text: CW: blood, gore, murder, cannibalism --- The taste of it haunts his dreams. It sits there, taunting him, waiting for him to break. It screams at him with blood-red lips, claret-tinted spit landing on his face, in his mouth. He can feel it slipping down his face in thick tendrils of warmth, a metallic wetness flooding his mouth. He opens his eyes and licks his lips, tasting the skin. He bites down, lightly, then harder, and harder, and harder. He stops when he tastes blood. Stops, because if he doesn't do it now, he will most certainly continue. He can feel it now, the blood on his tongue, the flesh in his mouth, the feast that his body is. He shudders, stops. Wipes the blood from his lips, wincing at the sting. Gets up to begin his day. His days are always the same. Gray-toned, slated with the same dull taste. His bed is gray, and so are the walls, triumphant against him, laughing at him with a deep pearl glint. God, he despises gray. He bypasses the bathroom, the mirror, the sight of blood on his face. He doesn’t bother caring for the wound on his mouth, and it will join a multitude of other scars, jagged and animalesque, all across his body. They stand out, the pale pink of past hurts contrasting the endless stony mass of his skin. His suit is gray, too. An ugly color, gray is. Much too bland and sallow to be anything of interest. The smell of it makes his eyes water. The taste of it leaves his mouth dry. Walking outside, all he sees is gray. Even the sky, deep ribbons of indigo interspersed with periwinkle clouds, is all one shade of disgustingly pale gray. The roads are gray too. The buildings, the walls, the sky. Gray, gray, gray. He walks down the street, weaving between each person as they clumsily bump into him, a mindless horde. Each contact of cloth-to-cloth, skin-to-cloth, sends sparks through his spine, rattling his teeth. His canines are sharp-edged, jagged from where he’s spent weeks scraping rocks and metal against them, just light enough to not be noticeable. They sit in his mouth, caged like tigers, gnashing together with the want- the need- to hurt. To tear apart. To gut. To devour. To feel happiness, to see red. His lip tingles, blood clotted but still present. Still there, dried to an ugly brown (at least it isn't gray). It takes him exactly fifteen minutes and forty-five seconds for him to get to work, briefcase sitting limp in his hand as he enters the revolving doors. "Oh, good morning, Mr. Miller," the secretary sitting at the front desk says. She smiles as she says his name. Her skin is supple, cream and flesh and strawberry and alive. He smiles back, hiding the cringe that threatens to break his facade. He wants to kill her. Wants to scream until her head falls off, until her eyes pop out, until- "Aw, come on, Stels, you know you don't gotta say the whole thing. We're friends, yeah?" -is what he says instead, tossing a wink and quick smile her way. She chuckles (he's never really seen her as a giggler, chuckling is much more accurate to her character), and spit floods his mouth at the sight of a blush on her cheeks. He walks away before he can do anything as stupid as mauling her in the office lobby. His nose wrinkles at the thought of the mess, spattered across the marble walls and polished floor. No, if he's going to kill her, he's going to do it right. And if that entails waiting for the right time to rip her throat out, so be it. He walks to the elevator, a bead of sweat trickling down his neck. The elevator doors are gray. Silver, if he's being technical, but still gray. Plain, boring gray. The doors open. His mouth waters. Someone is in the elevator, a person. A man. He doesn’t really know this man, has met him only in passing, but he knows that they work on the same floor. He gets in the elevator, smiling at the man who smiles at him. It's a beautiful smile. Much nicer than Stella's, if he's being honest. He's been trying to do that more lately, be honest. The elevator doors close, and all the sudden they're both enclosed in the endless gray. His reflection shines back at him, dim and poised stiffly next to the loose figure beside him. He blinks to stave off the heavy want that sits in his stomach, the pure hunger that lies in wait. The man next to him doesn't say a word. He just stands there, thick and warm and alive, practically waiting to be ripped apart. The gray, ever-present, sticking to the back of his eyelids like glue, starts to dissipate. The elevator hums, in sync with his breath. He tries to stay quiet, straining his ears to hear the sweet sound of a heartbeat in the midst of the silence. Everything is dripping in amber, staining the grayish walls a soft yellow ochre. His hands twitch. The doors open. The color that had overwhelmed him a second