The Word Cloud

The Town was a quiet place.

It hadn’t always seemed quiet to me. When I had first arrived here when I was young, I had struggled to come to terms with how large everything was. It had given me a feeling of insignificance, of being small and almost invisible. But now those feelings were gone. Now I walked through the streets and found it difficult to believe that this place was even a Town. After the sprawling toxic streets of the City this clean lush pace seemed very small.

The Town was celebrating. The streets were full to bursting with the young, and the old, the drunk and the drugged, many of which seemed perfectly content with their state of intoxication. I smiled watching the people’s folly and only just managed to sidestep as a young girl, no older than thirteen, threw herself at me. I struggled not to laugh as she staggered but did not fall. Shaking my head, I turned and walked into another woman, this one older. The woman smiled at me and held up a simple wooden bead necklace which was dropped over my head. She spoke to me in words I did not understand before twirling away. I watched her briefly as she disappeared into the crowd.

After the poisonous air of the City, this place was almost Eden to my long suffering senses. The city had been rank, the air had burned my nose and throat, the people were lifeless and the streets were bitter. The constant jostling did not anger me as it usually would have, but actually had the opposite effect. I was calm; a strange sense of contentment had washed over me, strange only because of its rarity. I felt suddenly safe here in a way I never had when in the City. It was impossible to be safe in City, to many eyes always watching. It had been impossible to indulge myself the way I planned to here.

The lust for blood had been rising slowly all evening and the fact I was now surrounded by unaware innocents only fuelled my hunger.

Fingering the delicate wooden beads that had been dropped around my neck, I moved on. The dancing woman and her cohorts would not fall prey to me tonight. My usual targets were not charming innocents but creatures of a more masculine nature.

Slipping silently back into the flow of people, I marveled at the strange smells of unfamiliar food and the brightly coloured candles that littered the rooftops. The smell was pleasant but overwhelming and so I slipped into the first tavern I came to. The expanses of dark wood along with tarnished brass spoke of an age which had long ago slowly slipped away. It survived now only in remnant places like these.

For the look of things, I placed coins on the bar, and in return received a glass full of wine I would never touch. Settling myself in the corner of the bar, I waited. Tonight I wore simple black, nothing eye-catching and beautiful but nothing to sneer at either. Black I have learned is always good for hiding both bloodstains and myself in crowds. With my hair pulled back, I appeared like any other young man. No one would guess I had killed dozens, fought dozens more and that I had every intention of killing tonight. But then that was the whole point.

To my relief it did not take long for my prey to become apparent. He stood a little way down the bar from me and ordered something I did not recognize. He then sat alone, drinking. Our eyes met more than once, but each time he broke our gaze, looking down at his drink. I tired quickly of this game. I am not famed for my patience, and make no attempts to deny this. I usually prefer to allow my prey to approach me, but that was not a luxury I needed this night as I had been denied my pleasure for far too long. Besides there was much to be had and I did not want to spend all night with this one. So I allowed my impatience to win and  moved to him. I watched silently as he ordered another of whatever it was he was drinking.

“You realize that that stuff will kill you.” I smirked at him. His eyes lit with pleasure when he realised I was addressing him.

I gave my name as Aaron and in a flash of inspiration I told him I was a painter from the south. He spoke to me in slow careful words. I learned that he was from the west and he’d come to see the Towns festival. Poor creature, he was a kind soul who didn’t seem to want to harm anything. I felt my fingers wrap around the wire in my pocket.

Ten minutes later we were leaning against the cold stone at the back of the tavern, my wires buried across his throat.

The sound he made was liquid silk and warmed me inside. It had been too long since I had taken someone who was free from the City’s toxins, someone clean, and I enjoyed it immensely. I pressed myself against him as he died and fancied I could feel it when the heat from him began to diminish. His eyes blinked blindly at me once, questioningly, and I sighed. I wasn’t doing this out of hatred, far from it. In the last moments of his life, I could have loved him.

With that thought sinking deep inside my mind I dropped him and turned back out onto the streets. My hunger would not be so easily satisfied.