Helen

Of course, clouds shrouded the sun and it was cold and damp and here I was, half-naked, waiting on a creep.  No, I was not nude.  Stripping down to my underwear was good enough for the likes of him. “Condemned!” the building sign proclaimed.  “Do not play here.”  Maybe a hundred years ago, before time gutted it, this building had been a school.  It was difficult to imagine how or why, hidden as it was in the middle of a fairly dense patch of woods just over a mile wide and long.  I just can’t see why anyone would build a school so far from town.  But what I really didn’t understand is why the building had been condemned but not torn down. 

Naturally, generations of kids played here because it was so unsafe though only during the summer.  On this fall day, the bleak sky and almost muddy ground discouraged children.  Well, that and the fact that this was about a mile from the middle school in the direction of nothing.

I kept my clothes in my backpack and had carefully arranged a fluffy towel so that it completely covered the backpack.  Three twenty-four ounce bottles of water were leaning against the backpack and I was sipping from a fourth.

The ring had swallowed my senses along with all but my most fundamental power.  So I—the great hunteress and super-sense gal—heard nothing from the tenderfoot until a twig snapped loudly to the side.  I spun towards the noise.  Eric the Creep, camera in tow, skulked from behind a massive oak, his eyes searching the woods suspiciously.  He stopped maybe thirty feet away.

“Hey,” I said.

“You didn’t keep your promise,” he said.

I shrugged.  “It’s cold.  But I do keep my promises.”

And with that, I stripped completely.  If his eyes had opened any wider they would have split his head.  Cobalt eyes, I noticed, and very bloodshot.  Probably from spending so much time downloading porn on the Internet.  The girls at Westmoreland had voted Eric the Creep most likely to molest children. 

I sighed and pirouetted.  “There.  Satisfied?”

He snapped pictures furiously.  If the little creep had just stopped and run away, what would I have done?   Well, actually, even without superhuman powers I know exactly what I would have done.

“I didn’t say you could take pictures,” I said.

“You told me to bring my camera!”

“And get with the digital age!”

“Film is better if you know what you’re doing.”

“Come here,” I said.  “I’ve kept my part of the bargain.”

I bent over, set my water bottle aside, and made a show of rummaging through my back pack.  Since I bent over to do so, I pretty much seduced him into coming nearer.  And he did.  I drew two things out of my backpack, one being another towel.  The other object I kept bundled in the new towel and I gently placed both aside.  After again covering my backpack in its towels, I grabbed a full bottle of water, stood upright, and faced him.

He had stopped ten feet away.  His hands hung limp at his side, shaking.  Those bulging, bloodshot eyes of his, which I always thought so leering, now held a different look altogether.  I’d seen it before.  It was reverence.  Not what I’d expected.  Some men hold female beauty in ridiculously high regard.  Bodies not for their touching, but to be viewed, admired, worshiped.  I was surprised that the Creep had such sensitivity but perhaps it was just hopelessness.

“Here,” I said, holding out a water bottle.  He hesitated.  “It’s all right.  It’s not piss or anything.  It’s just plain old bottled water.  Remember, I keep my promises.”  I kept my voice soothing and low but his hesitation was no longer suspicion.  Reverence had superseded suspicion.  “Can I please take some more pictures of you?” His voice was so plaintive.

“Sure,” I said, tossing the water bottle down next to the others.  I posed for him.  At first, I did so with reservations but gradually I became more model-like and he became less shy.  He didn’t start hollering out directions or anything like that.  But he came closer and my smile became friendlier.  “You know, I’m starting to suspect that you’re really not that bad a guy,” I said.

“I’m not,” he said.  He lowered the camera, horribly wounded.  “I don’t know why people say I am.  I just like girls.”

 “Just a minute,” I said, almost sighing, “I have just the thing.”

I lifted the towel I’d pulled out of my backpack and partially concealed my body behind it.  This thrilled him.  It took a great deal of coordination to keep the towel bundled just enough so I could conceal what I had beneath. He kept snapping away until inevitably he ran out of film.

He mumbled apologies.  “Please, it will just take a second.”

“Take your time,” I said, stepping closer to him.

