Trollheart

Extract from "Evil Never Dies" (approx. 3,300 words)

“Sir? Are you all right? Sir?”

The voice seems to come from far away, but another one is much closer, and while the first one is tinged with an element of concern, uncertainty and respect, this other drips the dark, hot fluid of terror, and agony, and dismay. I can hear the second voice, far louder than the first, the latter seeming to drop away like a stone falling into a deep, deep well, receding out of my hearing, falling away, falling, while the other one rushes up and shouts in my ear as if I am being attacked by a wild beast that has sprung upon me.

Except it is I who am the wild beast, and I the one carrying out the attack.

I feel the solid impact of the blade as it slices into flesh, feel the hot, wet (oh God help me!) delicious spurt of the blood as it fountains up out of the wound, cascading up and over my hand, drenching it in the scarlet life fluid of the woman before me, trickling over my knuckles and down my wrist, splashing over the handle of the knife and making it slippery in my grip. Her blood stains my clothing, seeping into the dark fabric and dripping from my breeches cuffs like dark, devilish red rain to pool on the street below my feet, below her feet, a puddle, a pool, a river in which we could both drown.

But she is the one drowning, and I am the one drowning her. Drowning her in her own blood, puncturing her soft flesh like one of the cursed fictional vampires from the works of Mr. Le Fanu or Lord Byron, sucking out the precious fluid (a phrase comes to me, I know not from where – the blood is the life) with sharp serrated steel instead of razor fang, imbuing her with the personal darkness that groans and writhes inside me, and ensuring that the last moments of her miserable, sad, pointless life are filled with pain and grief and fear and horror.

She is thrashing now, as of course I expected, as I (Lord help me!) hoped she would, trying to fight me off, though she must know it is of no use to attempt such a thing. I am stronger than her, and she, weakened by cheap gin and tired from too many steps taken along these dark and grimy London streets, is easy prey. I am the hunter, she is the quarry, and there is no question as to who will triumph. She would scream, but the gash I tore in her throat makes that impossible; no sound comes out, only blood and more blood.

She is not the first of my victims, and I know with a sinking heart (and, lord forgive me, rising excitement) that she will not be the last. I shake with anticipation and go to work as life flees her body, her bubbling gasps unheard by anyone in the deserted streets around us, the thick London particular shielding us from the most enquiring eyes, a shroud for us both, though only one of us is dying, dead now. We are alone, and there is time. Time to do what must be done, though it sickens me to my very soul and corrupts my heart, telling me that Heaven is forever closed to such as I. I am lost, I am damned, and like one of the damned, I descend into darkness and evil. I revel in it, I lust for it, I thrill to it.

I have no choice.

“Sir? Sir, can you hear me?”

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018