The Hunt

Charlotte. It was a whisper breaking through the folds of my mind, digging into my body and leaving me numb. Charlotte! Another; louder. Screaming almost. Ripping through me like knives, tearing, cutting, mangling. All other thoughts were gone, because I was left with nothing but the knowledge that I was coming undone as the screams ran through my mind.

Beads of sweat formed on my forehead and dribbled down the side of my face. My teeth tore against my lower lip, dribbles of warm blood running down my chin and falling onto the mattress beside me. And then there was a tongue, licking at the blood all of the way up to my mouth and igniting fire in my body. The tongue curled around my teeth, licking at the part that had torn my lip and running gently around my gums.

I was writhing and shaking, my eyes clenched shut as the voices screamed in my head. Charlotte. Laughter. It vibrated against my mouth, the tongue leaving my lips and trailing from my chin and down my neck. Teeth moved against my skin, dragging down tauntingly against my flesh as they nipped at my neck. A kiss was placed against my shoulder, gentle and deadly, and my heart was beating and flying out of control. I was in the grasps of death, the darkness that clouded my vision like an abyss that was dragging me through. But the death excited me, because it would be a death at the mercy of his teeth and his monstrosity.

My eyes snapped open. Pants left my lips, my chest heaving with each breath. I was sweating profusely from the warmth that invaded me, and my blood was pulsing heatedly in every part of my body.

Brown eyes rimmed with red stared back, so close that I wanted to scream. A smile formed on his lips, his incisors dripping with the nectar of life that he had torn from my body. I watched in utter silence as he leaned down, placing his mouth against my ear. “Charlotte.” I screamed.

His mouth was on mine, silencing me with his lips. I could taste blood on his tongue – my blood, and it dribbled down my throat like a poison that was killing me slowly. I didn’t want the blood; I wanted him to drain me dry so that the poison would be ridded from my body. I could feel it pulsing with every beat my heart took, and my lips moved desperately against his as I tried to keep up.

The kiss wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t the kiss of a lover. Deep down I knew that his affinity for me was because of the blood that pulsed through my veins and because of the insanity that seemed so close in my mind. I loved him. I loved him like a mouse loved its mother before it was torn to pieces in the clutches of hunger. I loved him because he was a monster and because he was eating me alive from the inside out, and because I was a masochist of the ugliest form and he was the only one willing to tear me apart.

His lips were gone. My mouth was cold. Blood ran down my throat. Laughter echoed around me, and I knew that he was laughing at me. My eyes were wide open, my mind wondering when the moment had been that I lost my soul to the monster that lay beside me. A cold hand trailed down my cheek, grabbing my chin and directing my eyes towards him. He stared at me with the eyes of death, a devilish smile curving his ruby lips and the remnants of blood sitting on his chin. “Charlotte,” he purred, and my body hummed in response. “Are you ready to begin, my gem?”

It was silent. My body screamed for mercy. “I love you,” I whispered. It wasn’t an answer, it was a sentence drawn from my body because I was drunk on his presence. He knew the answer; he knew it as well as he knew that my love for him was nothing but a desperate attempt to keep his darkness inside of me.

He chuckled and pressed his lips against my neck, eliciting a fire at his touch. “Then we’re ready,” he breathed.