Winter Heat.

Cigarettes.

Cancer sticks.

Tubes full of carcinogens. The very definition of the word carcinogen means something that tends to cause cancer. It fills in whatever area of the body it is present in and keeps multiplying until all of the previously healthy, living tissue is now black rot. Slowly it kills you without you ever suspecting it.

I don't get it. As I turn right down the block and enter through the parking lot, I breathe out the carbon monoxide in my lungs, making a beautiful, if evanescent cloud. An instantaneous, floating inkblot that is gone as quickly as it came. I stroll at a comfortable pace past the dimly lit conglomerate pet accessories store. The employees there are still cleaning up before they lock all the doors and head home. I've never had pets. I have a feeling that if I broke down and bought a puppy, it would be worm's food within a week. I barely even take care of myself.

I couldn't tell you how many of the people that stroll in there with an extra three hundred dollars for rehousing fees do the same thing to puppies they liked when buying and for the first fifteen minutes when petting them. They neglect. They let go. Puppies are a dime a dozen. Kitten skeletal structures are closely related to that of a rabbit's. I imagine they mate in an advanced ratio, though not nearly as much as rabbits. You can toss them in the soup. They're cheap. Cheap enough not to care about much more than pointing, petting and saying, "aww, aren't they so precious?"

People aren't exactly my favorite thing. But to be a successful normal person in this world, you have to get along with other people. Some paint on themselves a permanent plastic smile to achieve this. Some use substances such as pills or alcohol, or even narcotics. I lock eyes with some, avoid the eyes of others, and most of the time simply say nothing. I am a creature of action, and not hearsay. There are others like me in the world. Some tend to call us wallflowers.

My heels click on the cobblestone pavement that decorates the sidewalk. Back ten years ago, this was an extremely wealthy part of town. Crucial commerce still runs throughout. The developers put something simple and fancy to go with the motif of the whole area. Across the street there is a mall with stunning, if useless, pillars that barely carry an awning overlooking the area of the parking lot designated for buses. The name of the street running through this whole commercial center adorns the mall's oversized central entrance in a slightly cartoon font. Developers wanted to say that this mall is a family friendly joint. With some of the rabble that pushes through there, I am not so sure they are still trying to sell that point.

Economic growth can be like cancer. It grows so much in it's specific area so fast that there is not even a thought about how to expand outward, and instead the land just pays penalties for overgrowth of business until the economic bubble bursts. Then people are penniless. They take their children to the mall because of that dedicated family atmosphere that someone carved into a stone fixture. People come into the mall and buy nothing. Shops close. Other shops open and then close months later, owners penniless, trying to figure out where to take their kids for a family atmosphere. A running cycle until ultimately this mall dies.

But that's only speculation coming from an extremely negative person. It's not like I will track what actually happens to the mall. I just have to find some way to entertain my mind instead of letting it be immersed by the currently cold temperatures. The wind is stagnant. I am appreciative of the ebb of this peaceful but rather chilled aura. I know once I get into the club, the heat of bodies and the dampness of sweat in the room will make me forget all about this cold night air.

The last window of the pet store catches my peripheral vision. There is nothing special about it. It is simply a marker for the end of the building. The path to my objective.

Curved stucco walls sport pillars that hold the tasteful piece of building art together. There are benches built into one of the large, curved eastern pillar. The patio is still paved with cobblestone and there is a large patch of grass directly north of the area. Cast iron fencing designates the club's acceptable smoking area, one which at the moment is littered with people filling their lungs with what might and most assuredly will end up killing them. This is also where a different kind of heat comes into play.

We humans, we are such a base creature once you strip away all the confines of common social niceties. We hunger deeply for the soft caress of fingers against patches of skin that usually only house the caress of gently washed cotton. A drive to survive has us flirting with each other in order to obtain that baser notion of laying seeds into the earth to supply it with our genetic signatures- our only method of immortality.

