Sang Nouveau 02:

I walked slowly through the narrow corridors of the large mirror windowed office building, wearing that gray jumpsuit that every company on Earth makes their janitors wear. One of those massively tall buildings you can’t see into from the outside. I moved casually and smiled politely to everyone I passed.

“Morning Sir.”

“How are you ma’am?”

I learned a long time ago that as long as you dress like you work there and you keep your attitude polite enough everyone will assume you’re just new. They have to like you, but forget about you the moment you leave the room. Yeah, I’ve seen that Ocean’s movie one too many times, but it’s true, and it’s a sentence I live by.
In my right hand was a white, plastic bucket with a lid on it, tightly sealed. The one you’d expect cleaning products or something to be carried in, but I had nothing of the sort. No I was not here to scrub the toilets and mop the floors. I was here for a different kind of cleansing.

I took a left down one of the hallways and continued walking at my moderate and steady pace. Too fast and you look suspicious, too slow and you look like you’re wasting time. Both attract attention, and attention is bad. Remember, forgotten, the minute you leave the room.

The soles of my shoes made a tapping noise against the linoleum floor with each step I took. Each tap bringing me closer to my goal. Like the tick of a clock counting down until the deed would finally be done. I tried hard not to smile too much. This was the part of the job I loved, sure the end result was always great, but it was the anticipation, the waiting. That’s what made it all so very sweet.

At the end of the hallway I turned right and opened one of the office doors, stepping inside and closing the door behind me. The slightly overweight man at the desk looked up from his computer, staring at me in confusion. I knew what he was going to say before the words left his mouth, they always say the same thing.

“Excuse me…can I help you?”

“No…” I reply, like always, as I turned and pulleed the cord by the end of the window, slowly pulling the blinds closed to give the two of us some privacy.

“But I can help you.”

They always get nervous when the blinds start to close. I don’t blame them either. At that point it could only be one of two things that I want. Both are violent, both are painful, but one involves an orgasm on at least one person’s part. But before you ask, no, I didn’t walk into Jeremy Steven’s office that day to rape him, I don’t swing that way. The day I walked into that office it was business as usual, ridding the world of its age old plague. That day I was there to kill.

He started to reach for the phone, typical behavior, I silently mouthed his next words along with him as he spoke them.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave now, or I’ll call security.”

He couldn’t of course.  I had disconnected his phone long before he came in there that morning. Couldn’t have him calling the authorities now could we? Once the blinds were closed I set the bucket down on his desk and looked down at him seriously, shaking my head and clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth.

“Jeremy Stevens…you’ve been up to some bad, bad things lately haven’t you?”

He lifted the phone to his ear but heard nothing, his eyes going wide as he realized the phone line had been cut. I noticed his mouth begin to open and clamped my hand firmly over it.

“That would be a bad idea…I don’t like it when people yell…”

I heard his muffled scream against my hand and kept it there, my other hand grabbing his hair and yanking his head back to look down into his eyes. The funny thing was that if he wanted to he could have overpowered me in an instant. There’s no way I would have been a match for the kind of strength lying dormant within him. But he didn’t know that, no one had bothered to tell him. Just bled and left, like all the recent ones.

“I’m going to let go of your mouth, but you need to promise you won’t scream…promise?”

He nodded slowly, a sheer look of terror in his eyes, and I moved my hand away from his mouth.

“Wh-Wh-What do you want?” He sputtered out, his body shaking in fear. I smiled reassuringly at him.

“Me? I don’t want anything. I’m just here to keep the balance.” I pulled a pair of latex rubber gloves out of my pocket and started to pull them onto my hands slowly, moving behind Jeremy as I snapped the second one around my wrist.

“B-Balance of wh-what?” He asked, still stuttering, a single tear rolling down his face as he saw the gloves.

“Between the human beings who I protect…and your kind…” I said, pulling the zipper of the jumpsuit down a bit and reaching inside it, removing a compact nine millimeter hand gun from a side holster with a five inch silencer already screwed onto the end of it.

“My kind? What do you mean my kind? I’m a human, just like you. Just like everyone else” He didn’t dare turn around, very few ever did. They didn’t want to see what was going on back there.

“And when did I say I was human?” I laughed softly, cocking the hammer back and placing the end of the barrel against the back of Jeremy Steven’s head. I felt him jump and his body tensed as he felt it against his skin. I am human, but that line always seems to add a bit of a ‘wow’ factor, don’t you think?

“P-p-please…don’t d-do this…I have a family…” He sputtered out, now sobbing. I always hated seeing grown men cry, so I decided to end this faster.

