then did some curls with 180 pounds and finished with five hundred stomach crunches.
With every grueling set of exercises
Joe's mind went inexorably back to
Trent. He couldn't get that damned pedophile out of his mind. He had to find him and kil him and that meant he needed to get a car, preferably a van so that he could transport Alicia without having to lock her in a trunk. He had the librarian's wedding and engagement rings and about forty dol ars from her purse. The engagement ring was a huge solitaire, at least three carats. Her last husband had probably purchased it for four or five grand. Joe thought he might be able to get seven or eight hundred for it at a pawnshop but more than likely he'd have to settle for five or six hundred, an eighth of its value. That meant some very cheap transportation. If he went to a used car lot it would probably be enough fora down payment.
Joe grabbed a forty-five-pound weight and placed it on his chest as he groaned and strained his way through another fifty crunches. When he stood, his abdominal muscles were wound up tight and starting to cramp. He stretched backward as far as he could to loosen them up before he went to hit the showers. By the time he had undressed and stepped into the shower it was empty. Everyone had hurried to finish washing before he stepped in. He made them nervous. Joe knew that as soon as someone found the librarian's body he'd be the first suspect.
He doubted that anyone had seen him going in and out of the abandoned apartment building. The building