I walk past as uneventfully as I can muster. I don't want to draw the eyes of these foppish children and grown adults pretending that they have any notion of the gravity of death. Peacocks sporting death hawks. They wear boots with heels too big for them to walk around comfortably in. They wear latex and leather to try to simulate a mood of darkness. Sexy, bleeding darkness. Many of them know that they are indeed quite pretentious. In fact, many of them use pretentious as part of their attire. Intangible accessories to build up a character that they don't even close to resemble in their normal every day lives. A stocky man with slicked back hair, a button up shirt and slacks catches my eye. There is a voluptuous woman wearing a black corset over her blouse, a red skirt flowing down just to the tip of her thighs. The woman is whispering in his ear. Or maybe she's growling. Purring. In any case, she's giving him that signal that says, "I'm going to have you."

Following with the motif of my inner tirade, a thought pops into my head. In a way humans are like cancer. They continue to populate until they ravage the land and end up part of the dead ground they have raped of fertility.

She bites his neck with porcelain fangs she ordered off of a vampire website. Mating rituals that are a bit pathetic. Emulate Dracula and you just may seem edgier than you know in your soul that you are, right? Near the northwest corner of the patio, two girls kiss each other deeply, one trying to make the guy she is with riled, and the other trying to make her guy jealous. All still mating rituals. Show them what they can not have so they will want it more. They all feed off of each other. With freezing hands, they are barely able to contain themselves in the heat. There is a cloud of second hand smoke, wafting my way.

And I am an island, floating past where there used to be a line half an hour ago. I enter the club with the usual ease. Do everything quiet. I don't want any more eyes on me than usual. And even they are too much. I step in through the doors, halfway to the bar and I feel the eyes of Mr. Stocky on the back of my neck. Gently, my boots shift left, commanding the rest of my body to turn with them. He's looking upon me like he knows me. But then I realize, he's not looking at me. His eyes have gone dead from Miss Vampire Bite's little flirtation.

To my right, the bar smells like grain alcohol. Not unpleasantly sweet. There are girls there that the bartender has known for years. They get favor, extra maraschino cherries, less ice, more alcohol. Some of these girls are so pretty that I go blind when looking at them. To the right of the bar is the dance floor. It's multi-tiered, layered in lights with a fenced upper deck that tapers off into a cage. All of the dance floor follows the same theme as the cast iron gates outside.

People on the floor shift to the rhythm as one moving, shifting, contorted monster.

I don't dance.

But damned if I don't see the girl I'm there to see. She has large, almost Japanese animation style eyes, which work well for the theme of the clothes she bought from the "rebel company" store. She eyes me. I want her to eye me. But she doesn't want me up to the dance floor next to her yet. Which is good, because I don't want to go up there yet, either.

This is the game of attraction. Not like the usual mating ritual. This is dark eyes from across the room, meeting and colliding and ready to leave with each other. This is the vampire fantasy that most of these angst-burned people spend their lonely nights thinking about. This is sleek and sexy and slightly less pathetic. Still pathetic, though. We all know it's not real. It's just a role we play to satisfy our needs to be less flawed than we are.

I wander outside into the crowd of smoke and mating rituals. Everyone is busy doing their own thing, talking fanatically about whatever experiences has caused them to overreact. People are smiling, people are getting ready to dance. People are happy at the goth club. There's some irony for you.

When I say, "bright, shiny objects," to myself it is a reference to how easily others are entertained. As if all you need is a balloon animal, or a shiny hunk of metal to keep them entertained for hours. It's not so far from the truth, if you really listen to the conversations. They're mostly about the acquisition of fashion accessories and drunken parties. People have no hunger for the more sophisticated parts of life. Once you get to know them, sure they will tell you that they love Tolstoy or can read Tom Clancy forever and not get bored of it, but any mention of their real selves at industrial night is few and far between. Everyone is avoiding being me, the wallflower. Someone that is more comfortable to be alone.