ago, stuck deep in his gut like double-edged blades, retreats with a heavy sting. The man beside him becomes the man in front of him, exiting the elevator with a long stride and mauve draped across his shoulders. He follows along, trying to keep up with the tantalizing scent of freedom and blood. He tries not to trip over his own feet, veins rushing right just to catch one last glimpse of that person , even while his body veers left. He can feel it, the separation, the rush of it as he walks away while his bones and his blood scream at him to turn around. His office is at the end of the hall. His teeth grind together as he opens the door, watching with an apathetic distaste as the world fades to gray again. The rest of the day is a blur, sidewalk-slate against the memory of that red, the absolute temptation that Sam Egot is. That’s the man’s name, Sam Egot. It tastes thick and blue in comparison to his heavy rose figure, but it suits him all the same. It swirls around in his mind, scarlett teal splotches painted in front of his eyes. 5:00pm is perhaps the most gray time of the day, the most gray of the day, the most gray of everything. It may have taken him years to determine that the words five-o-clock are what leave his tongue ashen and his vision dulled, but he has nevertheless found it out. Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is power. And the knowledge of his own emotions, his own fears, his own hungers, is something important to him. For example: He walks to the elevator feeling sad. He enters the lobby feeling upset. And he looks at Stella-the-secretary and feels hungry. Oh, oh so hungry. For example: He understands that Stella is a drop in a crimson sea. He understands that Sam Egot, azure and cerise and tasteful in all his businessman glory, is much more appealing to his sea-sunk vision. For example: He knows that Mr. Egot- Sam, his mind whispers- has already left the building. He knows that makes him mad. He can feel it under his skin, writhing, waiting to jump out and coat everything a deep dark red (the color of blood). He also knows that Stella stays late to lock up the building. He knows that even though her scent isn’t as intensely visceral as Sam’s, she still has blood in her veins. Still has skin on her bones. Still has a smile, still has a blush. Still has a heart that pulses and bleeds, still has a life. His teeth feel too big for his mouth, threatening to unhinge his jaw and tear his lips to shreds, just so they can taste blood. Stella is dull. Stella is uninteresting. Stella is sitting at her desk. Stella is right there, and she’s alive. He walks up to her, footsteps ringing out against the floor as he approaches. She looks up at him, grinning a little, and the pit in his stomach- the rot in his brain- grows larger, begging to be fed. “Would you like to have dinner with me?” The question is simple, harsh words cobbled together yet spoken like wine, and she falls for it. Poor, innocent Stella. “Of course!” She replies, much too chipper for someone to be five o’clock on a Tuesday. Just the reminder of that wretched time sends shivers down his spine and lays a heavy gray fog in front of his face. The only thing he can see through it is Stella, pale and raspberry-red and standing up from her chair, bag and coat in hand. His nose wrinkles as she pulls it on, gray wool covering most of the dim light she provides. It’s dark outside when they exit the building. New York at 5pm in the dead of winter, of course it’s dark. He knew it was going to be dark. Dark and gray and dull, a thick paste of concrete mesh smeared across his vision while the soft light of a warm body pulses beside him. “Here?” He asks, arm looped in hers as they stop in front of a restaurant. Neon lights waver in front of him. He hates the smell, the taste they bring. “Of course,” she says. He’s starting to hate the sound of her voice, yet another thing to add in the list of things that he hates, right alongside neon lights and the color gray. They eat dinner. His stomach growls, even as he consumes salads, breads, meats, eating it all in the hope that it will stave off the lingering want in his gut. It doesn’t work, and he finds his eyes tracing her body as she eats, graceful as a woman is yet clumsy as a New Yorker tends to be. He finds that the hunger only grows as he keeps eating, and eventually stops to listen to the red-tinged atmosphere around them. His mind sings with the thrums of coal and slushy ice, humming parallel to the crimson tendrils that sit before him. He skips dessert. Stella does not. He watches her eat that, too, stuffing her face with an expensive french cake he doesn’t remember the name of. It has some sort of red filling, but he’s not quite sure what it is. The curiosity sits in the