Rhetoric of Crimson

Chapter 2: The Morality of a Murderer

Focusing too much on the little things was always a challenge that Freyr could never overcome. Like the greying hair on the elderly man's forearms as she plunged her knife into his skull. He was an innocent man. Just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The sadness of it all did not quench the hunger that had boiled over. Her body yearned for his blood, the craving causing her to lose all sense of the world around her. It felt as if each thought in her mind was as laboured as a bear dragging its kill across an infinite glacier. I... need... blood... the only thought in her head repeated on loop. 

She couldn't manage anything more complex than that simple notion. The muted colours of the surrounding city blended into an indistinguishable grey that contrasted with the only other colour she could see. Red. It was perhaps the only thing they had in common, they both bled red. She dove, quickly slitting the man's throat and drinking her fill. He moaned in pain, a fleeting sound. It almost drove her from his neck, as if it would make any difference now. She returned to drinking directly from his neck, the need to drink her fill was greater than the need for the cold winter air. 

Her guilt melted away with each sip, the regret would return, but for now every negative emotion fled her mind. Colour began to return to the world, and senses returned to their heightened state as she felt her physical strength grow with each gulp of the man's blood. The reprieve and relief from the lust that consumed her only lasted momentarily, as it always did. She had to drink fresh blood to satiate her hunger. After only a minute past death, her body would reject the blood.

The world exploded. Her senses returned in an instant. It was overwhelming. Her sound, her sight and her smell each accelerating past the limits of normal beings. Freyr clasped her hands to her ears and snapped her eyes shut. This was always the worst part of the feeding cycle. Going from single-word thoughts to complex understandings. Her mind was just as able as the average human, but her senses were something entirely different. Colour returned to the world, the ground was covered in snow, and she felt... cold. Snow drifted down from the overcast sky, and despite the dampening sound of the snow, she could feel her heartbeat echoing off the drifts of pale. Her ginger hair returned to its regular colour, and she wondered if it had changed colour or if it was just a result of her colour blindsight.

She stopped. Her senses quickly made her aware of a falsehood which she believed real. This was no old man. With her dulled senses, she had incorrectly taken this man to be well into his fifties, but with her returned senses, she realized that this man couldn't be that deep into his thirties. She had stalked him from behind until they reached the ally, the orange of dusk providing the only light as the shadows kept them out of sight from the main street she had followed him from.

She tried to vomit. Falling to her knees, she felt the rough acidic burn race up her throat until it fell back to her stomach just as fast as it had come up. Her body had become too blood-starved to give up the spoils of the evening. Unlike everyone else in this city, regular food offered no comfort or sustenance. Her body entirely operated on the fresh blood of those around her. She smashed her fist on the cobblestone, the ground cracking under her hand. She had sworn to only kill the those who had liven a full life, exclusively the elderly. The pain that radiated from her fist was only a pinch of pain compared to what the man's family would feel.

Upon her arrival in this city, she had sworn off eating people entirely, but that had only lasted a month. By week four, she had completely lost herself, becoming a wraith of a person. She had only returned to her normal self after consuming the blood of a lost child, a memory that still haunted her dreams every night. It was then that she vowed to only take the lives of those who had lived a full life. And yet, here she was, bathed in the hypocrisy of her vows.

She had first tried to only consume a little blood from her first victims, but her body would take over, not satisfied until the person was dead. Perhaps she could work to overcome that base primal urge, after all, she had only been in this form for three months.