LED lights; so different from the yellow orange street lights I grew up with. They are everywhere now. I feel as if I am in a different country. Strange. A wonderful feeling, a summer night’s cooling breeze sighs down the avenues and alleys of the city. I pass people on their night out. Couples, young and old, gaggles of singles out on the prowl, eyeing up groups of the opposite sex.

I pushed past a group of young ladies dressed to kill; a couple give me the eye. For a moment, it feels delectable. But other appetites kick in and kill it.

Today was my birthday, I would have been thirty.

Would have been, but two .45 ACP rounds ended that. Funny; I thought of myself as old. Now I realize I was young. It wasn’t much of a life: I was frustrated, I was drinking too much, I was blocked at every pass, but I was alive, I had hope. But now, none of that matters; all of it ended and was replaced by a rapacious hunger.

I burn with anger.

An unending, all-consuming rage flowed through my raw veins like battery acid during the dark hours. Thousands of volts pulse through my nerves and muscles.

Some dudebro bumped into me, bouncing off my chest.

“Hey! Watch it mother…”

I let out a timberwolf growl; it also made his friends back off. Bearing a set of long sharp teeth helps, too.

Looking in the mirror after dying is…weird. To see a flaccid pink body now draw out into hard predator sinewiness. Sometimes, it depends; it can change.

Contrary to Bram Stoker, I do have a reflection: over the past month, I have found a lot of Hollywood myths to be bullshit.

I walked by a bar; expensive, the place to be downtown. Patrons were sitting outside enjoying the weather, chatting. I want to join them, maybe have a beer. Like before, maybe chat up a cute girl, work some game, and probably get rejected for being a lowly convenience store clerk. As if being an Administration Assistant II is some big deal.

I saw a couple at a table at the end. A blond bombshell in some deep, plunging lacy thing that shows off her penchant for sunbathing naked when she isn’t banging out Crossfit sessions. He was a typical professional office rat, the trendy fuckbeard holding back his pudding baby face. $300 shoes make the man.

I brushed my fingers against her bare shoulder and told her, “I like your come-on-me tits. You must need a real man to suck on them sometimes instead of faking orgasms for the Michelin Man and his wallet.”

She looked at me and with a smile says, “God, yes!”

He just sat there dumbfounded and I walked away.

I have a sort of whammy on the opposite sex; must be the primal power of threatening violence and chaos. Weird, but I enjoy it.

But these people bore me, annoy me. There is a thing I must do tonight. Something I wanted to do when I was alive.

Around the corner, I found my Harley. I say “mine,” but I ripped it off some hard-assed biker, along with his arms. I keep them in the saddle bags.

The caress of the night wind felt good whipping through my hair as I roared out of town for the hills.

***

Jerrod screwed up his face in annoyance. The unmuffled rumble of a motorcycle going up his street made it hard to put the moves on Shelley over the phone, even in his backyard.

“Come on, babe; bring that sweet perky ass over to my house. The wife is gone and I have some fine bud. I’ll give you your pick of shifts this month.”

Shelley answered, “Sorry, I can’t tonight, but what about tomorrow night? Save me some of that ganja?”

“Can do, hotness; wife won’t be back until Monday.”

“Okay then, bye.”

“Bye.”

Jerrod hit “end” and took a draw from his Budweiser. A stiffy tented his swim trunks from hearing Shelley’s silky voice.

“Damn. Better get more than a handjob this time, or that little pierced bitch is getting a shit ton of weekends,” he said to no one.

Wading his alabaster, skinnyfat ass into the pool, he slugs the rest of the bottle down. He is distracted, thinking about what his wife is doing, “Probably getting some; haven’t gotten laid in three months, she’s got to be getting it somewhere else.”

The night draws in darker.

“Explains why I always got shit shifts at the store,” a voice from the far end of the pool spoke in a hard basso.

Jarrod saw a figure standing there silhouetted against the moon, a giant at least six-and-a-half feet tall.

“Who the fuck are you!? Get the fuck out of my yard!” Jerrod said.

“No,” it answered. “To think I probably died so you could dip your wick in a twenty-year-old girl. My life for a handjob. Fucker.”

“Peary? That you? The fuck you talking about?” Jarrod asked.

ZZZZIIIIP! The sound of a stream of piss hitting the water reached Jerrod. The pool near the figure went a dark red, then spread.

“Dude, the fuck?”

The lights in the darkening water cast a red glow.

“I’m talking about taking two slugs in the chest.”

“Yeah, I heard. They said it was bad, but I didn’t get no followup. You just up and disappeared.”

“YOU THINK I AM FUCKING WORRIED ABOUT MY JOB?”

Jerrod made a break for it. As he hauled himself out of the pool, a boot crashed into his shoulder, knocking it out of joint with the audible CRACK of his collar bone giving way.

“Not fast enough,” it said.

An iron grip seized his neck, yanking him out of the water. With pressure building, Jerrod blacked out. The thing plunged a fist through Jerrod’s breast bone and ripped out his heart. Bringing the organ to its mouth, it squeezed and drained the blood, then tore at the heart meat with snapping teeth.

***

It is late now; the streets are empty back downtown. I wander in the bluish white glare of the LEDs. Everything is so new; this is a new world I inhabit, among the living but not of them. I enjoy having the night to myself. I am the god of the underworld here in this granite and concrete Hades. 

I scaled an empty office building, some old red brick husk. I sat on the roof with an old friend, or part of him at least, and enjoyed the view.

“Nice, eh, Jerrod?”

Blubbery lips were silent on his sunken cheeks.

I listened to the night as a new melody sounded all around me, one I didn’t hear as a child.

The birds sing at night, confused by the false daylight of the street lamps. An unnatural time for birdsong in an unnatural world; perfectly fitting for an unnatural monster.