Page 57 of Starve
Blood.
There’s nothing else it can be, some rational part of me thinks. Only blood would look like this, the red color washed out in the darkness from the trees and the pale white lights of both my light and the moon shining down from above. Thankfully, the clouds from earlier have disappeared, because without the moon, I’d be a lot more panicked than I am. Even though the branches block out the majority, letting only eerie bars shine down on the underbrush to strike across it like bars, it’s better than nothing.
But that’s undoubtedly blood. The splashes get bigger, and closer together. When my light starts to shake, it takes a few seconds for me to realize that it’s because my hand is shaking, not the light malfunctioning.
“You can do this,” I breathe, though Cairo’s warning replays over and over in my head. He won’t hurt me…I hope. God, I hope my faith in him isn’t misplaced, and that I’m not following something else entirely.
The scream comes again, cutting through my thoughts, and it’s close enough that I jerk my flashlight up to scan the trees around me. “Cairo…?” What I wanted to be a loud call throughthe trees comes out as a whisper from my lips. But I don’t stop moving; I continue to follow the blood trail that’s now forming drag marks in the crushed grass. Even though my body is begging me to stop, to turn, torun,I tell myself that I’d know if what I was hearing is human.
So, it has to be an animal.
It has to be.
Gurgling noises find my ears, and I stop, too afraid to do anything but stare down at an illuminated patch of dirt. I can hear the sounds so close to me I know if I look too far ahead, I’ll see whatever is making them.
Maybe it’s not Cairo,I tell myself.Maybe it’s something else. Someone else.While I wanted to find him, now I’m not so sure. Not now that the sounds are much less animalistic and so much more human.
I hear a soft, gasped plea, though it’s broken off with asnapand one last breathy sound before the woods grow silent for only a moment. Then I hear the undeniable tearing and ripping of flesh; it takes everything in me to drag my gaze up from the dirt to look at the space between the trees in front of me.
Cairo is on his knees over a man’s body, who I belatedly recognize as Whippoorwill Gap’s least favorite, most inappropriate drunk. He’s not looking at the body, however. Cairo is staring at me with a snarl on his lips, and there’s nothing human in the way his eyes reflect the glare from my flashlight.
He bares his teeth in a bloody snarl, as gore drips from his mouth, and he leans forward almost territorially across the body below him.
“You shouldn’t have come here, little bird,”he grates out, voice slurred from his fully extended fangs and what’s in his mouth.
“Cairo…” my voice trails off, and my hand tightens on the flashlight as I take a step back, only to stupidly trip and fall onmy ass on the dirt with a soft, pained gasp. “I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to—” When he sits up, I see his chest is bloody in the glow of my light, and once again he bares his sharp teeth. I’ve never seen him look less human.
Less safe.
“You shouldneverhave come here,” he repeats as he leans down to the body of the man under him and tears into his chest.
And then, as I watch, Cairo eats.
Chapter 23
My fingers go numb,causing the flashlight to hit the ground, and I scrabble back until I hit a tree behind me with a soft, breathy sound. The air escapes my lungs entirely, and I can’t seem to draw more in as I watch him use his hands to tear into the man like a rotisserie chicken. Flesh parts like tissue paper under his sharp claws, and blood spurts upward, soaking Cairo’s face and chest.
For a moment, when Cairo glances up at me before burying his face in his meal, I see the flash of his teeth and a glare in his eyes.
It wouldn’t be so bad if I couldn’t see the old drunk’s face. But it jerks with every movement, his eyes sightless and staring up at nothing. His expression is fixed in a scream of fear, and I remind myself of all the times he stopped me in town, wanting money with alcohol on his breath and eyes that always wandered inappropriately.
No one will miss him.
There’d also been allegations, and reasons he never got hired, even at the local diner. I remember when he was in jail for three months, and everyone in Whippoorwill Gap was not sosilently glad about it, so they could walk around at night without being accosted by him.
No one will miss him.
That’s what I have to tell myself as I listen to his body get torn into smaller pieces for Cairo to eat. I make the mistake of looking at his face, of focusing on the way he tears away at the flesh over the man’s ribs. One hand holds the body in place, like a dog’s paw, and his mouth tears backward to rip away mouthfuls of his food.It’s easier when I don’t look at the dead man’s face not to run away, but only a little.
“Oh, fuck,” I whisper as I stand and take a step away from the tree behind me. Cairo growls low in his throat, territorial and soft, and his eyes roll up to find mine. “N-no, I’m not…” I don’t know what to say, but I’m certainly not trying to fight him for his meal.
“I told you to stay home,” he reminds me again in a guttural tone with his mouth full of blood. “I told you that you wouldn’t like what you’d find out here.”
His claws sink deeper when I take another step forward, and he growls again, pulling the corpse toward him possessively.
“Why?” I ask softly as I waver in place. “I thought you weren’t like the others.”
At that, he lets out a low, laughing growl. “I’m just like all of them deep down. I’m amonster,Fern. So many times I’ve tried to tell you to stay away. And I’ve tried to keep my distance from you. So go on then.”