In their hearts they are all scared to die. What's worse to them is dying alone. So they do their dance, try to attract their mates so that they can rest easy, knowing someone is with them at night. Society nowadays has them rushing through courting motions and skipping straight to the bedroom. No such thing as absence making the heart grow fonder. No such thing as a proper courtship. It's bed or bye, nowadays.

And they're alright with that.

She's alright with that. And if I so desired to taint my spirit with a night of unharnessed pleasure for a morning of hung over awkwardness I could very well slip her back into a cab with me. But it has been a long time since my appetite has been quenched by such mundane activities. She still curls inside the rhythms, sprawling as a piece of living art to every note and noise. Her Gothic dread-braided cap hides a beautiful crimson waterfall of straight, flowing hair. Her hazel eyes glow a golden tone in the flood of lights that make me glad I am not epileptic. She opts away from caking on white make-up to make her look pale. Instead, she just keeps away from the sun. There are two teeth that overlap in her mouth, but not in an ugly way. In a sort of innocent way I find endearing. From her fingerless gloves, her arms flow with fishnets into the sleeve of a form fitting black t-shirt she has torn a v down to show off her alabaster skin and cleavage. Every part of her body, save for her neck and head, not covered by the black material is caged by large-mesh fish nets.

She is quite a sight to behold.

I don't hurry to see her. She is there. She will be there.

Oh, but there's enough time. I'm not starved for romance.

Nothing ever just breaks. There is always somebody that took whatever it was, tampered with it and made it incompatible with the norms it was built for and set upon. The question of blame never helps to improve the situation, either way. It's all about learning to move forward and being the wolf instead of it's prey. There is a growing epidemic of those unready to accept the challenge to move forward and make their way to what they want to be. People are ready to accept their fate. I have this girl in the palm of my hands, and I have yet to even said hello to her. The air of confidence is not like air at all, more like an aura that exudes from a person's inner most wishes. This aura tends to envelop others, mesmerizing them. I can lead most people into the actions that I want them to do simply by this air of confidence.

If these walls could speak on the lengths that people go out of their way to show their need for attention, they'd speak volumes upon dead smile lips, cheap Gothic rings and sharpened fangs. Strangely, they're all beautiful in their own way. Desperation is a garment that they don like a well-enjoyed coat. The air is becoming stagnant. I am becoming stagnant. I cannot do this, play pretend, like it's not time to lure this girl to my lair, like it's a great idea to stay in this wafting stale smoke. These broken porcelain dolls with their dead smile lips, frayed cable knot hair, unconscious lust steaming out of their eyes. They are all a masquerade for what is really going on here. People looking to hurt one another, or at least to make them sting for a while. That's all that ever comes of this, bruises and scabs, gashes and stitches, hooks and clamps, and even a car battery. And sometimes... sometimes when it gets really fucked, a bottle of sleeping pills and a handle of whiskey.

This is the truth about desperation. What it makes one human do to another. This is the real heat; people so cold that they set one another on fire just to feel the fumes against their frozen skin. I can embrace this, for I am an animal of similar hungers.

Her name is Claire, she tells me, as her clove cigarette smoke drifts into my nasal passage, a sweet and unnerving scent. I would ask her last name, but we are not the sort that wants to know so much of each other. I tell her my name only after she has goaded it out of me. I sip a glass of cheap Merlot that the barman is selling for an incredibly high price. Claire had caught my eye upon her. A man of dark sophistication, tall, dark and handsome is just the type that she wanted to take her home this evening. I aim to please. Pleasantries dispense. I order a dry martini from the bar. The bartender gives me this strange look. Clearly no guy here likes to have a manly, stiff drink. Oh, bravado, sometimes it gets the best of me. Pretending to be a spirited member of society with his own quirky personality traits. I engulf myself in such tiny projects as this. It takes my mind off of what's to come, so as not to ruin everything by revealing my intent and purpose with my eyes.

