She

This one's a little darker. Hope you enjoy.

Thanks to Warrior_Wolf for the edits.

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Gasp.

Shriek.

Vermilion rivulets.

Spasm, twitch.

Still.

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Rending flesh makes a distinctive sound. It's hard to describe. Like ripping apart your roast chicken. But wetter. The grind of straining cartilage, the snap of bone. The ragged, frantic tear of stretched muscle and flesh. The liquid spatter of blood and fluids. It's a sound you can only truly begin to describe once you've experienced it. Unfortunately, most who do are dead soon afterward. Brad did; and he was.

Brad had enjoyed more drinks than he should have. He'd had a bloody great night with the lads, but knew that he was going to regret it in the morning. He staggered from the door of the bar, the sound of laughter and the clink of glass fading as it closed behind him. The night was quiet and still in contrast. He fumbled in his pocket for his keys as he made his way unsteadily towards his car. He found them, dropped them and swore. He found them again after several minutes on his hands and knees groping drunkenly amongst the litter on the edge of the sidewalk. He struggled to his feet. And found religion.

Dust motes danced on the edge of the muddy pool of light cast by an aging streetlamp. A figure coalesced suddenly in the fringe between light and dark, and from the gloom strands of black hair floated toward the light. She stepped forward as if blown lightly by the wind. Fluid grace. Sensuous curves. Desire incarnate.

She was a study in sepia; her figure, hair, clothes, boots rendered in subtle, deep shades of grey. Only her eyes glinted light within the pools of shadow cast on her face from the dim lamp above. She leaned casually against the post, yet even her slouch expressed an invitation. Ecstasy promised; death assured.

She was conscious the illusion was good, but not perfect. She was getting better at portraying this gender of the human form, yet there were subtle discrepancies. A careful observer -- and Brad, it must be said, was not -- may have noted that her clothing fit rather too perfectly almost as if it were part of her; that a faint corona of dust particles seemed to weave in and out of the mane of hair which drifted too much for such a still night; that her skin was smooth and cool, unmarred by any blemish: no scars from childhood misadventures, no moles, no creases, no lines marking the passage of time and experience. And her eyes, which lacked any humanity at all.

But then, She wasn't human. Or more precisely, It wasn't human. It had been mimicking this form for a while now and had almost begun to think of itself in terms of the gender of the species it modelled. She. Yet the similarity was solely visual. A brave man may have ventured that there were also predatory traits in common. He would have regretted making the comparison.

Brad's thoughts were solely sexual as he followed the swaying hips of his Divine Vision into the dark alley beside the bar. If he had any thought for his safety, it was that She couldn't have been armed. It would have been impossible to conceal any sort of weapon underneath such tightly fitting clothes. She turned the corner and stopped, out of sight of the street. She crooked a finger at him and he stumbled toward her as he unbuckled his jeans.

He found himself on his back on the cracked, dirty concrete. Above him, twin orbs of glittering starlight within a curtain of jet black hair. A faint smell. Decay, rot. But then this was the alley next to the bar. He felt her hand grasp his rigid shaft and he groaned. His jeans were around his thighs exposing his groin for the action to come. His cock was hard and throbbing. He couldn't remember her stripping, yet she was now magnificently naked as She crouched over him. Her full, firm breasts and dark nipples proud and obvious, even in the dim light. He saw She was hairless between her legs and he shivered with delight as she lowered herself slowly and soundlessly onto him.

He was faintly surprised through the haze of alcohol flooding his system. He did not feel the moist warmth he expected. Oh, the sensation was incredible, but it was the cool silk of liquid mercury rather than the usual soft, hot texture of female flesh. But his need was raging within him and there was no denying the exquisite pleasure his aching cock was experiencing as she moved slowly up and down him. Her breasts bounced as she rode him; mesmerising, tantalising, encouraging.

He knew he would cum shortly. White hot heat gathered within him and he reached the point beyond which male ejaculation is both imminently anticipated and inevitable. He thrust his hips up hard against her pelvis to sink himself deeply within her. She raked her fingernails across his chest and he felt a moment of ecstatic agony as it combined with the intensity of his sexual pleasure. She moved her hands around his shoulders, stroking, scratching, and then traced the line of his jaw sharply with her finger. He would explode within her within seconds. And then She broke his neck.

