The hunger always stirs at the same time.

Not in the belly. Not in the mouth. Somewhere deeper— behind the eyes. It hums like a remembered song, low and wet and old. The kind of feeling that passed through blood and claw. He doesn’t need to wonder the time; the sky tilts and the night exhales, and the ache begins.

He lies still until the dark thickens. The rhythm of the world has to slow, cool, flatten. Only then does he move.

He peels the sheet back like skin. His feet touch the floorboards. Cold. Good. He stretches, vertebrae clicking, joints grinding in their sockets like stones in a stream. The room is small, too neat. Sparse. No trophies. No distractions. Only what’s needed.

He cleans himself, but not to be clean. Clean doesn’t matter. He needs to vanish. Strip away the scent, the trace, the softness. He must be ready.

He glimpses his reflection, avoiding his own eyes. He always does. The reflection is not him—just a thing he wears. Hair. Skin. Teeth. Tools.

He dresses in silence. Black hoodie. Loose pants. Gloves. The knife, tucked like a fang in its fleshy sheath. Always sharp. Always patient.

He steps outside. The city yawns around him; orange streetlights and flickering neon. The air is heavy with exhaust and frying meat and the static hum of lives he doesn’t need to understand. He listens to footsteps. Doors closing. Sirens far off. All of it is useless noise—until the right sound cuts through.

A rhythm.

That’s what he hunts for. Not prey. Not a face. A rhythm. Someone who moves wrong. Who limps through the world with a beat too slow, too sweet, too fragile. A trembling chord in a symphony of rot.

He follows alleys and shadowed stairwells. Feels the world pulse around him. Dogs bark, and he doesn’t blink. Pigeons scatter, and he doesn’t flinch. He is a shadow within shadows. A breath inhaled, never exhaled. He waits for the rhythm to emerge from the din, to weave its distinct pattern through the clutter of the urban jungle. He listens beneath the traffic, beneath the voices, beneath the heartbeats, until he hears it at last. Faint, faint, but there. A note in a thousand wrong keys, plucked just for him.

His pace quickens.

The scent of sweat and smoke and modern filth tangles in the air, but the thread stays vibrant. A delicate reverberation, close now and becoming clearer with each step.

He sees her at the crosswalk.

She’s alone. Early twenties. A tight denim jacket wrapped her slight frame. Headphones sinking her even deeper into solitude. Head down. Shoulders hunched. She is a portrait of fragility.

He watches her while the world blurs by, tracking each exquisite note of her.

He trails her. Not close. Never close. A hunter knows patience. He studies her from across the street, mirrored in the glass of shopfronts, reflected in puddles, always just beyond the edge of her awareness.

She turns corners. Crosses streets. Pauses at a bodega window. She doesn’t feel him yet, but the air around her does. Birds on wires tilt their heads and fly. A cat under a car slinks away. Small things know.

She heads toward the park. Of course she does. Where the light doesn’t go. The space between late and later. Between alone and gone.

He smiles, but it’s not joy. It’s confirmation.

The trees rise like bones from the earth, creaking and groaning, trembling and shivering, as the wind threads through their branches. Streetlights flicker and die, one by one. The dark thickens. The scent of damp soil and decaying leaves fills the air, mingling with the sharp tang of ozone.

She pauses. Looks back.

Nothing.

He’s still. Not hidden—absent.

She walks on, faster now. Almost running.

The knife speaks softly beneath his coat, a subtle, metallic promise that seems to pulse with anticipation. It feels alive. An extension of himself, eager, ready. It urges him to close the distance. He knows he must wait. He knows the moment will come. It always does. She’s close now. So close.

His breath is measured, deliberate, each inhale expanding his chest, nostrils flaring wide to catch every scent. He smells her fear before it even registers in her mind, a sweet aroma that wafts toward him, curling from her pores like wisps of steam rising from a simmering pot.

She glances behind her again.

He’s there now. Closer, yet still a ghost; a feeling that something is not quite right.

Her pace slows down.

So does his.

She stops walking.

So does he.

She removes the headphones.

“Hello?” Her voice shakes through the trees, a weak, fragile thing, barely audible above the rustling leaves. It cracks the silence, quivering in the air, in his ears. He feels the vibration of it, the way it splinters off and vanishes, devoured by the dark. Her head tilts, listening for what she already senses.

He waits and doesn’t answer. Doesn’t speak. She’s not owed that.

He takes one step closer.

“Is someone there?” Soft. Tender. Begging without knowing it’s begging.

She sees him in the shadows.

"Hey—fuck off!" she snaps, but her voice breaks as she turns and quickens her pace.

He follows.

Her panic draws wild, frantic chords in the air. She veers off the path, slipping between trees. He moves with her, through the blackness, through the fear, feels the moment bending around them like a bow, the tension exquisite, beautiful.

He doesn’t close in. Not yet. Not that easy. This is the dance, this is the ritual, and he must let it play. He must follow every note to its end.

He draws the knife. Not high. Not theatrical. Just ready.

She sees it, letting out a blood-curdling scream that echoes through the air.

“STAY AWAY FROM ME, YOU FREAK! SOMEBODY, HELP!!”

The words crash around him, frantic wings beating against stone. Screams are useless here—where the light doesn’t go. Here, there are no saviors, only watchers. Only the wind.

His exhale is long and slow, a whispered groan of satisfaction. He lets her get distance. Let the panic swell and ripen. The moment doesn’t matter unless it’s perfect. He must take her just before she believes she’s safe—before the hope blooms and cuts off in one final note. Her pulse is a drum. Her breath is a song.

He waits. The blade waits. The night waits, and she’s close now. Closer than she even knows.

He lets her think she’s escaping, lets her feel a brief, quickening of hope before closing the distance.

Close now—he feels the moment coming.

The distance between them collapses as he moves, liquid, a dark river cutting through the labyrinth of trees. Her rhythm crashes into his veins, drowns out all other sound. She is there, a sobbing blur in the distance. She lurches toward the park gates, toward the streetlights and salvation.

He follows with a predatory grace, gliding like a relentless shadow. Her footsteps are frantic, erratic. She falls— caught by a root or a rock.

He sees her body jerk and sprawl forward, sees her elbows scrape as she hits the ground. Sees her cheek burn red where it meets the dirt. Her breath is a ragged thing as she scrambles to her feet and stumbles on.

He follows her steps, sharp and unsteady now, like a crippled animal’s. His own steps were sure and unfaltering. The knife was singing in his hand. This is the moment. This is the release.

Her foot catches. Her body flails forward, and she crumples to the ground. The leaves wrap around her slight frame, like a casket. He pauses, watching.

She doesn’t move.

He waits, letting the quiet stretch out and settle.

And she is paralyzed, like an animal caught in a beam of light.

Silence. Deep and violent.

“Please don’t—”

But that’s not what he hears.

He hears: Will you?

Will you finish it?

Will you do what the world won't?

Will you make it end?

“Why are you doing this?” She asks, not to him, but to the dark, to the air, to the trees. Her voice is a thin reed wrapped in breath and fear.

The knife glints in the dark. Alive. Slicing through the air with a ring, a final note. Her rhythm flares one last time, wild and bright, and he takes it, devours it, the ancient compulsion consuming all.

He rides the wave, lets it crash and recede, lets it saturate the marrow of his bones, the core of his soul. He lets it pull him toward the abyss, lets it drown him, until he is nothing else, until nothing else is him.

He waits.

And when the waves finally subside, when the ripples smooth to stillness, he opens his eyes to the darkness.

He turns away, leaving her in the grasp of the leaves and the dirt and the dark.

T.C. 4.29.25