Darkness

Chapter 1

I didn't mean to kill her. I acted purely on instinct. Now looking down at my reddened hands covered in her blood, my victims blood, I realised what I had done.
I had killed. I had killed an innocent being on my own free will.
I looked around for witnesses. There wasn't any. I was totally alone.
Solitude.
Me and this pale, drained corpse that lay by my feet.
I couldn't bring myself to feel guilty about killing her, I didn't know her, didn't care for her, so I didn't feel guilty about taking her life. The only thing I felt was hunger, a need for more blood.

She wasn't enough to satisfy the monster in me.
The monster I had become.

I crouched down and looked at my first kill. She was probably someone's mother, someone's sister, someone's wife. But yet I lost my family, so I sure didn't give a damn about hers. To a monster of my kind she was nothing more than a pusillanimous shell, infested with dreaded emotions, and pumped full of my life's craving. Blood. How pathetic of a life she must have lived.

Inspecting my prey, I didnt do to messily feeding on her compared to some other creatures I have witnessed feeding on people, despite from the blood splattered all down the front of my black velvet and lace dress.

I watched a puddle of blood pool around her slumped shoulders and soak into the muddy ground beneath us, I dipped my finger in it and brought it to my mouth, slipping my finger in. I sucked on it, desperate to consume every last drop of the tangy, coppery, sweet yet salty liquid I craved so much. I savoured the taste on my tounge. It suddenly felt like everything around me had more life, more meanin.
It awakened something inside me. Something hungry,
Something dangerous.

I checked my surroundings, looking where on earth we were, because after I caught the scent of this girl, my mind just focused on her, on her scent. My bear feet just followed her, winding us through trees and bushes until we were deeper in the coppice.
Looking around, to the east there was a bubbling stream and after that nothing but trees, trees and more trees, with the odd few rustles in the sparsley dotted bushes. Rabbits. I could smell them, using my super distinguished senses.

I contemplated my options regarding the body lying still and well and truly dead by my feet. I couldn't just leave her here, wherever we were for anyone to find. Because although we were in the middle of nowhere, judging by the uneven cut of some of the tree stumps, people used this place to gather wood, so leaving her body here would be a mistake. I couldn't risk getting caught.

I knew the punishment.

To risk defying the laws of the predator that I had become, would surely result in my inevitable death. Hung up for an excruciating century, no blood, no prey. Left to wither and rot. Or merely just staked right there on the spot, to make it a less torturous and painful death. But those kind of punishments only came if you had been granted mercy. But killing a random person that you didn't know that was on someone else's territory, was highly forbidden.

I didn't fancy being hung today.

I averted my gaze back down to the girl and being lost in my own mind, I completely forgot my plan of what to do with her dead body. Remembering the little stream to the east, I decided that that was my destination. Bending down, i strangled her ankles with my hands and fingers, I dragged her a good 30 feet east to the stream. Tightening my grip I raised my arm and flung her into the water.

I watched as she sunk down deeper into the depths of the bubbling Brook. Being dead and drained I knew that she would sink at first but then come up and float after a couple of days. And her floating like that on display in the water would certainly get me found out and killed.

I had to rethink my decision.

To any normal person seeing a dead body floating in a stream in the middle of nowhere would scream and run, but to someone who knew about me and my kind and the way we feed,they would investigate and dig and dig until they found out who did it and then hunt them down and kill them.

Until then I had three options;
Option one: I could let her float on the water for anyone to find.
Option two: I could burn her body and scatter her ashes in the water.
Option three: I could hide the evidence of her being fed on by ripping her head straight off of her shoulders.
But that would just cause more speculation amongst the leaders of my kind. So that wasn't really a plausible option.
So eventually I came to the desicion to burn her body. I knew it was an easy desicion to make, but I had to think carefully, had to plan meticulously so I wouldn't get found out.
Walking through the trees I found a forgotten axe lying on the floor, someone had accidentally left, confirming my suspicions of this part of the woods being a hot spot for gathering wood. I picked up the axe and headed toward a tree. It wasn't a very old tree, judging by its height, and I probably could've ripped it up from the ground with my own, bare hands, but using an axe was probably a bit more of a normal, humanly approach.

Ripping it up with my own hands would've left a hole in the floor and ...well it was just to suspicious. Maybe I was overthinking it but I just wanted to be careful.
I held a tighter grip on the axe, so when I swung it I didn't want to fling it halfway to africa, and positioned myself in front of the tree and swung. Thud. I took a second swing, thud, and a third, thud... crash. The tree crashed to the ground and echoed ever so slightly throughout the trees. I heard a loud clapping sound and looked up to see a flock of birds abandoning their tree, disturbed by the loud crash.

I walked over to the fallen tree trunk and picked it up without much effort. I dragged it over to where the trees were less common and there was a little bit of a clearing. I let it drop to the floor and went back a few steps to retrieve the axe and took it over to the trunk. I hit the trunk hard enough to make it splinter all the way down which made it easier for me to chop it into small enough pieces to start a fire.

After finishing chopping the wood into different random sizes I threw them all in a pile and realised that I had thrown the body in the water, meaning I could have to dive in and fish her out. I shuffled myself over toward the stream and saw her body floating on the surface rather then sunk at the bottom. I was relieved, I didnt fancy swimming into a place that was full of slimy creatures and things that were better undiscovered.

Dragging her body from the surface of the water, I threw her over to the pile of wood and she landes with a sickening crack and crunch as her bones cracked and splintered from the sudden hard impact. I fished in my dress pocket for the lighter I always keep on me. You never know when you might need to burn or set fire to someone or something. Like this girl. Not that I planned to kill her, I was just doing what I do best. I replayed the memory in my head for the millionth time

I remember her screams, the way she ran tripping over every possible tree branch or root that stuck up from the ground like they were purposely trying to trip her up. I chased her effortlessly, gracefully avoiding those very same tree parts and pieces. I didn't need to run very fast to keep up with her. She was breathless gasping for air, desperate for her life whilst being chased, whilst I was just having a casual jog, keeping a close distance behind her, but far enough away to make it last longer. I didn't need to run at all really, I just enjoyed the chase. Seeing they way my victims run, terrified for their lives, was half the fun of killing somebody...

I broke myself out of my trance and remembered I couldn't care less about a mere mortal. I live the way I want and do the things I need to survive, whatever the cost.

I flicked open my lighter and threw it onto the pile of wood, it didn't take long to start burning. I watched as the wood stared to blacken and char and the smell of burning skin filled the air. I took a deep breath in, savouring the smell of burning flesh meaning my tracks have been covered and I was finally free of this girl, of course she was still there. She was another mark on the chart of people I had killed.

Eventually the flames burned down, and I got a handful of her ashes off the wood and scattered them all around. In the water and all over the floor. Kicking the burnt wood around as well. After finishing my task I took another deep breath in and smelled something else.

Me having my highly distinguished senses, smell, taste, sight, hearing and even touch, I can smell things, see things, taste things, hear things and feel things on a higher scale then most normal beings. So if you were to put me in a room with a tiny bit of cheese and asked me to find it, I wouldn't even need to close my eyes and concentrate. I would be drawn to the smell like a moth to a flame. But of course my senses are super heightened when it comes to blood I can smell it from miles away.
Just like now.