Chapter 22: 22

Her breath blew across the warmth of my neck.

Goosebumps rippled down my arms and down to my toes.

It was hard to keep from hyperventilating.

"Please don't bite me," I said as gently as I could. I wasn't quite sure if she'd find it offensive or not.

I also didn't know how her feeding worked. I didn’t know how much control she had when hungry or how much of her feeding behavior was driven by a primal instinct to hunt and kill.

Her head ducked and instead of her breathing against my back I felt her nose press against my spine. It was only a little better.

I got to the woods edge and slowed down. What should I do with her? My intention was to separate her from people but now that we were here, I had no idea how to feed her. If she’d been murdering people for their blood, I doubted what I could offer her from my own blood supply would be enough.

She squirmed and I crouched to let her down. Once her feet hit the ground she prowled forward. I took several steps out of her way, but she walked past and leaned against a tree, staring deeper into the woods.

Her lips parted as she inhaled slowly.

This was hunting.

A chill crept down my spine as I tried not to think that maybe there were hikers in these woods. I doubted that since nobody came out here to hike but plenty of the soccer moms and Karens ‘hiked’ on the walking trails. 

“Can you–” I started to ask but she rushed off.

The quiet grace she moved with would take a while to get used to. I felt like a bumbling idiot crunching on leaves in here while she agilely stepped and hopped from stone to root to dirt with barely any effort.

She was headed toward a thicket of tall grass and brambles. I let out a relieved sigh. No person in their sane mind would fight their way in there.

That relief was short lived as she pushed her way through the thorny branches. There was a commotion of breaking branches and two deer leaped out and bounded off into the trees, out of sight within a few seconds.

Scarlet didn’t reappear. There was a horrible wail that sent a fresh wave of goosebumps down my arms. A poor deer’s death cry.

And then it was gone. My stomach churned uncomfortably and Scarlet finally came out, her hand hooked around the limp creature’s neck and pulled.

The thicket birthed the doe. It was an adult deer. That at least was a relief, but the blood gooping along its neck still made me feel more sick. And the eyes were black marbles staring at everything morosely.

A new sense of guilt clawed at my heart.

Scarlet hunkered down over the creature. She glanced up at me, revealing a face smeared with blood and satisfaction.

I looked away. I didn’t want to see her feed. At the moment, I was rethinking my omnivorous lifestyle. Not that I believed that killing an animal to eat it was evil. But seeing it happen and seeing the blood reminded me too much of grief. For all I knew one of the deer that had fled was this deer’s husband or child or whatever. And that would be traumatic no matter what.

She was quiet behind me, but I could hear the pulling and shifting as she went about doing what she was doing.

I leaned against one of the spindly maple trees, feeling my world sway around me. It’s just a deer, I reminded myself over and over. But I knew it was just a deer today, last night, and back in the asylum it had been a person. A person probably with a family, just trying to their job or whatever, going about their life and that life was just ripped right away from them to satiate somebody’s hunger.

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Well, shit. The world really was an immensely cruel place.

I had started to feel better, coming to terms with that fact and started to turn around. Scarlet was gently setting down the deer’s head, the neck even more bloodied than before. I took several deep breaths, reminding myself that this was the circle of life. I had no right to eat meat if I wasn’t willing to face that fact.

Scarlet produced a knife from one of her pockets, but I had no idea she even owned anything other than the rags I’d found her in. She rolled the corpse over a bit so the soft belly was facing upright.

She started sawing the fur apart. The deer stared limply off into space as she did so, the head lolled with the rhythm of her strokes. I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth. That sound was grossly familiar.  The ripping and tearing. But I was stuck watching as she opened up the cavity and reached in and with a few more cuts a large reddish-grey blob slid out.

My stomach finally heaved and I broke the trance to stumble a bit further away. There was so much blood.

I heard more squelching eating sounds. It was gross. No– raw meat in pretty plastic packages was gross. Raw organs getting devoured in some primal ritual was revolting.

In an attempt to keep my stomach from churning I sat and leaned against my tree, trying not to move as much as possible.

I waited, and breathed. Today had been truly miserable. I didn’t think much of anything would make me feel better.

A soft breeze chilled me and I hugged myself, suppressing shivers.

A hand landed on my shoulder and I flinched and snapped my gaze back.

Scarlett backed away.

She was cleaner now. There were still some shadowy streaks here and there where blood had been, but it looked like she’d managed to clean herself up somewhat.

“Are you mad?” she whispered.

I was lost before I found the words. “N-no. Of course not.”

She watched me with a worried expression.

“Let’s go home, you can shower or something there,” I said.

She tilted her head in the same inquisitive gesture as a dogs.

“You’re not mad?” she asked again.

“No.” I said it a little more firmly, reinforcing the statement. “Let’s go,” I started to offer my hand but it morphed into a weird ‘come along’ gesture I’d never seen before but made some amount of sense.

She was wary but she followed me. 

I didn’t dare look back at the corpse.

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