Two sessions of her leaving to dance and coming back to make sure none of the other women have taken me away from her and she leans in to kiss me, clumsily, half-tipsy. Whilst she is wavering, I reach my hand out to guide her cheek toward me, steadying her kiss, her claim being staked. This is another pathetic rite of seduction at this lonely place. When willing enough to go back home with them, the young women at this club will kiss their potential bed mate, so as to publicly mark them off the market for the evening. I've been casing her. She does this at least once a month. Not that it matters to me; she keeps herself clean with her monthly trips to the local sexual health clinic. And here's the sad truth. When she first came to this goth scene, like most uneducated to the community and their faux pas, she contracted Chlamydia from an attractive young British fellow. And, not only did she contract it, she spread it around to three other people.

This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to horror stories about this scene. Fortunately, she was able to rid herself of it. I don't case anyone further than finding out they have current infections. I should go for less attractive girls, but they never taste quite as good, if you know what I mean. I call a taxi one half hour before I'm ready to leave. I'm bringing Chlamydia Claire, as she is called in the local goth club gossip site. She is my main course tonight. Everything is going entirely too smoothly, which is why I'm able to catch Mr. Stocky's little glimpses my way every once in a while. Sure, he's getting lucky tonight, but something keeps catching his eye. I ready myself to black said eye if he gets too curious. I thought I was a man imperceptible, but apparently he sees me.

Claire is somewhere between buzzed and blackout drunk, although closer to drunk, before we get in the cab. A short ride downtown brings us to my high rise apartment. I lead her up slowly, carefully keeping her from any injury. If I wasn't so preoccupied with her, I would keep an eye out for any odd shadows, as I usually do on my way up. I start to think that maybe she's not worth it. But I'd be fooling myself. She is worth it. This tight flesh, beautiful hair, beautiful smile. I hunger for these things. I open the lock with a key code and stumble in with her next to me. She's been making strange sounds and asking about food noncommittally. Not surprisingly, she finds her way onto my marbled kitchen floor, scooting her ass about trying to figure out which fixture is the fridge in the dark. She is clawing across a steel oven door which is flawless and spotless, as I've never used it. I watch this in amusement for half a minute before switching on the dimmer.

"You're grabbing at the stove, dear," I say to her. "To your right is the refrigerator door. But, I hate to disappoint you."

She doesn't listen at all after I tell her where the door is, she just reaches up to the handles and swings it open, and I can almost feel her eyes getting wide.

Nothing.

I don't have guests over enough for it to have anything in it, and I'm usually out.

She banters with me momentarily about how I should have at least some mayo or something in the fridge.

She cleans up in the bathroom, commenting incoherently about how large my apartment is, I feign some response like, "I know, right?" whilst I fix a glass of scotch on the rocks to steady my aim. The ice clinks into the glass, already starting to melt from the heater being left on all day. I'm sure Claire won't notice until after she gets what she's come for. That waterfall sound liquid makes on it's way into the glass always makes me grit my teeth. I've always been thirsty.

There are many things I like about this apartment. When the saleswoman took me around to the 12th floor, 60 had such sleek charm to it. A rather large bedroom, a decent, two-tier patio overlooking the West view of the city. I've been told that the sunrise is beautiful from the opposite room's view, but I've never seen it. I'm usually hammered at the time, or in a dark room with a new girl doing things that might make you blush.

Getting on, a half hour later she's lying in bed next to me, still energetic from her drunkenness. She tugs at my flesh, trying to get me to do more with her. She's pathetic, really. Trying to be more used up than she already is. I can see her youth slowly slipping away from her, dew pouring out a thin, punctured leaf. I don't mean my observations to seem judgmental or snooty, only observatory, but alas, the words always seem to have a way of wrongly communicating a tone I had no intent on speaking with. She pulls one of my black tank tops off of the floor and over her shoulders. The girls always wander out onto the balcony, wondering what's more here. What the furnishings in this bachelor pad costs. What ridiculous amount of money they've fallen into bed with.