His fingers fumbled for his camera case and his face displayed a physical pain as he rummaged for new film.  I stepped closer to him and his fingers scrambled even more.

“Sorry Eric,” I said.  “I really did misjudge you.  That’s bad for both of us.”  It was my tone.  I’m normally very good with the tone but not this time.  Or maybe it was the fact that my powers were suspended.  But he skipped right past suspicion and landed deep into fear.

And that was before I lifted the 9 mm. 

The bullet ripped through his belly and his camera went flying.  He collapsed backward, exhaling loudly, but not screaming.  I don’t remember deciding to shoot him.  It just sort of happened. 

 “Shit,” I said. 

He landed hard, of course, and let out a slow, mournful wail.  How unlike me!  I always go for the killer blow.  Stupid. 

“Why?” he asked.

And I suppose I owed him the answer.  “It’s the ring, you see.  I must get this ring off.  I will consume your life force and the ring will pop off.  It’s what I do, you know.  I’m the Huntress.”

I stood over him and leveled the gun at his head.  Tears formed in his eyes.  “Don’t destroy the film,” he said.  “Please, save my film.”

“I promise,” I said.  “And I always keep my promise.”

He shut his eyes. 

I blew his brains out.

It took a little more than his basic life force to interrupt the ring’s spell; but fortunately a lot less than his full spirit—his ghost if you will.  The spell on the ring only paused for a few seconds but I slipped it off before the spell returned.  The ring landed on the ground and I experienced the sudden sensory overload that I always do after I suffer the odd bout of sensory deprivation.  I listened to worms burrowing, the wind tickling leaves fifty feet away; a Cessna passed overhead and I read the number on its fuselage… You get the idea.  This phase passed in a few minutes and everything became white noise again.  I rose, my legs as shaky as Eric’s hands had been.  I tossed the gun on the ground next to him.

I grabbed water bottles and poured them over myself, washing away any blood that might have splattered my way then I toweled myself but didn’t dress yet. 

“Why?” was the question I always hear when I Feed.  My favorite answer is “you die so that thousand of others might live.”  Usually I don’t answer at all.  Why had I bothered explaining myself to this kid?  You never talk to your victim.  That’s killer rule one.  But talking to my victim was what I did best.  Sexual intimacy was why Darkthanes could Feed so easily. 

I collected all the film he carried with him and tossed it in my backpack along with the power suppression ring.  My powers had been restored and my senses were functioning perfectly but I was on Urban Huntress mode—my powers adapt to the surroundings as surely as they draw demons.  Finding a trail in these woods required a little honest skill but the kid was a tenderfoot and I could track a fish in brackish water, to rephrase Princess Bride.  I found and followed his trail.  It was easy to see where he’d originally hidden and (I assumed correctly) taken pictures of me with a telephoto lens.  Then he’d moved a few feet away and stopped at a tree.  That’s where I found the other roll of film.  I snatched it from the root it was resting against, backtracked, and destroyed my footprints. 

“Save my film,” he said.  What a stupid thing to say.

No one came, which was a blessing, since I might have to kill again.  And I’d enough of killing.  I needed a real bath.  It was very cold here…

 I should have been moving through State then and there but I knew it wasn’t to be.  Eric the Creep was no creep.  He was just Eric the Geek, an ordinary kid who was a lot nicer than I’d ever seen.  And that meant I was fucked.

Perspective child molester!  Who said that?  It must have been that stupid bitch Anna.  Yes, it was probably her, so absolute in her judgments and dismissive of kids who don’t measure up to her impossible standards…

Not like me at all…

Eric the Creep!  Shit.

Who lived near here?

Carson.  Yes, Carson.  His family lived only half-a-mile away.  He was Jack’s tutor from time to time (Jack’s hands were too busy for studying when I tutored him).  Carson was a great kid who’d be valedictorian of the senior class.  I remembered he was a latchkey kid.  Both his parents worked hard, saving for his future.  He wanted to be a doctor!  A good kid from a good family.

Poor Carson.  Poor Carson’s family.

He was about to commit suicide.  I snatched up the 9mm next to Eric and donned my clothes.