BOUNDARY DISPUTE
Cynthia Arsuaga
Mike Arsuaga
Copyright © 2011
I waited in the dark for my prey.
Humans always passed this way.
A full moon lit up the path and surrounding meadow beyond the trees with a silvery aura. I squinted hard into the distance and spotted her. She walked fast bent toward the chilly breeze, with strides as long as she could make them. As she approached a willowy woman with dark hair flowing behind that sucked up all the light which appeared, absolutely black in the moonlight came into view. She wore a chiffon dress and the wind pressed the flimsy fabric hard against a lithe young frame. The thin chemise provided no protection from the chill and I wondered why she hadn’t worn a coat or something to guard from the cold.
Only a few yards away and still in the open, I noted brief detail of the face, young and smooth. The moonlight made the oval visage very pale and bloodless with a touch of color on the cheeks. Large, alert, and wary eyes traversed back and forth across the path ahead. The vague and indistinct features reminded me of looking at the worn down image on an old well used coin, but I observed enough. She was prime.
“I am going to enjoy this one,” I thought to myself as she reached the edge of the clearing. Five more seconds and she’d enter the wood.
I had an anticipatory fantasy of how the attack would happen. I would let her pass and cut off retreat, to sweep in from behind. I can reach forty miles an hour at top speed, beyond any human’s hope of, especially a female. She wouldn’t hear my approach until the last second to turn in horror as I fall upon her and take her to the ground.
She has a firm athletic body and is young. Although she will put up a good fight, she has no more chance of escaping than a rabbit has of getting out of a bobcat’s jaws. All this would only serve to heighten my frenzy.
A sharp, startled breath escapes red lacquered lips when she realizes every nightmare and dark fairy tale of childhood is true.
“Oh my God!” she cries out.
I force her head to one side exposing the long white neck. The face is in shadow now, all horrified profile and hysterical gleaming eye. I brush aside some curls of black hair and bite deeply. Rich salty blood gushes hotly down my throat. The struggles gradually subside.
Before dying she silently mouths the word ‘Why,’ in self-reproof, I think, for not believing The Stories.
Now the cooling corpse is lying on the ground limp as a rag doll. I sit back under a tree, relishing the warmth of the blood seeping throughout my body. Satiated, I let out a loud soupy contented belch.
I come out of my reverie to the present.
The prey is twenty yards ahead, well into the wood, time to go. In a second, I am on her. She falls forward with me on top. One of her hands is still free and imparts a hard slap across my face. I rear back from the powerful, smarting blow which allows her time to stand up.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demands as the black wig comes off. “This is my hunting ground.”
It is Deidra from the coven.