PREFACE
Catherine Hansen was an innocent young woman, credulous and unguarded in every way. Naïve to think that her walk home tonight along the John O’Connell bridge would be exactly like the countless before.
Uneventful. Safe.
No. She was perfectly calm. The creature, it knew this, recognized it from her scent—the smell of an unperturbed heart, pumping her blood evenly through her body. There was nothing to indicate that this girl was expecting her ensuing demise, and a part of the creature was disappointed. It relished in the stirrings of fear—an animalistic, orgasmic feeling that made its mouth water.
A perfect specimen this girl was as well, with a thick train of gorgeous golden hair flowing behind delicate shoulders, down a tiny waist, accented by rounded hips and long legs. Maybe she had a significant other?
In its eyes, it would be a simple venture to form an attachment to one so beautiful. She might’ve had a child, even. All readying, delectable possibilities. And with them in mind, the creature stepped out from the brush, grinning delightedly at the automatic shrill escaping the beautiful girl’s full lips.
It closed its eyes, taking in the delicate sound, alongside that of her escaping footfalls against the asphalt. It looked down disdainfully at what the sun had done to its withering flesh, took a moment to watch the girl’s risible attempt at keeping her own skin, before it pounced.
When the Sitka Police eventually found her, bound in foreign silk, the orifice of her torn stomach had been emptied from its innards, with even most of the blood missing, and now lined with a horde of feasting maggots. Her breasts, like the rest of her now ashen skin, had shriveled down to the size of prunes, her lips busted open, blue eyes gauged, legs unnaturally twisted, and golden tresses ripped from her scalp, her beauty a distant memory.
Catherine Hansen was an innocent young woman, not one deserving of a fate as gruesome as this. Not that the creature cared.
