alistairmather

so i was sitting in my normal spot at the bar in the local coffee joint typing away this Halloween, when this very pretty girl comes up to me and starts talking to me about what i am writing and why i write. now being the ultra-suave, charming and capable social creature that i am... i just stared at her in dumbfoundment.

look, pretty girls do not just come up and show interest in me. i'm weird, i look weird, i sound weird, and in most places people assume i am still a child, so pretty within my age range girls do not speak to me unless forced to by circumstances beyond their control.

long story short, i got a smile, a wave and an interested pretty girl and i gave her... nothing. no name, no information, nada.

and this everyone is why i will always be single: because i can't believe any of you can really be interested.

...well that and what i happened to be writing was fairly bizarre. i wasn't sure a random stranger, despite interest, would have appreciated what i was doing with my Halloween:



Blood sings. Wind blows. Nerves crackle and burn. Leaves and offal and other less identifiable signs of death rush past in a dry clatter. Sense of elation spreads from the center, jumping and cavorting its way through eldritch biological channels, leaving cells humming. Chill nightfall dances with the last of days heat, rippling in steps and whorls as old and natural as life/death.
I smile as the night catches me up.
Steps fall nigh soundless from soft soles on cooling pavement. Energy bursts from a depthless source, screaming and searing its way soundlessly and painlessly throughout the whole. Heat and motion, self replenishing and self consuming, distributed instantaneously to churning organ and flexing muscle.
I walk these streets. My streets.
Mind judders and leaps, thoughts running mad, running free, playing at their own games in senseless and meaningful patterns. Image/ideas clash and meld with a manic pace, surfacing as fastly fading subliminals within the tight confines of the phosphor/calcium shell that encloses them. Against closed eyelids, light and form waltz together to tell tales that the wet gray matter behind them can express in no other way.
My smile widens.
Children with dead black eyes and ragged clothes come running/loping from behind. Their small nostrils flare and twitch, scenting the night for prey. They circle warily, testing and tasting my scent for pheromones and telltales. Bright pink tongues loll through bladed silver teeth. They eye me nervously, searching for fear, for anxiety for weakness. Feet, and sometimes hands, continue to fall soundlessly, no cessation in motion or purpose as this dance plays out. One of the children, quick and hard, obviously the pack leader, darts forward, makes eye contact. For a moment we are one, sharing information in the ancient language of predator/prey.
The child decides it does not like what it learns.
With a cry it calls to its pack/playmates. They circle me once, twice carefully avoiding looking directly at me, showing respect and submission to the dominant predator. One of them, a girl, smoothly drops to all fours and pulls up its colourless rags to display its rump, raising a soft behind to my inspection without ever breaking stride. Her black eyes peer coyly through long lashes, emulating a ritual it is too young to have ever known, but which has been imprinted through years of lost ritual onto the twining double helix of her genetic code. This one is in heat, the musky scent of her sex hanging thickly, sweetly in the air. A few of the other children eye her darkly, including the one who had challenged me, but none interfere. The children do not live long, their internal energies burning bright and quick, and the drive to mate is paired with an even stronger drive to improve their stock, extend their seed. Glands set within her vulva release intoxicating hormones, specialized and refined through generations of breeding to entice and excite. The other children begin to move more quickly, more erratically, driven to frenzy by the chemical miasma thickening in the night air. On her second pass, I casually place a glancing blow on her thin, bared hip. She yelps, more in shock and rejection then in any real pain. I get one last glance of longing and desire through those long lashes, and then they are all off, silent as shadows, moving on to easier prey and less deadly games.
I move deeper into the city. My city.