Joe's eyes widened.
'How do I know? How do I know what you've become? What you've done? The lives you've taken? How did I know that you were coming here? Because I'm inside of you, little Joseph…' He patted his stomach and licked his lips. '… and you are inside of me.'
'And that's why I have to kil you.'
'So kil me! The COs here are rather overzealous, though. Especial y that big black son of a bitch. He nearly broke my arm once trying to wrestle me into a straitjacket. He doesn't know his own strength. If he didn't snap your neck like a twig, the other guards would shoot you dead the minute they saw your hands on my throat.' Trent's dark beady eyes narrowed as his smile widened. He watched the veins in Joe's forearms protrude, his biceps bulge, wound with tension.
'My, you've grown! You're quite a big boy now. Not real y my taste but I might be inclined to make an exception.' Trent continued to tease, feeling safe with so many guards standing just beyond the next door.
'Are you kidding me? Are you seriously trying to intimidate me, you pathetic little worm! You attacked children because you were too weak and cowardly to go after real prey. I'm a true predator, not some simpering baby-fucker who couldn't get a real woman to look twice at him. Or a real man for that matter.' Joseph began to laugh and he could see
Trent visibly deflate.
'Shut up! Shut the fuck up! Stop laughing at me! You don't know what I am! You don't know the power I possess!' He looked even more like a spoiled child as he exploded into a tantrum. Tears squeaked out of the corners of his eyes and his bloated cheeks reddened with rage.
Joe rose from his chair and leaned forward until he towered over the fat little pederast whose hands were stil cuffed in front of him, leaving him al but helpless. Joe's voice lowered seductively as his eyes locked in on
Trent's.
'Your power has faded, Damon. You're just like them now. Weak. Helpless. Prey. How long has it been since you last fed?
Let me get you out of here and we can feed together. Then you can show me how powerful you are.'
Damon licked his lips salaciously at the thought of fresh meat, fresh blood.
'You're trying to trick me. I'm not going anywhere with you. So you can kil me?
Rip me up into little pieces to rid yourself of the curse? Do you real y want to be like those sheep that bad? What wil your life be like without the hunger? Without the passion? Nothing can replace it, you know. Regular sex wil feel like trying to masturbate in a ful -body cast. Nothing wil ever compare to what you've experienced. You'l miss it every day of your life until you eventual y kil again. But with the curse gone, the kil ing won't be the same. It won't be as fulfil ing. But you'l keep kil ing because it wil be the closest you can ever come to what you can experience right now with just one bite. Only it won't be one bite. Without the curse it wil take the consumption of several victims to even approximate the ecstasy the flesh gives you now and you'l gladly kil them al and more.'
'It-it's true then? There is a cure? This is some kind of disease?'
'What do you think? Can't you feel the changes?'
'I think that you're going to stay in here for the rest of your life unless you let me help you.'
11 It's better than winding up on your dinner plate.' Damon sat back on his bed, grinning like a baby with a mouth ful of his own feces.
Joe wanted to lunge across the room and crack open the pederast's rib cage. He wanted to tear out the man's heart and consume it. But Damon was right.
Any violent actions in this place would quickly lead to his own death or incarceration. Stil, he had to find a way to get the man alone so that he could end his pathetic little life and sever the bloodline that linked them both to the curse. He decided to cal Trent's bluff. He stood up as if he was about to leave.
'I'l think of you the next time I feed. I'l imagine you slowly starving to death in here, eating meat loaf, creamed corn, and Jel -O.'
Joe signaled for the guard.
'Wait! Wait a minute. What did you have in mind?'
Joe turned back around and waved the guard off as he took his seat again.
'Tel me what you know about this place. What's the best way to get you out of here?'
'Get me a gun and I can free myself.'
'And then use it on me? Uh-uh, not gonna happen.'
'Okay. Then how about a knife? I could probably take out that big bastard with a knife if I took him by surprise.'
'Let me think about it.'
'Nothing else to think about. There's no way they'd let you out of here with me.'
'If you had to go to the hospital for an emergency, where would they take you?'
'Right here. This is a ful y functioning medical hospital as wel as an insane asylum.'
'And what's security like in the medical wards?'
'Penetrable.' Trent smiled. Joe wanted to peel his face off and leave him smiling forever.
Chapter Thirty-six
With the threat of death temporarily less imminent, Alicia had time to deconstruct herself. To tear herself apart piece by piece. She looked down at her body and began to catalogue her flaws, something she had not done since this ordeal began. From the moment she'd set foot into Joe's apartment, seemingly a lifetime ago, she had felt terrified, helpless, revolted, angry, aroused, ecstatic, and confused, but not for a moment had she felt unattractive. A man was ready to kil her because she was so sexy. What greater affirmation of her beauty did she need? It was her sex appeal that had first brought her to the notice of Joseph Miles and it was her sex appeal that was leading her to whatever fate awaited at the end of this journey.
Stil, with the naked 100-watt bulb glaring down at her from the ceiling, the various bulges and blemishes seemed to glow as if lit by a spotlight. And with no one's eyes to see herself through but her own, her hypercritical nature rose to the fore and she began dismantling herself.
Alicia wished Joe had been thoughtful enough to turn off the lights before he left. She'd gone more than seventy-two hours without once thinking that she was too fat, without worrying about the rol s at her hips or the stretch marks or cel ulite. Now al she could see in herself were flaws.
She looked down at her oversized breasts, which had flattened out and fal en to either side of her rib cage, tucked beneath her armpits like pale, fleshy, water wings, and wondered why anyone would want to touch the hideous things. They were not round and perky like the silicone queens and faint stretch marks ran through them from the missing nipples nearly to her col arbone. They were so light and thin that no one else would have noticed them, but she did.
She looked at the thick black mole beneath her left breast, wishing that Joe had had the empathy to bite that off instead of her nipples.
Sighing and scowling in disgust, she ran her judgment like a sharp scalpel over her bel y; the lightning bolt- shaped stretch marks radiating up from her hairy pubic mound where her skin had yielded to the fat cel s multiplying like cancer beneath it. Her bloated stomach jiggled with each sob as self-hate overcame her. She wanted Joe to hurry back. She needed him to tel her how beautiful she was. She needed him to look at her with those voracious eyes ful of lust and appetite that seemed to gather her entire body into them and cradle her in their unwavering gaze. She wept herself to sleep praying for the return of her murderous kidnapper.
It was past dark when he returned. The door opened and slammed behind him.
Alicia moaned softly in her sleep and tugged on her restraints before lying stil once more. Joe slipped into the bathroom and clicked on the lights.
Alicia winced and whimpered as the mortifying sound of metal on bone clawed its way into her deep, dreamless sleep, stirring up terrible butcher-shop fantasies.
Images of car crashes, autopsies, bondage, and blood play swirled through Alicia's mind in a kaleidoscopic
