The raindrops tumbled out of the sky. It was unplanned, hasty, and the water seemed to be in a desperate hurry to slam itself to the ground as fast as possible. There it lay, leaving the earth wet, squelchy and glistening. As well as the aggressive raindrops that smacked him in the face, The Boy could also feel the soft mud oozing around his bare feet, the wind that blew in sharp gusts around his ears, and a fog so thick that it was slowly choking him. He felt like all the forces of the sky had conspired against him, and they were doing their best to kill him. All around him was the bitter stench of decay. It drifted about his nostrils menacingly, a constant reminder that he was surrounded by carcasses. For once he was glad of the shadowy night- it meant that he didn’t have to see the rotting bodies as well as smell them.

Trudging on through the gloomy forest, he felt as if time had ceased to exist. He just drifted around in the night like a lost soul. He was disorientated, irritated and sore with hunger and exhaustion, meaning it was all he could do to keep walking, or rather, drifting, through the night. He couldn’t tell if he had been travelling in the woods for hours or days when the trees finally started to peter out, giving way to a twisting road and an abundance of grim alleyways with a few dark houses squished together on the edge. The narrow streets were crawling with rats and slugs, and the tiny houses were damp, damaged and smelly. It was a disgusting, decrepit place, but it was the best The Boy could find. This nasty, obscure community was the closest place to the Boy’s home where humans lived, so he ignored the general unpleasantness of the area. He only needed to stay for a while, anyway. He’d be in and out in a matter of minutes, and then he could go back to his home in the woods. Eyes dilated with fear and excitement, he slunk off into the street like a snake: slowly, cunningly, but ready to strike at any second. He was pondering upon which house he should visit, when he saw the face of a little girl. She was staring out at him from the broken window of a crumbling little house across the road. Her face was caked in dirt, but he could see her wide, dark eyes; they were full of fear and confusion. They were the eyes of someone who had seen terrible things. For a moment he felt sorry for her, because she reminded him of how he had been, before he had been cast out of society and made to live on his own. He was sad that he had to kill her, but he didn’t want anyone to know what he was doing. She had seen him, so she couldn’t live. Then the moment passed and all thoughts of sorrow and regret departed straight from his mind as swiftly as they had come, leaving him with nothing but selfish greediness. He fixed his gaze back on the terrified child at the window. He had chosen his victim.

He waited until he was sure that the girl had withdrawn back into the rotting hole of a house, before moving. He didn’t want her to get suspicious. When he was certain that he was alone he dashed across the empty road. His feet made no sound on the wet cobbles. When he reached the other side, he stood underneath the house, and then leapt up onto the cracked window ledge with a cat-like pounce. It wobbled dangerously under his weight. As he jumped through the broken window, he could feel the ledge smashing to the ground below. Unable to regain his balance, he flailed and thrashed wildly in the air before he fell into the cramped room. It was a fairly short fall, but the floor was hard and cold, making for a very painful landing. Even in the split second before he hit the floor, he could tell that that the girl had seen him, and all hopes of going unnoticed wilted inside him like a flower left in the burning sun with no water. He quickly scanned his surroundings, and was unhappy with what he saw. There was a grimy mirror stretched across one of the dirty walls, and in the corner furthest from the window was a bed in which the bedraggled little girl now sat up straight, paralyzed with fear. On the door was a sign that said ‘Adelaide’ ad he took this to be the girls name. The whole place was sickening in a dusty, greasy sort of way, but it wasn’t this that disturbed him most. Instead it was the sight of the wooden cross that hung opposite from the bed. Just looking at it gave him a horrible queasy feeling, and if he had had any food in his stomach, he had no doubt that he would have heaved it out by now. As it was, he hadn’t feasted for days and was desperate to eat. Suddenly he stood up and closed the distance between himself and Adelaide, taking care not to look at the cross. All he thought about was the sticky red liquid inside her body, and he could imagine it coursing through her veins. To him, she was just a bag of juicy red fluid and the only thing that was between him and this rich fluid was her flesh. He was too distracted to notice the dark expression on her sallow face, and he also failed to see the stick that she held in her hand.

Adelaide recognized the direness of her situation immediately. Here was a strange boy that had fallen through her window, and with every step closer he took toward her, she felt more and more certain that she was going to die tonight. He stood in front of her, blocking the tiny light from the lamp so that she could only see the silhouette of his body. Although it was too dark to make out most of the features in his face, she could clearly see his eyes, and they scared her terribly. Never had she seen someone with red eyes like that. He reached out, his pale bony fingers wrapping skilfully around her neck. She took note of how horrid his fingernails looked- they were excessively long and pointed, and an inky black in colour. She suppressed her urge to scream, for she feared that if she did, those fingernails would rip through her neck. At this thought, the muscles in her right arm tensed and she tightened her grip on the weapon she held. In an attempt to distract him, she asked him what his name was, where he lived, and with whom. She was aware that those were rather absurd questions to ask, when she was being murdered in her own bed, but it was all she could manage. It had the desired effect however, for he momentarily loosened his grip on her neck as he thought of a suitable answer. This allowed the girl to move her head quickly, looking for an escape route. Her gaze rested on the grubby mirror for no more than a second, but it was long enough for her to catch a glimpse of herself in the reflection. At first she didn’t notice anything, but then she realized that the boy was not there. He was nowhere to be seen in the mirror, and yet he should be. This either meant two things: that he was just a dream, or that this boy was so terrible, so despicable, that even his own reflection rejected him. The first option was highly unlikely because she knew that she was incapable of imagining such a scene, so she dismissed it. The second option, however, worried her much more. She didn’t know what to do about her alarming discovery.

All of a sudden, the boy was speaking to her, interrupting her thoughts. ‘I don’t have one anymore,’ he said,’ I don’t have a name. My parents got rid of me because I’m a savage and they never even gave me a name because I’m so horrid. I’m not human, you know. I live in a forest and there is no one else there except for me and the ones I’ve killed. I shall have to kill you too, now you’ve seen me. If I were you, I shan’t ask any more questions. If I were you I’d be quiet and die without a fuss. Life isn’t so good, you know. You’re better off dead,’ he answered. Adelaide was shocked by this sudden speech, and she didn’t know what to do. She hated his voice; his every screeching word seemed laboured and tortured. She was scared by the offhand manner in which he referred to death and ‘the ones he killed’. Before she knew it his, teeth were in her neck and she could hear grotesque sucking noises that he made. Vampire!, she thought. Soon the pain was dulled and she could hear nothing but a constant tintinnabulum in her ears. She wished had a sword to kill him with, but all she had was the wooden stick that she held in her right hand. She didn’t think it would be very useful, but it was very sharp, and it was the only thing she had. So she hit him with it, over and over again, until he jumped away from her in shock. His teeth ripped bigger holes in her neck as he moved away, causing Adelaide to howl in pain. She stabbed him relentlessly, and it was just luck that she caught him in the heart. He very nearly lived, but he was already weak with hunger, and he had no will to live anyway. He passed silently, didn’t even utter a dying word.
It was almost as if he was waiting to die.