It was a cold night, that night. Western winds driving rain into our faces to mingle with the sweat and blood, clammy terror. We circled each other feverishly under the sickly glow of fading lampposts, still breathless from the chase.
My legs burned with the steady fire of oxygen debt; gasping frozen air into my lungs for sustenance, thoughts slipped through my mind like blood through her fingers…
There is a special gaze preys have, when they know they are lost, a kind of wide-eyed hysteria which seems to spread through the whole body. Breathing futile tension. She feinted and I dodged; we circled and our shadows, bored perhaps, seemed to stand still. fourteen years old, I knew all there was to know about her kind; I knew about her strengths and flaws, her absolute inability to compromise – a deficient sense of ethics.
“Quit playing, you brat; give up.” What killed me was her voice, so warm and normal, so… so human. And I knew she was not.
She tensed to lash out at me and I dodged, but not before she had taken a healthy piece of my t-shirt with her. Landing poorly, I stumbled and turned to see her smiling sweetly, licking at the blood on her fingers. ‘Not human, not Amy’ I reminded myself. Reaching out, I felt the winds change and blow into her face, into her eyes, forcing her to blink: my chance. I dug into my pockets, searching frantically for what I knew must be there. - It had to be - A pencil; it would have to do… As I managed to dig it out, untangling it from my torn t-shirt, I looked up at her looking at it. Somewhere nearby, I felt people moving. She reached up and unbuttoned her shirt, shifting her gaze to meet mine.
“You wouldn’t do that. you couldn’t.” for a second, her eyes twisted and Amy gazed back at me, a tear trickling from the corner of her eye as she pulled a side of her shirt open to reveal her bra, I could hear her heart beat over her voice. “You wouldn’t hurt me would you?” I shook my head numbly, and Amy’s sweet features twisted into a wicked grin. …But you’re not You.
Taking the element of surprise; I lunged at her, pushing through the rain to punch my fragile stake into Amy’s pale flesh, only to be met by her incoming left foot: a square kick to the chest. I fell back to groan and catch my breath as she pressed on, pushing me further and further back towards the railway fence. The people were coming closer, I had to finish soon or she might do real damage. I ransacked my mind for an idea, anything would do. Shuffling haphazardly back out of her reach as she herded me like meat to the slaughterhouse: step by step by step, until I stumbled back and felt the cold metal of the railway fencing against my shoulder. No more going back, then. I thought bitterly, renewing my grip on the slipping pencil.
Looking up, I saw her standing no more than a step away, a huge grin splitting Amy’s sweet features, goading me: she had won. I felt her fingers twist into claws and I let my head, my shoulders, drop; the pencil slipped out of my fingers to clatter onto the wet pavement and I waited for the kill… Somewhere above, hidden behind the cold crowd of stars someone, I am sure, held his breath: waiting. The wind twisted and turned about us, trapped by the buildings and the fence, catching drenched leaves and plastic bags in its own chaotic dance. And, as I stood there with my eyes and fists tightly shut, people stepped out to see her there and shouted in surprise.
I felt her turn and lunged, carrying her to the ground as I drove the pitiful pencil through Amy’s beautiful white bra, through Amy’s perfect soft skin and into Amy’s tainted golden heart. As she looked up into my face, staring at my lips, Amy’s innocent gaze surfaced and a final breath glowed white in the November air.
The people screamed and I heard running footsteps, they would probably call the cops; with no lamplights to give me away, it would merely become a strange tale in the local tabloid: Amy did not bleed. Still reeling from the blows and the terror; I dragged her, step by awful step, across the railway and into the abandoned residential estate beyond. Checking once in a while to be sure my chewed Graphite 3 stayed firmly in place. After a while, I picked Amy carefully up off the tarmac and carried her, half-walking half-stumbling, as far as I could into the estate, and into one of the crumbling houses.