A Girl Has To Eat Part 4

Despair warred with fury. Her mind felt a lot clearer now, and she could see what had happened. This fucker had just been playing with its food. It had been toying with her for days.

Vanna felt her jaw clench, in a very literal sense, because the cheek and muscle that should have been protecting it was gone. The bone clattered oddly loudly to her intact ear.

It didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt.

“Fuck you,” she bit out. Vanna sat up. She got to her feet with what her hindbrain recognized was uncharacteristic agility. “Come and try me again.”

Andrea’s head cocked way too far to the left, and then she grinned with teeth that certainly did not belong to a telemarketer. They were dark with Vanna’s blood.

The sight turned her stomach and pissed her off.

‘I want something to hit it with.’

She looked around and saw nothing. The metal trash bin was certainly too heavy, unless she was going to try to push the monster into it. The only thing was her backpack. Vanna shrugged it off her shoulders and made eye contact with the thing.

“You have to be joking,” it cackled. It took two lunges forward and batted the bag out of her hand. She slapped it in return, landing a solid hit on Andrea’s shoulder that made the monster over balance before it took a froggish leap away and on top of the dumpster.

A spark of doubt flickered in her mind. That was a lot of force. More force than she’d thought she could hit with. There was that phenomenon of adrenaline giving massive strength, of course...

It looked at her for a moment, with calculation in yellow eyes. She thought it might be doubting itself.

Then its gaze narrowed again, hungry and unconcerned. “Little girl, I think I will eat you alive,” it crooned. “I thought you’d be dead already. I like this. This is interesting. I’ll remember you for weeks.”

Her heart jumped and her stomach twisted. She didn’t feel it now, but that had to be adrenaline. Vanna forced down the fear and kept looking at the thing. She didn’t answer it. She didn’t know what to say that it wouldn’t laugh at.

She didn’t see it move. But it was in the air, reaching out to cradle her face and ride her to the ground with momentum. Vanna put her arms up and swung at it.

There was another crack. It hit the ground with a roll and then leapt agilely up, never losing eye contact. “What’s this?” It lisped. It raised a hand to Andrea’s face. There was blood coming down from her lips.

It was too dark for Vanna to see the source. It could have been a scrape from the pavement, or maybe from a bitten tongue. Either way, she cringed.

‘Is Andrea still in there?’

“I like you less now,” it said in a flat, dangerous tone.

She didn’t blink. She didn’t let it out of her sight.

It spat Andrea’s blood at her. Vanna turned her head away on reflex, forgetting that half her face was gone. She tasted blood and her first instinct was to gag.

The monster laughed. The taste set in.

Vanna went very, very still.

It was a revelation, in the Old Testament sense. It was a message from a higher power. She had eaten good food, of course. She had tasted expensive wine at weddings and luxuriated in the richness of spices.

None of it had ever made her brain buzz and purr like that blood did.

Vanna licked her lips, looking for more. It was gone and she made a soft, disappointed sound.

And then she focused. She remembered. She looked steadily at the monster. There was more where that came from. There was a lot more.

It was still laughing. It said something to her, but she couldn’t possibly hear it over the roar in her ears and the delicious thought churning through her mind. Vanna looked up and around, confirming what she already knew. There were no cameras and no light pointing where they were. The monster had done that on purpose, probably scoped out the spot in the daylight.

Vanna smiled.

“What are you?” She asked, needing a name for this experience.

It snorted. “Why would that be your priority?” It circled her, moving liquid and dangerous. “You have better things to worry about, stupid.”

She watched it move through half-closed eyes, languid.

Vanna knew on an instinctive level that she was just as dangerous. More, even, because this one thought she was still prey. She smiled back at it.

It faltered. It was still stupid enough to get within her arm’s reach. Vanna moved faster than thought and smashed it against the cement once, twice, three times with all her eager newborn strength. Andrea’s head cracked like a dropped egg, all broken in at the back. The thing finally screamed, high pitched and desperate. It tried to slither away, but she had her knees on its hands.

She put a hand over its mouth. Lovingly, she stared down at the confused face as she adjusted her weight.

“Thank you, mother,” Vanna crooned.

Horrified comprehension registered in those yellow eyes. It bucked, but it couldn’t throw her off. She pressed down the hand on the mouth, trying to figure out what the bleeding wound was.

A scrape.

She kept one hand on the other monster’s mouth and nose as she reached around, feeling for gravel on the cement. She came up with a few stones. She hummed to herself as she put them on Andrea’s face and rubbed them in, deepening the wound.

There was a muffled howl of outrage and fear from underneath her. She ignored it and popped the stones in her mouth to suck on, feeling her eyes nearly close at the perfect, soul-filling taste. She needed more, she needed a lot more. The weaker monster tried again to kick her off. She frowned at it and used her knee to crush the ribs on the right side of Andrea’s body. It convulsed and blood bubbled out of her mouth.

Vanna rubbed her fingers in it and lapped it up, careful as she could be in this euphoria. She didn’t want to leave her saliva on a body. It would look bad.

The way that the other monster had bitten into her made her painfully curious about what that would taste like. She held herself back with iron willpower. The most important thing was to not get into trouble. She could let the circumstances explain a dead woman with Vanna’s flesh caught in her teeth and stomach. It would be much harder to explain if Vanna also had a little bit of human flesh as a treat.

When Andrea’s body had finally given in and her stomach was full, Vanna rolled off of it and contemplated where to go from here. Back to her hotel room to pretend nothing had happened?

She touched her face, remembering the disfigurement. She still didn’t feel the pain. But she couldn’t pretend to have been uninvolved.

‘Am I still pretty?’

Hmm. She retrieved her backpack. Her phone was still inside. She thought it over for a minute, and then shrugged. She called the detective.

It took 10 rings. Hamaki sounded groggy.

Vanna laid down on the cement, in case anyone looked over. “Hello?” She said. She was almost surprised by how small and helpless her voice sounded. It certainly sounded odd without the left half of her face. “I was attacked.”

“Who is- uh, Miss Vanna?” There was a sound of shuffling. “Where are you? Are you in danger now, and have you called the emergency line?”

She glanced at the corpse she had been leisurely draining. “I think I’m safe?” Vanna said. It came out as a question. “I’m confused. My face is gone.”

There was a pause and then a “Wait- your- your face? Where are you?”

“She hit my head on the ground and she ate my face,” Vanna reported, aiming for both truthful and disoriented. “I’m in the hotel. By the hotel.” She squinted. “I can see the sign.”

Vanna listened with vague interest as the detective prodded her for more information. She heard a car door slam around the time that she recalled the town she’d stopped in. She closed her eyes to relax and opened them to a paramedic.

“Hello,” she said, wondering how he would taste.

It was purely academic, of course. She was satiated. She laid there, disinterested in moving while the man checked her pulse and injury. She let him and his partner load her onto a stretcher.

Calmly, she regarded the flashing red and blue lights in the parking lot. Then she closed her eyes.

She could eat more later.