Someone Else's Hope
***Begin Adult Content: Violence***


Marcus Dixon wanted to die. Anything to keep him from watching helplessly as that monster gutted his little boy.

But she was smart, hurting him and his wife Jackie just enough to make them suffer, but not enough to kill them. The vicious blonde wanted them to see her torture and murder their little Jeremy.

What kind of person did these sorts of things?

Samantha still walked with a limp, which almost assuredly hurt the intimidation factor of pacing around her helpless pray. Fortunately, the rest of her look – the sweaty and matted hair, the dark bloodshot eyes, the torn clothing, the dried blood caked on her cheeks and forehead – made up for the limp.

Course, it didn’t hurt the blood on her flesh was that of Jeremy’s parents.

“It’s a shame, really,” the Slayer said to no one in particular. “The little bastard had to pass out so soon. Kinda reminds you how fragile these things are.”

Jeremy was still breathing; she could hear it as she passed him. And the longer he stayed that way, the more Samantha enjoyed this little exercise. She wanted to teach the Dixons a lesson in suffering. Marcus had asked her for spare change when she passed them in a dark alley, their clothes reeking of trash and their spirits reeking of humanity even in the face of homelessness.

So what if the family was homeless and Jackie lost her left breast to cancer? Everything they’d endured to this point paled in comparison to what the Slayer was doing to their son. They wouldn’t admit it, but Samantha could tell. Every time she tore into the boy’s flesh, every time she licked his blood off her fingers, she saw it in their eyes.

A flash of sadness. A twinkle in the dark. That emptiness she’d felt since that bitch cop took Cory away … it was now her personal mission to make everyone feel the same way.

Okay, so her mission was actually to exact revenge on Grace, but considering how the first phase of that plan failed so miserably – as evidenced by the horrible limp – the Slayer was content to bide her time, mend her wounds and set things right in the process.

And few things were more right to Samantha than taking away someone else’s hope.

“Why,” Jackie sputtered, her lips shaking as she fought back tears. “Why do this? Why not just … kill us?”

Samantha refused to look Jeremy’s parents in the eye. “Because,” she began in a dark tone, speaking in an almost-whisper, “where’s the fun in that? There’s no suffering in death. Death is a free ticket out of this hellhole … the idea is to keep you here as long as possible and twist you into something a little less than human.”

“But … why?!”

Marcus sighed, wincing at the pain shooting through his jaw. Samantha had removed five of his teeth an hour earlier – with her bare hands. The throbbing made speaking nearly impossible, but in spite of himself, the 34-year-old former Army Ranger spoke.

“You lost someone,” he offered in a strained voice. “If I had to guess, a child.”

The Slayer stopped, her back to the parents. She stood motionless for what seemed like forever, letting her dirty blonde locks fall over her eyes. Her fists tightened, to the point her nails punctured skin. Blood trickled down Samantha’s fingers and fell to the floor, mixing with the vitae of her underage victim.

That undead whore would pay. And so would the fucking cop who threw her behind bars to begin with. If Samantha remembered correctly, that cop had children of her own. What fun it would be to dismember them in front of Starnes … consequences be damned. Throw Samantha in jail, give her the chair – it didn’t matter anymore.

Without Cory, none of it mattered. All Samantha cared about now was revenge and making others suffer the way she had.

“Someone took away the most important thing in your life, and this is your grief. You lash out, at those who have what you lost.”

Samantha growled, grabbing a tuft of Jeremy’s hair and ripping it out of his scalp. The Slayer stormed at Marcus, shoving the bloody locks down his throat, clasping her hand over his mouth – to shut him up and make him choke.

“What are you, a fucking shrink?!” she spat, removing her hand and watching Marcus choke and hack and cough until he spilled the contents of his stomach – as well as Jeremy’s torn hair – onto the cold floor below.

Samantha’s glare turned to Jackie, a sneer forming on her face as she saw the mother shaking. The Slayer trailed a finger along Jackie’s jawline, that sneer turning into a disturbing chuckle.