corner of his mind as he gazes upon her lips, stained with the mysterious red filling he needs to know the flavor of. When she’s done, he pays. She smiles shyly at that, a bit of red still stuck to the side of her mouth. He doesn’t say anything. Her hand intertwines with his, and his teeth clench. He tightens his jaw so hard it hurts, stabbing pinpricks of a bright yellow pain, but he doesn’t dare stop. Even New York at twilight in the middle of winter would notice her screams, her body. So he walks with her, knocking against her a little bit more with every step, whispering seductively and guiding them towards an alley (she would be scared of his house, the color of blood). There is no one in the alley he chooses. There never is, even if a lonely figure sits huddled against the brick walls, because those figures are people, and those people are dead. Sometimes, when the hunger gets to be a bit too hungry for him to control, he kills, even if they sit in his stomach like the word gray. Those meals are never satisfying, but everyone stays away (the color of blood is scary to some). For the best, truly. He isn’t quite sure how often he can resist those lowly figures, even if their skin is gray and tastes like trash. Stella, sweet Stella, chuckles a bit and follows him. As a secretary, she’s always been sharp, but outside of the office he’s found that she lacks certain skills; such as the basic survival instinct of self-preservation. Tragic for her, truly, but all the better for him. As soon as they enter the alley, barely hidden from prying eyes that always seem to be lurking, he pushes her against the wall. It’s cold, and she gasps at him, though he isn’t sure if she’s gasping out of pleasure or pain. He doesn’t care, anyway. Now that he’s trapped her, the fog in his mind is clearing, replaced with a bright light and the sweetly sour scent of blood. He wastes no time in pressing forward to kiss her, licking her face as soon as he makes contact. Strawberry filling. How interesting. Curiosity now sated, he pulls back and grins as she flounders at him. Such red lips, she has (the color of blood). They’re pressed up right against a dumpster, one that almost never gets emptied or moved, and he feels to his right, smiles as he grasps onto a blade, frosted and frozen from the cold. Stella is about to say something, perhaps about the cold, perhaps wanting to move somewhere else to continue this. Her face switches to shock, to horror, to pain, as he brings the knife up swiftly to her neck. The blade is gray, and he snarls at it- at her-, striking the sharp side across the supple flesh of her neck. The fog dissipates completely as he sees the red gushing from her neck. It flows freely, fast and irregular before settling into a steady pulse, the warmth of it coating his hands. He pulls the knife away and smiles at it, at the blood covering the awful silver metal. Red has always been much more appealing than gray to him, after all. Her gagging body falls against him, the blood drizzling across his coat and staining it a lovely shade of vermilion. He pushes her back as she chokes, watching the blood as it spatters across the snow, arcs of red spilling against the gray sludge and turning it a dull shade of carmine (the color of blood). Stella is still alive as he places the wet knife against her clothed shoulder, cutting the fabric off and then even deeper, carving the skin. A thick chunk of flesh falls into his waiting hands, and he licks the knife before trying it. Her blood is sweet, saccharine, and the thickness of it coats his tongue and throat, a perfect prelude to tasting her body. He cradles the food in his hands, watching as it stains his hands red, as the flesh sinks into his waiting grip. His mouth floods with spit, watering down the blood that already lines his throat. He lifts the gift up to his mouth, almost reverently, before placing it on his lips. Salt and metal make their way inside his mouth, cardinal red on his taste buds. Cherry-sweet, wine-bitter as he bites down on it, over and over again to feel the taste of it flood his senses. The scent of blood is thick and heavy in the air, and he should be awfully cold right now, but he isn’t. The warmth of the blood is keeping him comfortable and cozy, wrapping him in a cocoon of syrupy liquid. He swallows the meat, smiles a bloody grin at the corpse that used to be Stella, and leans down to begin the true feast. His head buries against her neck, biting deep into her skin, feeling the blood almost choke him while he tries to eat. She tastes good, he will admit. Probably not as good as Sam Egot, but good enough- for tonight, at least. He feasts on her until the sun starts to rise, shining over the world in shades of ruby and wine (the color of blood).