December 15, 2003. 2:15 AM
Oh my god. The things I saw tonight. It was horrible…all that blood…those screams, so unholy sounding…I almost pissed myself! Wait…maybe I should start at the beginning. I'm Darius Hunt. A fitting name I guess…considering what I saw today…see, you're going to think I'm crazy! I saw an honest do badness dead girl at Sam's Pizza in the mall today. She was just walking along like nothing was wrong, chatting with a friend some boy. But I saw her clear as day for what she really was…
Darius Hunt hurried along with the evening crowd milling about in the Cherry Sands Mall, his sneakered feet carrying him along at a nice pace as he tried not to bump into anyone while carrying his bags full of Christmas gifts for his family and friends. It wasn't quite closing time yet, but rush hour was just winding down and he wanted to get home and finish his homework. The huge ivory clocktower like fixture that was the centerpiece of the two story mall began to gong loudly seven times, marking the top of the hour.
Darius frowned and looked at his watch before he clutched his trenchcoat tighter and lifted his bag to his shoulder to carry it easier. As he passed Nieman Marcus, he saw a face he hadn't seen in about three years, not since his fourteenth birthday party. It was a girl whose name took a moment to come to his mind...Sherry. That's it. Her name was Sherry. She'd always been a pretty girl, lustrous blonde hair and nice curves. A great rack, Darius's father had observed drunkenly once. That had been before he left Darius and his mom alone to fend for themselves a year back. The thought brought a pang of coldness to Darius's heart, but he ignored it and let his eyes linger on Sherry's body as she passed.
She was walking with another girl, and they were holding hands. Giggling and eye contact, with rather obviously suggestive rubbing up against each other too, made Darius suspect maybe they were lovers. That thought brought a different pang to Darius and he tried to force it down. He watched them for a few moments before they disappeared to the bathroom. He shrugged and turned away, toward the exit. Best to make it home sooner than later, maybe Mom had cooked something.
He hadn't made it five steps when the vision hit him. It was sudden and intense, filling his real vision and making him close his eyes as his mind's eye came into sharp focus. It made Darius's head feel like it was splitting open and he dropped his bag of Christmas goodies on the ground with a sharp crash on the tile and put his hand to his throbbing temple. He saw a hazy, vague sight of Sherry and the other girl in one of the stalls in the bathroom. The girl's naked breast was in Sherry's hand under her pink sweater and Sherry was licking the pink nipple while the girl squirmed and Sherry suddenly seemed to decay in front of Darius's eyes, like one of those FX shots in the movies. She opened a mouth full of rotting sharp teeth and plunged them into the girl's shoulder. The girl screamed terrified in his vision and he heard a sharp voice in his head:
IT FEEDS.
Then just as quickly, the vision ended. Darius fell stunned to his knees, oblivious to the passerby observers watching him with concern and offering him a hand up. He jumped to his feet, pushing a hand through suddenly sweat dampened blonde brown hair and started to run toward the bathroom, pushing through the crowd. That vision was too real, it brought to mind thoughts uncomfortably quick of how Sherry had disappeared about a year and a half ago and not been heard from. Everyone thought she'd run away, but now she was back. And there was a growing sense of urgency as Darius burst into the girl's bathroom and looked around wildly. It was empty and quiet save for the soft sound of giggling…in a stall…
Darius looked toward the stall as the giggle turned to a scream of pure immense animal pain. He ran to the stall door and kicked it open. The girl was in Sherry's arms, held tight as her face was buried against her naked breast, twin rivulets of blood running from the corner of her mouth down the slender curve toward the girl's nipple.
"Get away from her!" Instead of the eroticism such a sight would normally provide, Darius was filled only with horror and disgust as he realized that this girl was being eaten, her blood was being sucked by the Sherry thing. Then the Sherry thing looked up at Darius and it was the same decayed face he'd seen in his vision, the same rotting fangs. Sherry-thing dropped the girl and turned toward Darius, licking her lips in a horrible show of loving how her "food" tasted.
"Mm…another snack!" Sherry-thing croaked before lunging for Darius. The young man threw both his hands up.
"No!" He shouted as he saw Sherry thing's mouth open to show extended fangs aimed for his throat. He felt something warm bloom inside of him and she stopped dead in her tracks as her mouth seemed to snap shut against her will and she glared cold fire at Darius.
"What are you?" She hissed, backing up. Without bothering to fix her sweater, the girl in the pink sweater was standing up, staring in slack jawed horror at Sherry, obviously seeing the same thing that Darius saw…then chaos erupted…
It was insane. The girl's name, it turned out, was Aspen. She's 25 years old and God is she a looker. Too bad she's gay, or I'd ask her out in a heartbeat. Anyway…that's not what's important. Focus Darius…okay. The thing that used to be Sherry didn't see it coming. A glowing sword of some sort seemed to just…materialize in Aspen's hand. She leaped at Sherry at the same time as Sherry tried to claw me with her fingernails, which were really wicked sharp.
Aspen got there first and she swung her fiery sword hard, and hit home. It sliced down into Sherry's shoulder, seeming to nearly take off her arm, but she was hardly effected. She slammed her fist into the side of my head and threw me halfway across the bathroom before I could blink. But Aspen was screaming now, a scary sight. Her blonde hair was messed up, her bloody breast was still showing and she was repeatedly shoving her glowing blade into Sherry's stomach, stabbing her until she fell onto the ground and just turned to dust when she hacked off her head.
That was some crazy shit. I don't know what the fuck is going on, but as we ran away from the mall, Aspen told me that she'd been almost instantly smitten with Sherry when they'd just met in the food court. They'd giggled a bit and talked before Sherry had offered to get Aspen off in a bathroom stall. Oh how red I turned when Aspen admitted that like she was saying the sky was blue. But anyway, she said that she hadn't expected to be bitten, only that it felt horrible at first, but then better than anything she'd ever felt afterward. So she had sort of zoned out until she heard my voice. Then she'd heard another voice in her head, just like I did...she said it told her that Sherry tried to drain her life, and must be destroyed. Next thing she knew, she was holding a sword made of fire. And the rest I already told you. I gave Aspen my number, I hope to God she calls me soon. I'm scared, and I'm cold. Mom's not home and the darkness is just as bad as it was when I was five years old and my Dad used to hold me and tell me that there were no monsters out there to get me. I knew he was a liar…that was just one of the few things I had hoped he wouldn't lie about.