“You’re the one I’m really interested in,” Samantha whispered. “Mothers always feel a special bond with their kids. They should, since the little fuckers grow inside you for nine months. Making you fat, making you sick, making you weak and tired and sticking you in bed screaming at your husband and making you want weird-ass shit like banana-and-sour-cream pickle sandwiches.

“It’s disgusting. All that shit for a small, pathetic excuse for a human. I swear, these things should be in zoos.”

Jackie wanted so badly to speak up, to look this monster right in the eye and give her hell for the way she would cavalierly talk about a child like that. One would think a mother would view children differently, even if her own spawn had been snatched away from her.

Yet fear prevailed. Jackie saw the things Samantha was doing to her son and her husband, and the fear of what was to come preventing the words from forming in her throat.

Samantha chuckled, glancing over her shoulder at the young boy. He was still bleeding, which meant he was still alive. Splendid … as much as the Slayer wanted to kill the boy, tear him apart limb by limb, she enjoyed the fact that he was still breathing. Sure, he was unconscious, but this wasn’t so much about his suffering as it was about that of his parents.

And his parents, dutiful as they were, were suffering.

“It must kill you,” Samantha sneered at Jackie, grabbing a tuft of the woman’s brown locks and tugging violently. “Living with just one tit. Knowing that no matter how many times your husband tells you otherwise, he just doesn’t find you that attractive anymore. Hell, what if he were sleeping around on you?

“You know, just roaming the alleys, finding whatever homeless skank with two melons willing to part her thighs and give him a taste. Say he knocked her up, gave her a child while you’re in some shopping cart trying to raise yours … and all because some disease ate at your breast and made you half a woman.

“Might as well yank out your uterus while you’re at it.”

Which Samantha would’ve actually done, if she had the necessary tools. She supposed she might be able to pull it off with her bare hands, but that would be difficult and messy at best. Besides, doing so would likely kill Jackie, and the Slayer didn’t want the parents dying until after their boy.

Long after their boy.

A soft groan told Samantha the young boy was regaining consciousness, and the Slayer turned around to see Jeremy blinking, shaking his head in an obvious attempt to shake the cobwebs out of his head. Blood trickled down his forehead from where Samantha had torn his hair out, and Jeremy couldn’t help but sniffle at the pain once he fully came to.

“Finally,” the Slayer barked, marching toward the boy and grabbing his wrists, her fingernails puncturing his skin. “Was beginning to think your useless ass would never wake up.”

Samantha slapped Jeremy across the face, laughing to herself as she watched the small body swaying with the restraints. She enjoyed this, but the parents were starting to bore her. In fact, Samantha felt the sudden urge to get out, to roam amongst the city and possibly find her next victim.

Probably some little co-ed, some drunken sorority skank who nobody would miss the next morning. Some pretty girl whose death would devastate her parents back home in Bumfuck Nowhere, Iowa, parents who thought their daughter was still a good Christian virgin.

As if those sorts of things still existed.

“I’m done for now,” Samantha announced to no one in particular. “Kinda bored … you can do whatever you want with them, but if I come back and anyone’s dead, I will dust your ass on the spot.”

Emerging from the shadows, a man with ridged brows and a black tattoo across his forehead grinned, leaning in toward Jackie. “Can I at least feed?” Epimetheus asked, licking his lips. “This one looks tasty – even with the deflated tire.”

Samantha glared and popped Epimetheus upside his head. “Long as she’s still alive when I get back, I don’t care what you do. Feed off her, rape her, play checkers with her … I don’t care.

“Just don’t kill her.”

Epimetheus nodded. “And your son?”

Samantha’s eyes flashed for a moment, a flicker of humanity trying to bust through. But the darkness soon returned, as did the Slayer’s bemused smirk. She grabbed Marcus’ crotch and twisted hard, cackling to herself when she heard the crack behind his pathetic scream.

“You will have him in time. Just tell your Elders to be patient – otherwise, they’ll have to answer to me. Which I can guarantee they won’t like …”



***End Adult Content: Violence***


[NPC Epimetheus was written by Jeff.]