Homecoming
From Changeling Venue
It was chilly, no, not chilly, it was a tiny childish cold, a cold that would grow up someday and be a real, life numbing, soul stealing cold some night a few moons off. Right now though, it was merely a hint of what it would become, a childish version of its murderous future self. You could see the sociopathic thing it was going to become but, there was nothing to be done. Small animals would be harmed.
I was waiting for her to come out of her little two story house at the end of Ninety Seventh Street, just off Sacramento Avenue. It was a pretty house, clean, neat, orderly, nice is the oldest definition of the world. Like other nice things it was mostly for show too. There was a sickness inside and it had festered for too long. I knew it, a few others did too, mostly though it was not something that was talked about. It would be tomorrow though. The light of day did that sometimes.
I’d waited and watched and spoken to her for two nights previously. The Ministry had taught me the importance and power of numbers and three was one heavy with purpose. I’d chosen it more out of whimsy than any real connection but really, it was important if only to me. Evergreen trees are great hiding places if you do not mind the sap and the needles. I never have. Lying there, amidst the soft prickly bed of brown needles I was comfortable; cold and comfortable and waiting. Hunting was something I learned to do over there and it is only one of many things I learned there that I often find now, sometimes to my horror, which I enjoy.
She was late; predictably, my presence the last few days had thrown her off her schedule. That happened allot and it’s a reasonable response to being stalked and threatened and hunted. Caution in moderation is something very few people include in their daily lives. First time parents and nervous children do sometimes but not your average Jane or Joe. She’d added it because of me, but unfortunately it was not going to save her.
She had the lights off over the door, the better to see. The lights inside went out too. It was dark already; Autumn had seen to it that the days were already dwindling and that the light no longer held sway. Darkness would soon have the run of the place for fifteen hours out of every twenty four. I was looking forward to it. She peered out from a corner of the big glass windows that faced out of the street. A moment later she did it again from the other side. She really had no chance to see me; the tree conspired with me to keep me from sight.
I’m a big guy, I do not move with anything like speed or stealth merely the thick brutish power that comes from having been run, run hard and long and tirelessly. There is no grace to it and it is not breathtaking to watch, unless I am coming right at you. Many people catch their breath then, whether it is out of fear or wonder I am never entirely sure. The front door cracked open and she slipped out, moving swiftly on heels. Clicking over the concrete, loud and clear in the bitter Autumn’ cold. I managed to get out from beneath the tree, across the street and between her and her car. She stopped when I appeared before her though surely she’d seen me cross the street as well. Anxiety, fear and paranoia though blinded her to most of the approach.
“Stay away from me.”
Her voice was nice, quiet; you’d think she would scream wouldn’t you? She did not want attention though, in a way, she was the villain here.
“Look, I told you, please, leave me alone, its little enough, its not hurting anyone, I just…”
She trailed off, it’s the blind white eye, it never fails to attract attention and it never fails to bother people, that is until they see the teeth. After the teeth, most people really can think of nothing else. I wasn’t smiling though so it had to be the eye.
“I told you, either stop or pay up.”
My voice is surprisingly clear, I usually slur or mumble. The curse of having teeth too big for your jawbones I suppose. I’d never be a public speaker, but up close, in the chilly clarity that you only get in the Autumn and Winter, she heard me without trouble. Besides, I’d given the same short speech the two nights before, she knew it already. Probably she heard it in her dreams.
She shivered, pulled her arms around herself, fighting the fear and the cold and her own greed. She glanced at me, immobile and hulking and mindless, a monster out of movies; then down at her shiny white shoes. Glistening plastic shoes so white that snow would look dirty grey next to them; nurse’s shoes so tightly sealed even blood might not stain them.
“How much?”
She asks nervously, thinking I wanted a cut. Expecting that to be my everything as it so often was for people. She didn’t know, couldn’t really, the cost was so much higher. I sighed and a small cloud of fog rolled out over her. Something cried out in the night somewhere behind me, over the train tracks that acted as terminus for the street. I don’t like hitting women.
There wasn’t any sound, I caught her beneath the chin and had her throat and voice box in my hand. Her breath, caught by fear and sudden mounting terror, stuck up in her lungs and began to choke her. It would be stale and reeking and toxic before it ever got back out to the open air again. I lifted her easily, threw her nearly soundlessly into her own brick wall; keeping my hand on her throat, choking out any sound.
I dragged her to the train tracks; half carried her up the stones that raised the tracks to the height of the floors of the houses around us. She moaned once, half conscious, unaware and only barely feeling. There was a wet tearing sound when I tore her throat away and ended her chances or calling for help. She moved then, frantic, her body beating a mad rhythm on my back as her arms flailed useless and wild against me. Her blood was hot, metallic salt, it gushed out over my clothes and over the tracks. Black and shining, it captured the light and dragged it down to earth.
Sitting on the iron track I let her bleed out, waited till she was gone, lost to whatever waits for people afterwards. She wasn’t cold yet when I gutted her and ate whatever was left inside that smelled good. Most people eat things everyday that would disgust them if they ever stopped to think about what they are. Still, eating them raw and fresh is pretty tough too.
When I finished I left her there, her gleaming whites black under the muted streetlights. A car drove by but no one saw us there. I left her draped over the iron track, uncomfortable and bent. A passing freight train would find her there in an hour and make a mockery of the crime scene but that is just how things are. I walked away from her down the tracks, North towards the lights and the action. I left my car not far from the center of town. As I walked along that iron shod road, I could feel it coming back already; could feel the flush of it, the mad weird rush of it. The sickening mess in my belly grew warm and wholesome and comforting. I was back, home again, another wandering age had come and gone and I was home. It welcomed me back too. Happy I think, in its way, to have me with it, at least as happy as I was to be here anyways. I felt the bond stiffen, strengthen, enforced by old promises and half misunderstood oaths.
Autumn had come and found me waiting and ready and now, finally, I was home for good. I walked to my old beater, opened the trunk and wiped my hands and face with the oily rags there. When I was clean enough for street lights, I got in and drove home. And the town, my little sleepy home, repaid my service to it as I went. I fancied that, in the dark of my driveway, the car cooling around me, that the glamour made me glow in the darkness. It really was good to be home.
