The Devil Next Door

In the back of her mind there was a memory. Some show on TV. Something about man’s modern world, his cities and technology, being like a cage that he had locked himself up in. The captivity repressed his natural instinctive desires, his animal impulses. In the cage, man no longer had to fear predators or hunt for food or defend his territory. Like a monkey in a zoo, he had no other instinctive outlet but sex. That’s why people were so obsessed by sex. Simply because all the other impulses nature had installed were repressed. All that remained was sex, sex, sex There were low voices in the kitchen, the sound of bottles or jars smashed on the floor.

Susan made to back away…and then something hit her from behind. Right between the shoulder blades with an explosion of impact and agony. She was tossed into the room, slipping on the blood and landing atop the lovers. The man paid her no notice; he was intent on what he was doing. The woman hissed at him. She struck out with a backhanded fist, catching Susan in the mouth and sending her sprawling. This time she landed in the viscera on the floor. She cried, slipping and sliding on it, feeling it under her shoes like greasy snakes.

The old woman spit phlegm at her.

Susan crawled away, whimpering and shaking.

And there, right before her, standing high and almost proud, was a nude woman with a baseball bat in her hands. Her breasts and belly and face were painted with snaking transverse bands of blood. Her hair was wild, caked with filth. Her blue eyes were wide and bright, filled with a glacial coolness. They stared down with a catatonic glaze that was shiny and wet and utterly inhuman. More like the hungry stare of a wolf.

Now you got it, hon. Wolves. As in were-wolves. You know, shapeshifters, Lon Chaney and all that horseshit. Werewolves. That’s what these things are. Not people. Not really. Not anymore. Maybe they’re not sprouting hair and fangs like movie werewolves, but please be assured, my dear, these are fucking werewolves and you are now in their lair.

And all of that was disturbing, hell yes, but what seemed even worse was that this crazy woman had a leather sling of arrows on her back and shiny onyx bow over one shoulder like she was some demented Amazonian.

“Please,” Susan said, holding out her hands for mercy, trying to catch her breath, trying to find her center which was so lopsided, inverted, and upside down by this point she could have slid right off it like a fried egg in a grease-slicked pan. Over, Under, Sideways, Down, as The Yardbirds had once said. She swallowed, feeling the dryness of her throat. Her heart pounded, blood rushed at her temples. “Please…I didn’t mean to barge in, I was looking for someone, but they’re not here so I’ll just be on my-”

“Hhhhssssssttt!” the woman said by way of reply, forcing hissing air through clenched teeth.

Susan shook her head, not understanding such gibberish. At least on the surface…but down below where the wild things were, where they ran crusted with blood and gamey with their own rancid animal stink, she understood all too well. She was being told in a very rudimentary way to shut her fucking mouth. For the werewolf woman did not want to hear shit like that. She was not accustomed to her prey blabbing on and on; she liked her meat to know its place, to sit on the plate and exude a tasty pink juice, to be tender and filling, to satisfy both tongue and gut.

“What’s…what’s your name?” Susan said, trying a different tact even though her animal instinct told her she was literally fucked here like the virgin on prom night in the old joke.

The woman cocked her head, her face scrubbed of emotion like that of a mannequin. There was excrement all over her feet. Her pale thighs and calves were bright with fingers of blood that seemed to have run from between her legs as if she were menstruating. And judging from the hot, meaty smell wafting off her, Susan knew she was.

“Please,” Susan said again.

The woman grinned. Her teeth were stained red. “I’m Angie,” she said. Then she said it again: “ I’m Annnngeeeee,” the way a little kid would say it, enjoying the way it filled her throat and rolled off her tongue. And this more than anything told Susan Donnel all she needed to know about the brain behind those eyes: simple, childlike, the cunning and savage appetites of a beast coupled with the rudimentary reasoning of a child.

Susan opened her mouth to speak and as she did so, Angie swung the baseball bat with a smooth muscular grace. It hit Susan in the mouth and she in turn hit the floor, her teeth scattering like dice. She was barely conscious, just gagging on her own blood. She was barely aware of the two men that stepped into the room and ripped her clothes off beneath the full approving glare of Angie Preen.