The Devil Next Door

19

Dick Starling stood watch over his wife’s corpse.

This was the love of his life, his happiness, his heart, his everything. That’s why he had to kill Megan because she just hadn’t understood. When it had come over him as it was now coming over everyone, she had fought against it. And even though he could no longer really remember what he had been like before, he knew that this was better and Megan was an alien entity, a disease germ in the midst of a healthy body. So he had taken his axe and split her head open.

That had been several hours ago and now he had her strung up in the kitchen by the feet, had dressed her out as he dressed out his deer in November. He’d taken her head off and gutted her, placing her organs and entrails in neat piles in the sink on the drain board.

There was blood all over the floor.

There was blood all over him.

He sat in a sticky, drying pool of it, the blood-stench up his nose and down his throat, permeating every pore and every cell and the joyous, pleasing smell of it made him swoon, made him hard, connected him to the simple rhythms of life in a way he had never known before. He sat there, studying the blade of his axe. It was stained with blood. There with clots of hair and bits of tissue stuck to it.

Cocking his head, he listened.

For intruders.

They had already tried to take his kill once. A woman and two ratty-looking girls with kitchen knives. Some near-submerged, misty portion of his brain told him that they were once Maddie Sinclair and her two daughters, Kylie and Elissa. But that meant nothing to him. They were scavengers, predators. He had chased them off. He had wanted the woman. He wanted to fuck her on the bloody floor, maybe the girls, too. But they had run off.

He wondered where his own daughters were.

He studied the walls of the kitchen. They were splattered with blood and decorated with bloody handprints. When Dick had been dressing Megan out, he had been amazed at his bloody hands so he pressed them against the walls and made prints. He liked the way it looked so he kept dipping his hands into his wife’s torso and painting the walls with red handprints. Those who came here would know this was his lair. That he would defend it.

He heard voices in the distance.

Crawling across the floor with his axe, he pulled himself up by the sink. The smell of organ-meats and intestines made his mouth water, his belly growl. He peered out the window. He saw a man out there, across the street. A man and a girl. It took him a moment, but then he remembered that the man was Louis Shears and the girl was Macy Merchant.

Dick wondered if Louis would give him the girl.

Maybe he would trade her for meat.

Dick slid down to the floor and studied his handprints on the wall and contemplated his wonderful new world. He would need to go out soon. Go out and hunt. But first there were other considerations.

He needed to eat.

Breaking apart several kitchen chairs, he built a fire on the kitchen floor.

Soon, the smell of roasting meat filled the room…