That's the thing. The mind always wanders to that. Even if the girl had been innocent to begin with, and I assure you the way she sways convinces me against any sort of innocence, she would still go directly to extortion when coming at least halfway to her senses. All of the girls do. You would think I would go out of my way to make my abode seem humble. She's no different. She walks, half buzzed, out onto the concrete, sliding open the glass doors.

"Watch out," I call to her. More than enough guests of mine have tried to throw out my rotater cuff almost killing themselves from a twelve story drop. It doesn't help that she's still buzzing. Luckily, she only piddles around for a minute out there, coming back inside and closing the tinted glass sliding doors behind her. I throw the curtains closed as she stumbles around, trying to figure out more about me, figuring very little.

In the empty cabinets, few lonely objects await use. Chloral hydrate drops in a small bottle covered with prescription information about someone I've never met before, a bottle of cheap scotch and a warm bottle of soda water all await my acts of supposed hospitality. Sure, I've already subdued her into bed, but I don't think she's ready for what I have prepared next. Not many of them are. Because in the end, we all really just want something normal. Someone to fall asleep next to at night and to complain to when work was particularly unbearable. Someone you can trust, someone you can hold. That's what all of humanity is looking for, right?

But I have a large problem with that. I bathe in these thoughts as I reach for a crystal tumbler and clink a couple of cubes of ice in, dropping two droplets in before filling a respectable amount of scotch and soda into the glass. With a learned sleight of hand, I put the bottles back into the cabinet to sit and wait for their next use. She wanders toward a secret door that only I know about. Extra room can come in handy when you have a lot of free time by yourself. Whenever I buy property to occupy, I make sure to give it a personal touch- a custom built wine cellar here, a walk in refrigeration room there and a bit of class and a signature flare is added to a home.

I bring it over to her. She'll drink it. She's sort of "under my spell," if you will. Open to suggestion from enough of my kind of persuasion. She mumbles some incoherent questions about my place. I ask her what she is saying in the most endearing way I can muster. "Nothing... Never mind," she says as she takes a rather pained gulp of the scotch and soda. It is sort of cute the way she keeps the glass to her lips, as though she didn't know whether to drink more or pull the glass away. Kids these days, they're so addicted to a binge and purge lifestyle. I ask her if she wants to see my hideaway chamber, my secret touch of elegance; one which many girls have missed out on. One that she's just special enough to see. Pleas for attention are never quite so desperate as when you dangle the tiniest scent of acceptance in front of these kinds of girls.

Don't get me wrong or think me a terrible monster. This is never really the case, for unless through my eyes no one ever sees quite at the same level I see. There are all types of people that use thousands of others to achieve what they need. Bankers, lawyers, salesmen, hunters, and even girls like these. This is a mutual utility of sorts. She wants daddy's approval, and when I get what I want, I award her with what she associates as such. This is real world symbiosis, and I'd challenge anyone to prove me false on that. I open the secret door as she finishes the last of the scotch and soda in her glass. I can feel the tension in the air. She wants to know what exactly this room is.

It's cold. Dark gray walls of metal surrounded by empty professional kitchen racks. There is a butchering table that I've had custom built to turn upward, that way when having lavish dinner parties I can buy a whole goat and butcher it, emptying the blood through clever positioning. You see, the table has a crank in the center which elevates it's load to certain angles, and draining blood from butchered animals can take a few days, so unless I wanted one of those ghastly meat hooks hanging out of my ceiling to drain and clean with, this would be the only way to take the large protein from alive to ready for preparation and cooking. I've braised quite a few goat shoulders in my day. Of course, this is not the type of food I dine on. I just like having high society guests over to network with. For all intents and purposes, I keep my apartment minimally furnished. No television, no food, no art to adorn the wall. Only clothes and a bed. All the decorations at parties come from a storage basement on the grounds. But when I am alone, I keep the place plain and unadorned with unimportant things that would clutter my thoughts most days anyway.

