How much the human body contains - excerpt

As soon as I walked up to the bar at the Downtowner he had his eyes on me. Now they’re nearly popping out. The scent of terror is amazing, absolutely palpable, and I get down to it slowly. Concentrate on each hair growing, every millimetre of muscle extending. I have control over all parts of my body. He has none. He pisses his pants.

A very expensive suit looks like. Gold watchband and wedding ring, a wallet full of dough. I nuzzle my nose inside his jacket and put the fat bulk of it between my teeth. He’s still alive, has no comprehension whatsoever. A quick swing to the left and the wallet flies out the car window, hits a rock and bounces off. He scrambles for the door. I place my paw on his chest. My claws elongate. Don’t much feel like a run tonight, nuzzle into his neck, you’re not going anywhere tonight, and the smell of fear is ammonia.

In an instant he seizes up, all this energy inside and the absolute inability to do anything with it. I open my mouth to show him the flexibility of my jaw. It fits nicely round his head. Shards of bone, lots of blood and brain, explode immediately outward. The windscreen and dashboard, actually the whole interior of the 1977 Ford Fairlane is covered with what a moment ago was inside him. It always amazes me how much a human body contains.

Once the kill is over with everything seems to shift into another gear. The pace of things slows down. The stars move slower. I breathe in and what’s external becomes internal, out and the dissipation is perceptible on the very edges of the universe. My body is part of everything and I can move it all. Nothing is beyond my reach.

I push his car off the edge of Mount Wellington. Police will confirm later that they have no idea how this could have happened. The latest model Fairlane, bought only weeks prior to the accident, was found by a bushwalker at the bottom of the Organ Pipes. The summit directly above this defining geological feature is approximately 400 metres to the north of the official car park. No roads lead here. There are a lot of boulders in-between.

I work outside the so-called laws of physics.

It all depends on the paradigm within which you choose to live. You make the structure, this is what it comes down to. I don’t believe that being a werewolf necessarily gives me these powers but rather an awareness of my full capabilities. The beast within us all is a magnificent creature and I let it out as often as possible.

When I walked into the Downtowner on Elizabeth Street just after 9.30pm I knew that Clifford Palmer, drive time announcer for 7HT, was taking refuge there after a fight with his wife. He bought me a vodka and orange, a straight Jack Daniels for himself, and we went sat down in one of the private booths to the left of the bar. Immediately he put his hand up my skirt, told me I was a spunk, and I opened my legs for him, took a sip of my drink. Rolled an ice cube round my mouth as I leaned in to kiss him. Think so?

He stunk of cigarettes and aftershave, bourbon. You bet, his hot breath going all over my neck, yer sexy sex-y, down near my cleavage he’s panting damp and fast, uh huh uh huh, gone right into my ear hole now, fearl like a root babe? and he got his fingers inside my knickers, opened my wet up. Stuck them into me, god you turn me on you liddel tart.

And I could smell everything he’d been up to. Could’ve mapped out there and then his moves for the whole of the previous week. I disassembled him, when he’d last filled his car up, when he’d had a wank, smoked a joint. Put his face in a muff. Whose muff, I knew that too. I knew Clifford better than he knew himself.

The lighting was dim except for the glow from above the bar. I leant in for a pash. His tongue curled round the ice, hooked onto it and dragged it out. He spat it into the palm of his hand, looked up at me, then used his thumb to push it into my vagina. I felt the trickle of it melting, watched the barmaid polishing glasses. It was a Tuesday night and there was nothing much to do.

Cliff was forty-two. He liked young girls. Preferably sluts. He wanted a fifteen year old mouth that knew how to give a blow job. There were plenty round.

I got home just after three in the morning. Fog lay across the highway and the paddocks on either side. Heads of sheep sat on top, occasionally moved. It was like they were swimming, treading water in a white, steamy lake. The moon was up high, everything was clear up there, and I left them to it. It was tempting but I never act on impulse, prefer to choose my kill carefully.

With Cliff I contemplated murder within twelve hours of us being introduced. That was a year ago now, outside the Red Line depot in Harrington Street. Picked him for a prick right off. The world is a better place etc etc, not that I care much about that. I don’t go in for altruism, choosing the cruel and violent, getting rid of the useless. I can kill an upstanding citizen a loving mum; I knocked off my great Aunt Vera. I always have the pack’s best interests at heart but in the end I kill for reasons of my own. Survival.

Still it felt good to see him die, the slimy bastard, frightened and whimpering, his face distorted with pain. I won’t deny there was a great deal of pleasure in that. He was an arrogant shit who thought he knew it all and ended up knowing nothing, the hairy beast blowing his brain long before my teeth did. And when I did eventually get round to sending him to hell it was as a piece of shitting pissing, stinking bit of meat, which is pretty well how you’re all going to do it. Violent or not death, like birth, is ultimately messy.