Wrath White - Succulent Prey

Joey tasted nickel and copper. Blood.

His mouth was fil ed with his own blood lying thick on his tongue. He tried to spit it out but the duct tape strapped across his face made it impossible. He had no choice but to swal ow it, gagging as a wad of blood and phlegm slid down his throat in a warm lump. Joey tried hard to keep from crying. He'd been crying for hours and it had done him no good. The fat kid seemed to enjoy his tears.

Why me? Why is he doing this?

It was a pointless question with no answer that would have made a bit of difference. He was suffering and he would continue to suffer and there was nothing he could do about it.

At first he had been confident that his parents would rescue him and punish the fat kid. He was sure that as soon as they realized he hadn't made it home from school they'd be kicking down every door on the block looking for him. But that had been many hours ago and no one had come for him. Now he was afraid that no one would ever find him; that he would die down there in the dank basement.

The rusted fiberglass-on-steel tub in which Joey lay was rapidly fil ing with blood. Joey splashed about in a river of red, slipping farther down into the tub. He'd heard that you could drown in three inches of bathwater and wondered how many inches of blood were already in the tub. He knew he was bleeding to death. His flesh had been split open like overripe fruit and was leaking in a steady sluggish drip down into the large bathtub.

Joey didn't know how many times he'd been stabbed and cut. Slashes crosshatched his thighs and buttocks, many of them going clean through to the bone, yawning wide like toothless smiles fil ed with bleeding pink gums. He could see the red muscle fibers and stringy sal ow fat boiling up out of one particularly deep wound in his upper thigh. Luckily his genitals had been spared the fat kid's attentions. His anus, unfortunately, had not. He'd cut him there too and then he'd done worse. Joey tried his best not to think about that pain.

Several times now the fat kid had come, dipped a glass into the tub, fil ed it with Joey's blood, and brought the glass to his blubbery lips to drink. His squinty little eyes would flutter in absolute ecstasy as he gulped down the red liquid, making sickening smacking noises. Even through the pain Joey found amusement in knowing that he had pissed himself in the same tub from which the fat kid was drinking.

Time stal ed as Joey slipped into and out of consciousness. The basement was a perpetual night, an endless nightmare from which he could not awaken. The windows along the tops of the basement wal s were spray-painted black. Faint glimmers of light leaked between the cracks in the frames and cast eerie shadows on the damp wal s. The only genuine il umi nation came from the fluorescent light at the bottom of the basement steps and that was only turned on when the fat kid came down to play.

Joey was beginning to fear that light. In the dark he was alone. Safe. Whenever the light came on the pain started al over again.

Joey's throat was raw and hoarse from the agonized shrieks that had torn their way up from his bel y and out into the moist, stagnant basement air. Even after the fat kid covered Joey's mouth with duct tape he had continued to scream at every thrust and slash of the knife, scalpel, sharp steel pins, and needles. Not to cal for help, but to drown out the pain with noise.

Joey lost track of how many times the fat kid came down to torture him or drink from his wounds. The image of the teenager's chubby cheeks splashed with

Joey's blood, his eyes glazed and sparkling with hunger and lust, made chil s dance along Joey's skin. He wondered if the kid was a vampire.

Vampires were supposed to be thin and beautiful and this kid was al lumpy and misshapen with pimples exploding al over his acne-scarred face, but he had drank an enormous amount of blood.

Only a vampire could have drank that much blood without getting sick. But if that kid was immortal then he was fucked because that meant he'd have to look like that forever.

Maybe he just thinks he's a vampire?

Joey wondered. Or maybe he is a vampire but just a different kind than the ones in the movies. An uglier kind.

The basement door creaked open again and sunlight spil ed down the stairs, il uminating the cobwebs and rat droppings and chasing away the cockroaches that had come to lap at the blood splattered around the outside of the tub. A few tepid rays of sunshine struck metal and cast their gleam farther into the room. Joey's eyes fol owed the sun rays back to their reflection in the stainless surgical steel and he shuddered.

Several cruel-looking implements were laid out on a metal table a few feet from where Joey lay bleeding. Razor-sharp scalpels, knives, and needles, arranged the way surgeons did on TV-in order of practical use. They were al stained with Joey's blood.

The basement door closed again and the lone fluorescent light at the top of the basement steps flashed on. The bulb was broken and flickered continuously, casting eerie shadows around the room.

Joey cringed as the fat kid came back down the stairs, backlit by the strobelighting fluorescent bulb. He was just one great malformed shadow.

The fat kid was naked. His pale flesh was stained with Joey's blood, including his short, fireplug-shaped cock, erect and straining beneath the weight of his low-hanging gut. Joey began to whimper as the kid's gore-streaked smile came swooping down at him and he felt those clammy hands and blubbery lips, that slimy wormlike tongue, and blunt little teeth worry at him, probing and digging into his wounds, ripping them wider. He began to scream against the duct tape sealed tight to his lips as he was turned facedown in the tub and he felt the pain lance through him again in rhythmic thrusts, drawing more blood.

Joseph Miles woke up with his heart thundering in his chest, his lungs sucking in air and forcing it back out in rapid bursts. His old scars screamed as if they'd just been made. His eyes slid back and forth, sweeping the room, looking for the fat kid. He reached out and stroked the large powerful forms of Hades and Beelzebub, his guardians, nestled beside him in the bed, one on each side. The rock-hard muscles coiled beneath their fur reassured him. They would've torn that fat kid to pieces.

Anyway, he was locked up now. He'd never hurt Joey again. Stil, Joey was grateful for his two guardians.

He squinted against the harsh invasive glare of the morning sun lancing through the cracks in his vertical blinds and tried to wil the clouds to shield him from it. Hades and Beelzebub did not appear to mind the sunlight nearly as much as he did. Joey found that surprising. Weren't monsters supposed to fear the light?

That's what the books al said. But the fat kid had snatched him off his bike in broad daylight and Hades and

Beelzebub loved the sun. They lay snoring steadily in the warm morning light.

Their heavy rumbling breaths vibrated through the mattress like a revving engine. Joey could stil smel the meaty steel-and-copper scent of flesh and blood in each exhalation. He cringed, remembering their last meal.

Joey stared at the two massive beasts, admiring their fearsome jaws with the savage, lethal-looking canines. Their mouths could easily have crushed the largest bones in his body. Their necks were as thick as his waist and their legs and shoulders were broad and muscular.

The combined weight of the two monsters was nearly three hundred pounds, three times his own weight, and with them lying on the blanket he was trapped beneath it, unable to move.

Beelzebub was the first to notice that the young boy had awakened. He leapt up and ran to the head of the bed where he began happily licking Joey's face.