Page 43 of Clouded by Envy

Closing his eyes, Brenik swiftly twisted the bird’s fragile neck to the right, and a light crack echoed through the cabin. Brenik opened his eyes and looked down at the lost life—he hated feeling like a predator.

Brenik pulled open the kitchen drawer and drew out a knife. Lowering the blade to the sparrow’s stomach, he cut a small line and watched blood bloom to the surface. Then he brought the fragile body to his lips and drank, the taste of metal filling his mouth. A satisfaction instantly hit him—it worked. Not that he wanted to kill baby birds forever, but if that was what he had to do, then he would do it.

Resting the dead sparrow on the counter, Brenik went into his room and pressed the last drop of blood to the portrait. The canvas absorbed it, but he didn’t feel anything.

Something felt off, but he ignored the feeling and picked up the bird to go bury it outside. After he finished covering the small creature with dirt, he felt it. The urge to get the heinous thing out of his stomach.

Brenik would not do it. He was going to hold it down because he had found a new way of fulfilling the task. The unsettling truth was that he hadn’t.

He dug the palm of his hand into the bark of the tree, firmly keeping his lips sealed. But it came back up in a thick black solid form like all the other times. Brenik squeezed the bark as hard as he could, staring down at his blackened failure.

Defeated, he yanked his hand away from the tree and gazed at the hairline scratches left behind on his palm. Brenik needed help, and he needed to talk to Bray.

When the day grew dark, Brenik headed back to the tree hole. A red truck and a blue car sat lifelessly in the cracked driveway—the house seemed to be fully moved into already.

A sadness enveloped him—it was as if Ruth had never been there at all. The porch was lit, and he could see freshly planted blue and white flowers in the front yard.

There were lights on in the house, and Brenik thought maybe he should have waited until an even later time. He quietly rounded the corner of the house and opened the gate—a small amount at a time to avoid any squeaking.

The back porch was lit, too, and he silently cursed to himself, but at least he was able to see well. There was a light on in Ruth’s old sewing room, and he couldn’t help peering in through a small gap in the curtains.

A young boy with dark hair was in the room, lying on his stomach in bed while reading a thick book.

Soundlessly, Brenik backed away from the scene inside the room and headed for the tree. He stayed as silent as possible and easily found his way up the trunk to the hole.

“Psst… Bray, it’s me,” he spoke softly. No response. She may already be asleep, but he couldn’t see inside. “Bray,” he said again.

When she didn’t answer, Brenik snaked his hand inside to wake his sister on her hammock. It was empty, so he moved his hand to his bed, feeling nothing except the cloth. She wasn’t there.

Well, where the hell is she?he thought. Brenik shrugged off his disappointment, because he couldn’t expect her to sit around all day long in a tree hole, waiting for him to return. But he was used to it—she had always been there when he came back.

He would try another day, or maybe he wouldn’t. Another idea came to him.

It had been a while since he had drunk human blood. The urge would be coming soon. He didn’t want to be near Rana when it happened, so he would have to hunt before that.

Climbing down the tree, Brenik hurried out of the backyard and closed the gate without making a single peep.

Quickening his pace down the street, he headed straight for the park. Brenik didn’t know what would happen once he finished off the homeless people in that area. Eventually, he would have to find some elsewhere.

Security was gone for the night, and there lay several people inside the park already sleeping—some were still up doing suspicious-looking activities.

When he had murdered the homeless man—whose real name he found out was Larry Thibodeaux—he thought the people there would be too scared to come back to the park. Lucky for Brenik, when Larry somehow came back to life, he left the park premises.

Maybe he didn’t actually murder them when he drank their blood, which made him feel a little better about killing them.

From what the news had said, the attackers were crazy with rage. He found it odd that they didn’t change into what he was and pine for blood instead.

Brushing off his thoughts, Brenik stalked toward a woman in her late forties with stringy russet hair. A stretchy band was tied around her arm as she slid a needle into a vein at her inner elbow.What a waste of a human. But he was there to end her suffering.

Brenik knelt beside her and purred in her ear, “Hey, Darlin’, how are you this evening?”

She looked up at him with a glare, but didn’t hide the needle that was still in her closed fist. “Screw off.”

Feisty. “Do you want to go somewhere?” Brenik felt his pulse quicken, not really wanting to do it, but he had to fight the remorse that would come later.

“I won’t go anywhere with you, pretty boy. Unless you want to pay me,” the woman said with an inkling of seduction, as she pulled her shoulders back to puff out her sunken chest and breasts.

“How about we go into the bushes, and I’ll pay you a hundred bucks?”

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