The Tacoma skyline filled the windshield as Joe rolled into town with Alicia curled up in the front seat, looking well fed and content just as the first nine-to-fivers were beginning to scramble from the nest to catch the early worm. Joe stopped the van at a gas station and ran in to get directions to the psychiatric hospital.
‘You visiting someone or checking in?’ asked the long-haired, flannel-shirted, grunge-rock reject who worked the cash register. He had beautiful greenish blue eyes like seawater. Joe wondered how those vibrant orbs would taste and imagined sucking them out of his skull like boiled oysters. The boy waited for a response to his little witticism and seemed to grow nervous when Joe merely continued to stare into his eyes.
‘Uh, okay, yeah. The hospital’s down past the airport heading toward the center of town. You can’t miss it.’ Joe smiled, turned, and walked back out to his van.
Joe drove the five miles into the center of town and had no trouble finding the hospital. He drove past and continued farther into the city. He needed to find a place to hide Alicia. Alicia snuggled up beside him. She was still bound but Joe had allowed her into the front seat. He trusted her more now. Even as her heart filled with an affection that she assumed was love for the monstrous predator beside her, shame colored her cheeks. She had eaten a man and enjoyed it.
She didn’t know if Joe was right.
Perhaps he had somehow passed his sickness on to her when he had bitten her. But she doubted it. She had eaten Frank only to be closer to Joe. She wasn’t exactly hungering to bite into anyone else. There wasn’t that all consuming appetite working within her the way it had worked inside Joe, twisting his guts as if he were starving. She couldn’t have reached orgasm just from tasting poor Frank’s flame-broiled cock the way Joe had, not without Joe’s organ pounding in and out of her. She wouldn’t have tasted Frank’s flesh at all if she had not wanted to get closer to Joe, to understand the passions that drove him and perhaps to share them, if he hadn’t made it look so sensuous. If he hadn’t looked so powerful and sexual as he stroked his huge cock and crammed pieces of Frank into his mouth. If she hadn’t been such a slut to have lusted after and now possibly to have fallen in love with the murderous psychopath, there was no way she would have eaten poor Frank.
Why do I let myself do these things? she wondered, and was shocked when Joe answered as if he had been in her head listening to her doubt herself.
‘You know why you get off on being with me? Because you’re a slut. But that’s why I love you. I’m a slut too. We’re both whores and so what? We are what we are. Fucking makes you happy so why shouldn’t you fuck? Why should you feel guilty about it? Is there anything that makes you feel more alive than having a fat cock between your thighs? No. Nothing except maybe having one in each hole. And what’s wrong with that? You’ve let society make you hate yourself for your appetites. You hate yourself for enjoying life. That’s stupid. Be a slut and be happy,’ Joe said, waving his hand at her dismissively.
Alicia was shocked. Part of her wanted to listen to him and to know the type of freedom he was talking about. The other part was appalled and wanted to slap the shit out of him.
‘I’m not a slut!’ she hissed, eyes glistening with outraged tears.
‘Yes you are, Alicia,’ Joe replied without taking his eyes off the road. ‘And I love you for it. We could never be together if you weren’t.’
‘Bull shit! This fuck society crap is just another way for you to justify giving in to your own appetites. Eating people, people that you know and claim to love!’ Her eyes raged over his face as if seeking a way into his head. Joe held his eyes fixed on the road as if afraid to face his accuser. ‘You’re just saying all this shit because you don’t really want to change! You’re starting to like it. You’re addicted and you’re afraid of how boring life would be without the high you get from eating other human beings. I know. It’s the same way with me and sex. It’s the only thing that makes life worth a damn to me and I can’t imagine living one night without it. And you’re afraid. Now that you’re here you’re scared to death of confronting that crazy man again.’
Joe’s face darkened and his jaw tightened. The muscles flexed as if he were biting down on something too hard to penetrate. Now that she was really looking at him, his jaw really did look like it had gotten bigger.
