text: [Themes: horror, dystopia]
  
  Just a short time ago, you were human, just like the woman you just drank the blood of. And yet, you felt no sorrow or guilt. You looked at your hands again, and at the woman's body. Perhaps it was the natural order. You had failed as a human. The Hunter took you, and made you into a monster. Perhaps that was how it was supposed to be. It was the natural order of things. Your job before was to fight the Hunters, but now? Food. Food was your only constant thought, your only focus. The sun was still nowhere in sight, and your neighborhood was a stone's throw away.
  
  Leaving your humanity on the ground next to the woman's body, you walked back to your neighborhood. Surprisingly, nobody had gone after the woman. When you got to the treeline and looked in on the neighborhood, you could see that more guards had been posted, with guns. Through a window in the house of the woman you ate, you can see her husband crying, being consoled by your wife.
  
  Your wife.
  
  The edges of your vision blurred with anger. It was natural this time, a natural transition into hunting mode. You sprinted up to the house and flung yourself through the window. You didn't know whether you wanted to attack the man or your wife, but you didn't have to make the choice. Your wife left the room quickly, while the man stumbled over, caught off guard by your entrance. You beat the man to the door and slammed it shut.
  
  The man's eyes, puffy and wet with tears, were now bulged open. He was quaking in fear. You swiftly pushed him over, ripped his throat open, and began to drink. The man put up more fight than the woman, but was still as powerful as a beached tuna fish. You drank his blood until there was nothing left in him, and then wiped your mouth on your sleeve again. You left his body in the room and jumped back out the window. Once outside, you could see that the remaining guards were just entering the house through its front door.
  
  You disappeared into the woods, much stronger now. With every meal you felt more in control, stronger than before. While you doubted you could keep coming back to your own neighborhood without being caught and killed, you still needed more food. The immense amount of blood you had just consumed felt like nothing more than a single graham cracker, whetting your appetite. You needed another feeding ground, so you set off, away from your neighborhood.
  
  Pretty soon, sunlight began to flood the air, illuminating the world around you. You hadn't been thinking about the sun at all since your second kill, and for a brief moment you worried it would kill you. After a few seconds, nothing happened. You weren't sure what you were expecting, but the sunlight seemed to have no effect on you at all. It made you slightly curious as to why the Hunters hid during the day, but the thought quickly died. You didn't care. You were hungry.
  
  As the sun grew higher in the sky, you kept traveling through the woods for a long time, even passing a road at one point. You were focused entirely on finding more humans, so your pupils dilated when you heard voices. You raced to the origin of the sound to find that it was a neighborhood. Its inhabitants were just waking up, apparently checking to see if anyone had been taken.
  
  They were standing in a group, a huge mass of humans, all talking to each other. They were unfocused, thinking they were safe since the sun was up. You licked your lips and lowered yourself among the brush to hide. Your hunger was fierce now, but even in your primal state you knew you couldn't just start tearing through the mob. There were too many people, and you didn't want to get killed.
  
  You sat and waited for awhile. The humans finished their meeting and split up, returning to their homes. They were all getting ready for their normal days, kids getting dressed for school and adults dressing for work. It was strange watching the humans perform the very same dull routines you had once been a part of, but you were free now. It was almost amusing, seeing them monotonously prepare for the day.
  
  It was entertaining, sure, but your appetite only grew. You became impatient, wishing one of them would come outside to water their plants or something, or leave their kids alone inside. The humans dawdled, hugging each other and saying goodbye. You mocked them from inside your head, urging them to give you an opening.
  
  > hunt Now
  After another few seconds watching the humans sit there in their homes, you couldn't wait any longer. You gave control to your hunger, and your hunger sent you barreling towards the house at top speed. You flew through the window and into a kitchen, where a human was halfway through making a salad.
  
  The human screamed in fear, but the sound was dull to you. The thought of food was your drive now. You tore her throat open, and began to drink from the steam of blood that sprayed onto the floor. Moments later, your meal was disturbed by another human entering the kitchen. Summoned by the screams of your latest victim, this human had brought a small knife along.
  
  You immediately rose, facing the human. He defensively held up his folding knife, gripping it with both hands. He looked terrified of you. Your hunger deemed him not a threat, so you stepped forward and slapped the knife from his hand, before incapacitating him and dropping him on the ground. You wanted to finish the kill you'd started first.
  
  After you were satisfied, you stood, facing the front door. From what you knew, there were two other humans, probably children, in the house. They wouldn't be a danger and likely didn't hold enough blood to be worth the hunt,, so you disregarded them. You made your way to the front door and looked out the window. The area was still teeming with humans, blissfully unaware that two had died. You watched from the safety of the house, waiting for another opening to kill.
  
  Your focus was so solely on the window and the humans on the outside, so much so that you didn't notice the human child watching you from the top of the stairs. He had an aluminum baseball bat gripped tightly in his hands. He crept down the stairs, as intently focused on you as you were on the window.
  
  You had never had trouble hunting, because your opponent was always right in front of you. No human had ever so much as grazed you, making it easy to kill. You had gotten overconfident, not knowing how it felt to take a hit. When the human child raised the bat over his head and brought it down directly on the back of your skull, nothing could have prepared you for the violent waves of pain that invaded your body. Your face went forward into the glass, shattering the window.
  
  The human child's swing was painful, sure, but it came nowhere near crippling you. You fought the dizziness off and struck the small human off his feet. The baseball bat skittered away, leaving your next victim helpless. You got off the floor and stood to your full height again, towering over the frightened child. You approached him slowly, relishing in the fear you caused.
  
  Sadly, not even a baseball bat was enough for you to learn your lesson. Your focus was solely on the human child, and not on the crowd of humans that had been alerted to the sound of a broken window. Your focus was not on the human holding the hunting rifle, not on the human with her handgun pointed directly at your throat, not on the human with the golf club who was silently sneaking up on you from behind, but on the weak human child. Of course, the weak human child was no longer afraid, because there was no threat anymore.