Bone

In the dream, it always hurt when that massive jaw clamped down on his arm, crushing everything before pulling and tearing him apart. It started just beneath his left shoulder, throbbing, sharp.

He woke up sweating, shivering. He sat right up in bed, instantly pulling a pillow against his face as if to blot out the pain and the fear. He could smell his own fear, and it sickened him.

A bolt of hot white agony chose that moment to shoot through him, down his arm and back up into his chest. Was his heart giving out? Was this what a heart attack felt like?

He heard a dog-like whimper and tilted his head to hear where it had come from. Then he heard it again. It was in his chest. It was his own sound of pain. He closed his eyes, and to him it sounded like a massive metal door slamming shut.

In flashes of yellow light he could see it, the snarling canine mouth tearing away from his ruined arm, lunging at his face with bloody teeth. He could smell the blood. He could taste it.

He slid backward just an inch or two, but it was useless. Those teeth were snapping at his chin, at the cheekbone, just under his eye -- then at the side of his neck.

Instinctively he tried to curl himself up, make himself the smallest target possible; but his enemy was already so intimate, there was no place to hide, no safe position. The teeth were razors and they went through his flesh not caring where. They could pulverize bone into sand and tear muscle tissue to ribbons.

In the dream, he always felt himself crawling weakly along a silvery path of sand in a midnight pine forest, leaning here and there on a tree to catch his breath and listening for the sound of the mad dog. He saw his blood on the silvery white sand, a perfect trail leading to himself.

This time, the rain diluted the red. Everything was loud, but black. This was better, he reminded himself; better than what it would be without the bullet. Before he passed out again, his fingers fluttered down along his side until they found the wound. He gasped as he touched it too roughly, smiling because he knew he could harm no one but himself.

In the dream, he slept.

After the Cold

Rain in the gutters moved fast, like a river, he thought, but this was the city. The sidewalk had soaked up as much of this water as it could take on, and the clear liquid now shone the lights from store windows and streetlamps like a mirror might, with rainbow auras at the edges of shapes, just enough to let him know it wasn't the half that was real.

He was wet. His clothes looked worse for the wear than they were, and he himself felt worn and cold as he plodded along, his feet making the occasional splash in a deepset step of concrete. The rain kept coming. There seemed no end to it, or the wind that drove it earthward. A gust of wind hit him across the face, drawing him further out of his reverie. In it, even above the odor of rainwater and street decay, he caught the scent of one who could make him warm again - Delmaya.

She was waiting for him under the ample awning of a vacant brick building in the end of the street. She saw him, and a large white smile broke over her dark glistening face with its beautiful high cheekbones and noble nose, and a glint of honey in her amber eyes made her flash like a jewel to him. She was bound up in a tight orchestration of spandex and cotton, her small round breasts and mighty thighs smooth and perfect beneath silvery fabric. Her full lips were the color of dark orchids, and her hair was long, straight, and the color of polished brass. He smiled back.

"Ma cherie," he said as he took her hand, "such a night to find you waiting here alone." He lifted her hand and brushed his lips over the inside of her tiny wrist.

Her smile did not waver; indeed, her eyes seemed to grow even brighter, her smile more touching than ever.

"I know you, Monsieur." she whispered shyly, looking into his eyes.

"Of course you do." He kissed her fingers one by one.

"I have dreamed about you." she said, gasping once as she felt his teeth rake her flesh.

"And I, you." he replied, licking along the pattern of her veins, barely visible beneath the skin of her forearm.

"You will bring me what I have sought for so long," she said.

He sank his teeth into her, the sound of her flesh breaking filling his head like an explosion.

"You will give me rest."

He traced a trail of blood from her wrist up her arm, into the bend of her elbow. This drew another gasp from Delmaya, who leaned down to gently brush her cheek against his hair.

"You have come to take me home." She whispered, kissing him.

Slowly, he worked his way up her arm with kisses and blood. Her neck came under his tongue and he could feel her pounding heart.

"Yes," he told her skin quietly, "take you. Home."

The blood was warm

The blood drizzled into the gutter and finally into the sewer. It was such a waste, especially in this storm. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and the green eyes noticed the small form huddled under the overhang, shivering, wet and cold.

"Please....his name..was...Murphy," the small child whispered.

"No one cares anymore, honey," said the green-eyed red-head. "He won't be bothering you anymore."

When the 8-year old didn't move, the red-head hissed.

"Go.....now." Those green eyes were neon and glowed dangerously.

But the child would forget. Moreover, she would live. That was more than Murphy could claim.

The red-head laughed coldly, licking her fangs.

The next one needs to be harder to catch... she thought to herself.