Almost. She had carefully severed a select portion of the spinal cord, immobilising his limbs. Brad was so consumed by the waves of pleasure about to erupt within him that it took him a moment to figure out that something was wrong. He was unable to move. The blood coarsing through him redirected itself in the absence of peripheral movement and further engorged his already swollen member. He could feel the skin of his shaft and the knob of his head swell and stretch to the point of pain. His orgasm would be intense, phenomenal; unlike he had ever experienced before and he screamed with triumph as his thick, white semen erupted from him, bursting into her like a torrent. She smiled in satisfaction as she tore out his eye.

He screamed again and She shuddered as she absorbed the combined effects of his pleasure and searing agony. Small barbs now held him within her and tore at his cock as She continued to ride him through his final orgasm. Blood mixed with semen. She suddenly stood and he shrieked as the sudden movement tore strips of skin and flesh from his once-proud member.

Pleasure dissipated, but the pain remained as he watched her from his remaining eye, gore running in rivulets from her groin and down her legs to drip onto the ground around her. His gore. Horror added to fear as he managed to look down at the wreckage of his penis. Lacerated flesh, blood pumping, chunks of him spattered across his hips and stomach. He'd lost control of his bowels and he could smell his own shit. His fear bordered on insanity as the last vestiges of pleasure completely fled from him.

She crouched again over him, licking the blood from his ruined socket. She pulled at the ruins of his orb with her teeth to make the blood well, bright and red. He screamed again, pain and primal fear from the depths of his being. She held a finger in front of his eye and he watched as it shifted form, narrowing and extending into a claw. His scream this time was cut short as She tore out his vocal chords.

She knew now that his remaining vital capacity was limited. Calmly She set about extracting as much pain and horror as possible from him. She cut out his tongue. Shaved strips of flesh slowly from his face and held them up for him to see. Tears welled from the remaining eye and She used the salt water to enhance the agony from his ruined flesh. She cut off the nipples from his heaving chest. She sliced open his balls from their sac and ate them in front of him. She sliced open his gut and unwound his bowel, carefully placing the still functioning organs where he could see them.

He longed for death. She had skilfully kept him on the edge of consciousness. On the brink of agony beyond which the brain forces itself into dark oblivion; a deliberate denial of experience while it awaits the final outcome of stress and shock and an opportunity for recovery. There would be no recovery from this though. Perhaps She read this in his eye. Perhaps for a moment an expression of compassion flitted across her face. She reached back and punched a clawed hand into his gut, burying it up to the elbow as She probed underneath his rib cage to clutch his heart. She ripped it from him and held it up for him to see. As his vision faded, he saw it beat once, twice. Then ribbons of blood oozed from between her fingers and cascaded down her arm as She squeezed it to a pulp, flecks of warm flesh spattering his ruined body.

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Still. Silent. Had anything been heard within? No, the faint sounds of human activity continued unchanged.

She could feel the body beneath her subtly begin the process of deterioration now that its life force was gone. The blood and fluids seeping from the shattered form gleamed dully as they coalesced into pools in irregularities in the concrete. She remained motionless awhile longer to watch the thermal patterns in the flow. Then her form seemed to melt, collapsing and flowing around the corpse. Seconds later that too was gone, rising like a mist to disperse in the evening air.

A withered shell remained. Paper-dry skin shrunk around bleached bones. Skull fragments. A stray tooth: stark against bright fabric. Linen shirt, designer jeans, a Seiko watch; the barely crumpled clothing combining oddly with the desiccated residue of what, only minutes before, had been a living being.

She was an aberration in this plane of existence. An energy flux had stranded her, much like flotsam washed onto a foreign shore. It was a temporary, yet She was powerless to do anything other than wait for the coalition of necessary conditions. She would use the time to renew her strength against the demands of a departure She was sure would be as taxing on her resources as her untimely arrival. She had quickly adapted, identifying that the fringes of the society of this dominant species offered the simultaneous advantages of easy prey and refuge. She hunted by night and retreated by day. She could function diurnally, but offsetting the constant energy barrage from the solar orb of this system was draining. Besides, hunting was easier by night.

She did not fear detection, but it was her nature to be prudent. It was almost impossible to harm her physically, but exposure to some energy forms was dangerous. And so She hunted with care and caution, changing her haunts regularly and varying her kill patterns.

Police detectives were seriously concerned, but at a loss. Times of death did not match the apparent age of the remains. Spatter patterns which should have been blood weren't. Or more correctly were the absence of blood; the locations clearly evident in the grime of walls and floors. Bone damage matched no easily identifiable weapon. Nothing taken (other than life), no motives, no links, and no clues.

