She was so hungry.
Dazed, blurry vision flashed around the room as jumbled memories glinted in the darkness of her mind like knives.
My lunch, where's my lunch, I know I brought one -
Knots twisted painfully in her neck and belly, and one leg buckled. She braced herself against the break-room counter, shutting her eyes against the swimming lights and surfaces. She felt like her insides were on fire, like her innards had become two battling octopus, strangling each other. She had never been this hungry in her LIFE.
She pushed herself away from the counter and her heel slipped. Rubber sole squealed against sterile tile and she stumbled forward to careen into the break room table. She opened her eyes as she steadied herself there, but something was wrong. She lifted her hands off of the table surface, and found that she had left hand-prints on the blue marbled tabletop.
Red hand prints.
What...?
Another glinting steel memory, and her hand flew to her neck - she felt the blood there, she could feel the torn skin - it had not been gentle. There weren't two delicate holes like in the movies. She should be dead right now. She was an excellent student, and from what she was feeling on her neck, and saw on her hands, she should be dead, not walking around not -
So Hungry. Oh God, I'm dying.
Her insides heaved again, and she let out a startled cry, bending in half with her arms wrapped about her middle.
"It will pass. Go on. Have a nibble." A voice, velvet lined with arsenic, the gleam before the angler's sharpened maw, the madness of a torturer's gentle touch. It was in her mind as well as her ears, it was everywhere around her, in her heart like an ice-pick.
She spun, bumping her hip into the table. A mug shook, spun and fell, breaking on the floor. He stood there, smiling, her blood still on his chin. Though her memories were in the dark - she couldn't shake it, couldn't reach past them - one thing remained, and it was that she hated. This. Man.
But she could make no move against him.
"What - what did you do to me?" She asked, throat tight, eyes burning, teeth aching.
He shrugged, licking a fingertip clean. "I made some improvements. Enough questions, pet."
Her mouth sealed shut. She felt panicked. I can't move. I can't speak. I can't do anything! It was like his voice was a vice, and her free will was clamped within it.
He stepped aside, and gestured out the door. There was the hallway. She could hear footsteps. Night crew. David and his radio playing Devo all the time, Tiffany with her collection of pocket-sized poetry books left around the place. Diego the custodian with the wallet full of family photos and the handlebar mustache -
She could smell his mustache wax. She could smell the rose scented pages of Shakespeare's love sonnets volume 2, she could smell the half eaten bag of chips.
She could hear their heartbeats. Delicious rhythms pounding through their thick veins, roaring like a river of life, calling her to sip from it deeply -
No!
Her stomach roared. Her fingertips reached back and curled around the edge of he table.
That Man tilted his head at her. "You don't eat, you become useless. You become useless, I need to put you down." He shrugged. "But honestly, you don't have a choice, and I don't have time to baby you, so - Go. Eat."
She didn't understand. She couldn't grasp what he was saying until she let go of the table. She felt the howling in her stomach and she stumbled as she felt the teeth inside of her head crack and split open, sending shock-waves of pain into her eyes. When her hands investigated she found the fangs here, long and yearning. Her jaw ached.
I am so hungry. Eat, eat, EAT.
No. No, this isn't what I think it is, I'm not going to do that - Her thoughts were the only will she had, it seemed, as she moved out of the room and down the hall. They screamed in her darkened mind as her hands reached for Tiffany, glasses clattering to the floor. They howled in protest as Tiffany asked her why - what was going on - help me, help me, help me. Her thoughts could barely process how she ripped into her friend's throat with a bare hand to stop the noise, how her eyes marked the page of Sonnet number 97 as it lay open on the floor.
Then her thoughts could do no more, rallied as they were against her own body's unwilling actions. But they watched. They watched and heard as brave Diego came with a mop and died to it, broken ends in his sternum, blood mingling with Tiffany's on the floor. Snarls, hissing, foreign noises came from her own throat as David started to run down the hall. She watched, detached, as she leaped upon him and tore his throat out with his teeth -
And secretly wept when his blood poured down her throat, and how good it felt, and how revived she was, and how the pain in her chest instantly receded, and she was so lost in that glory, that blood, that blood of her friend, that her thoughts could make no more noise but silent hatred, and then it was over.
He patted her on the head. "Aw, good doggie."
"Fuck you." She said. She could say it, she said it. She tried to reach out, to take hold of his throat, but her hand raised an inch before He lifted one finger.
"Tut tut tut, little mutt." He bent at the hip to be eye to eye with her. He smelled like... he smelled like master. She felt bile in her throat and then tasted blood. "Smile, little doggie."
She smiled. She hated him.
"You're mine now. And your pet name is Emira."
"I'll show you what a fucking 'pet' can do -" She started, spitting anger, body vibrating in the attempt to defy him.
He raised his hand again and made a fist. Her heart clenched, seizing in her chest and she gasped, the pain unreal, worse then her hunger, worse then anything, and she clawed at her own chest to get it to stop.
"Watch your mouth, Dog." He warned. "I own you. You will do as I say, when I say it. Nod your head."
She nodded.
"Your name is Emira now. And you are Mine. Understand that?" He grinned, eyes mad, face contorted with cruelty. "Mine. Now say it. What. Is. Your. Name?"
She gasped, pain released. Her hand left a bloody print on the wall of the hallway. Something dripped nearby, a slow bloody dribble. The darkness of her mind was swimming with razor blades. She hated this man. She would end him. She would end him if it took millennia.
She locked eyes with him. "My name is Emira."
And you are going to regret this.