The Pièce de résistance of the evening comes as the glass shatters upon the red tile in this empty walk-in refrigerator room. She is about to fall, and I catch her. "Sweet Dreams," I say to her.

Awakening now, she notices herself hoisted upon the table, a ball-gag in her mouth to keep the creeping screams out. Damn it if I don't like to keep them under for this part, but I guess I didn't put enough drops in tonight. But no muffled cries come. There certainly is fear in her eyes, no mistaking it. But not a sound. I pass it off as strange but nothing more.

A short dagger I stole from someone that tried to kill me once comes into play. It sits there upon one of these cold shelves, lonely as most of the days that it sits. Cold as the blood ran when I took it as a trophy defending myself from the person trying to use it on me. I stabbed him at the base of his brain when he lie in agony, trying to choke down pain and pull energy to get back up and fight. I took away his misery. And I took his Misery Cord as a memory of his honorable conduct against my superior skills. But that was another life.

And to another shelf, I have a rather large funnel fed into a giant jar. I take this jar and position it for a few minutes, so as to get the right effect out of it. She still doesn't make a sound when I drag the Misery Cord across her flesh softly. Just up the arm a bit to edge the thrill a bit. Not a sound. She's completely confident that either she's going to survive this or that dying here is of no worry to her. I don't trust that, so I inspect her with a more critical eye. Dear God, why should this night have to drag out so long. I should have just harvested and gone to bed, but this closer inspection could yield troubling results.

And it does.

I drag the dagger over her ear to find a familiar tattoo. A familiar symbol.

"You just gave yourself away by being so brave," I whisper into her ear.

Fucking bitch.

She was casing me as I cased her. Stalking me with the same presence of mind I give to every one of my own hunts. I should explain.

Generally, among the current generation, a solar cross with a red dot in the center means absolutely nothing. But back when this girl's ancestors and my own hunted each other, it meant that she was called the bait. I bare my teeth to her frightened visage "You've been a naughty girl," I say, as she closes her eyes and prepares for the worst. I breathe in her fear, as she is now not simply my victim so much as my mortal enemy.

One final drag along the flesh, this time with weight behind it.

Her blood is a deep color, almost like dark chocolate, only a touch of red. It pours through the funnel into the large jar. A waterfall down an otherwise alabaster neck. She doesn't struggle with death. She finds peace honorably. I respect that. Which is why I'm determined to make this next part clean.

That's right, Mr. Stocky probably has the other solar cross, this one with arrows pointing out from all axes. He's the muscle, the one who gets the job done while the bait distracts the target. They're sloppy. Much too sloppy for a seasoned veteran like myself. My secret door is slightly open. I can hear a lock being picked, so I close the door and turn off the light in the walk in. I realize my mistake as my eyes adjust to the dark. I gingerly take the funnel out of the jar and seal a lid on it before sliding it with care onto a lower rack. This is much harder to do with my eyes still adjusting to the darkness. I pull out my cell and text an old friend. A cleaner, if you will indulge me. I creep toward the door,climbing up onto the top rack.

He swings open the door from the outside. He brought his shotgun and a backpack, probably full of cool gear, his ancestors always did go for the technology edge. A moment of weakness is my only gadget, my only helping hand. He flicks on the light and sees her instantly, dead, bleeding on the tiles. He's overcome with depression, falling to his knees in front of her. A fallen comrade. A lover, perhaps.

Soundlessly I bound to the floor behind him, giving him thirty or so seconds to grieve before saying, "sloppy at best. How did you ever expect to rival a strength hundreds of years in the making?"

The next thing this man sees before complete and utter darkness is his view twisting an unnatural way. The last thing he feels besides sorrow and anger are my cold palms upon his ears. I like to be merciful in some cases. Just end the suffering right then and there.

My friend, the cleaner comes to take the bodies, leaving the blood. I don't know what he does with them, but he calls them "large protein".

After he leaves, I fix myself a drink.

But not of scotch.