She was not evil. She was neither malicious nor cruel. She was simply a predator and, though we are keen because of our fear to assign human motivations to expert hunters like tigers and sharks, the reality is that they function on instinct devoid of emotion. So did She. She did not cause pain for pleasure: it was simply food. She did not create horror for satisfaction: it was merely energy. She fed off the electromagnetic aura generated by neural activity and had quickly discovered that the intensities associated with pain and pleasure in this species generated the most satisfying spectrums. Similarly, She did not 'drink' the blood of her victims in the conventional sense. Her body absorbed fluids at the cellular level, converting their components as a source of fuel and trace minerals.

She could feed from any life form, but had acquired a 'taste' -- not that She had that sense in the way we understand it -- for the combination of neural energies and elemental substances of the human species. No other life-forms on this planet provided such a high energy return ratio. Oh, there were other species, but they either required higher energy outputs to trap and kill or provided only base energy rewards. It was her good fortune, She marvelled, that such an advanced life-form was so simple to prey upon.

She had found it most effective to mimic the female of the species. The males were evidently dominated by visual stimuli which She could easily replicate. Not that the male form was hard to copy: if anything it was easier. No, the problem had been that females were sensitive to a broader range of environmental factors and that smell and touch in close proximity were of more importance to them than to the males. She could not effectively replicate the texture of human skin. Neither could She generate a convincing enough reproduction of human pheromones to mask her latent scent. It was not strong, but there was a faint odour associated with the by-products of her energy conversion processes. The result was that it was far more difficult to lure and trap females than males.

She needed only one more kill. She would take advantage tonight of alignments within this planetary systems' configuration to escape it, provided She could secure a small extra increase to her energy store.

She had thought about staying. This world provided bountiful sustenance. However, She would soon reach critical mass. Her kind was very few in number and reproduced by division, much like simple cells. What made her such an effective hunter in her ability to form and phase shift, was also a substantial risk during reproduction. The difficulty lay in consciously separating the collective forces of her molecular structure. It could not be attempted except in the most neutral of environments. Even then, there was a strong probability that separation would be abortive or, even if initially successful, that the two new entities would immediately turn and destroy each other. To attempt it in her current environment was suicidal.

One more kill, and She needed it quickly. Speed, not subtlety was now essential.

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Charlie was on edge. He hated the late shift. Walking home in the early hours of the morning from the bus stop gave him the willies. It was a fairly safe neighbourhood, but he'd always been a little bit afraid of the dark. The world was different at night. Sounds were muted. Colour was washed out. It unnerved him and his imagination ran riot.

The sound of his footsteps on the sidewalk echoed up the street. He scrutinised every patch of shadow ahead for potential danger and breathed easier once he was past. Only a block to go. Then he stopped. Had he seen movement in the shadow under that elm stretched over the pavement ahead of him? His heart raced, pulse throbbing. Sweat broke out on his forehead and his hands felt clammy.

It was as though a part of the gloom coalesced. Then a female shape walked slowly toward him out of the patch of shadow beneath the tree. He breathed a sigh of relief. She drew level with him and was about to murmur a courteous 'good evening' when She firmly grasped his arm and pulled him close. She was very attractive and her face was only inches from his. He opened his mouth in surprise; which was a mistake.

She leant in as if to kiss him. But instead, at the moment of contact, her form began to liquefy. He froze in sudden and urgent terror as her features melted and he felt a cool smoothness invade his mouth and flow down his throat. And then She was gone, the last wisps of matter sucked into him like a vacuum. He stared in shock, disbelieving, searching for where She had gone. The street was silent and empty. He patted his body, his clothes. Touched his face, probed his mouth. Then he registered a cold, hard weight in his stomach. It was the last thing he felt.

She had contracted and solidified her form. This was not quite true, scientifically speaking. Her structural elements were always solid: small spheres of molecular conglomerates mere microns across. But her ability to manipulate the inter-molecular forces, changing their degrees of separation made it appear as though her form shifted between liquid, gas or solid phases. Now it was consolidated tightly, having absorbed a little of this beings fluids as She invaded his body. The mucus and acids of his digestive tract were even now being slowly transformed. Energy uptake would be rapidly increased by a decrease in density, both of herself and her host.

It could be said that Charlie exploded. The forces generated by the almost instantaneous expansion from within him liquefied his physical form. But not a drop of blood, flesh or bone fell to the street. The cloud of red mist that had been Charlie had turned grey within a fraction of a second, his essences quickly absorbed. The grey miasma swirled for a moment longer then was gone.

A faint shadow passed briefly over the moon.

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Shoelace.

Button.

Shattered glasses.

Briefcase.

Silence.

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