“Not any more you don’t Jeremy.” With my free hand I reached back into my jumpsuit and pulled out a small stack of photographs, tossing them onto the desk in front of him. There were pictures of his wife and daughters. All dead in their beds, all of them bled to death. All of them with two clean puncture wounds to the jugular vein.

He gasped when he saw the pictures, shaking his head.

“No, no, no…that wasn’t me!”

“But it WAS you Jeremy! You did it! You killed them!”

“No!” He sobbed heavily, tears pouring down onto the desk.

“Yes Jeremy. You went crazy…you came home last night, and you drained them of life. You probably don’t remember, your kind rarely do when they go into a blood lust.”

When I explained this to him, his eyes went wider and he broke down, as if some great realization had just him.

“I couldn’t help it…I couldn’t stop myself…I was just so thirsty…”

I pat his shoulder reassuringly.

“I know Jeremy, it wasn’t your fault. That’s why I’m here to make it all go away. I can save you.”

“Killing…me…isn’t…saving…me.” He managed to say between sobs.

“Don’t think of it as killing…technically you’re already dead.”

And with that I pulled the trigger. The trigger released the hammer. The hammer struck the circle on the back of the shell and created a spark. The spark ignited the powder and the power exploded, forcing the bullet out of the barrel and into the back of Jeremy Steven’s head. It came out the other side and landed on the desk along with half of his brain and a few skull fragments.

I always liked guns, the way they work. Simple, yet elegant. Beautiful, yet deadly. I caught the empty shell casing as it was jettisoned out of the gun, the hot metal burning the palm of my hand a bit, but I ignored it. I set the gun down on the desk and reached into one of my pockets, pulling out a large plastic bag and using it to pick up the bullet off of the desk, then turning it inside out and dropping the shell casing into it. Lastly I unscrewed the silencer from the gun and put both of them in the plastic bag, then set it to the side.

I unscrewed the lid off of the bucket and pulled out a small rectangular object wrapped in garbage bags. Under that the bottom of the bucket was full of ice. I unwrapped the garbage bags and pulled out the hacksaw that was inside them, cracking my neck from side to side and sighing softly.

“Alright…playtime’s over. Now to business…”

I placed the edge of the saw blade to the back of Jeremy’s neck and began to drag it back and forth, applying pressure down onto the neck. It went through the flesh and muscled quickly, but the spinal column always took a bit more work. It was like sawing through a very dense piece of wood. Once I’d snapped that and gotten through the other side of the neck I stuffed the saw into the garbage back it had been wrapped in and dropped the plastic bag with the other items into the same garbage bag.

I picked up Jeremy’s head and closed his eye lids for him, a last showing of respect for the man before placing the head in the bucket. I peeled the latex gloves off and dropped them into the garbage bag next, then unzipped the bloody jumpsuit and stepped out of it, placing it and the gun holster strapped to my shoulder in the bag as well before tying the top and setting it on the floor. Under the jumpsuit I had on a pair of khaki slacks, a white oxford shirt and a blue tie.

I screwed the lid of the bucket back on and made sure my outfit was straightened out before pulling a pair of glasses out of my pocket and putting them on. After one more check to make sure I hadn’t missed any blood on my person and picked up the bucket and the bag and peaked out into the hallway.

Once I was sure there was no one around I stepped into the hall and dropped both the bucket and the bag into the garbage shoot. A janitor carrying a bucket and a garbage bag would be fine, but an office worker? I made my way casually out of the building, politely greeting and waving to everyone I passed.

“Morning ma’am”

“How are you sir?”

I took the back exit and grabbed the bag and bucket out of the dumpster, walking over to the large white van parked behind the building and pulled open the back doors, stepping inside and closing them behind me.

Rob looked up at me from his laptop screen and then down at the bucket and bag.

“Got the head?” He asked.

“Of course I have the fucking head.”

“Good…I hope this one didn’t tire you out, cause our girl’s been on the move again.”

“Yeah?” I asked “She get another one?”

He simply nodded and turned the laptop so I could see it, there was a picture of some kid on there, no more than twenty or so. Long black hair, green eyes, looked like one of those Goths.

“That was him heading into the club last night. We have no pictures of them leaving so they must have taken the back exit.”

“Got any info on him?”

“Nothing yet, but I’m still looking. Checking the police database as we speak.”

“Good…well keep at it. And while you do that, I think it’s time I paid our old friend Eli a little visit…He should know it’s one of his who’s been out bleeding without
permission.”

I knocked on the van wall that separated the driver’s area and the back section.
“Let’s go Dan, we’re going to Eli’s.”

With that the van pulled out of the parking lot and headed off down the highway toward Eli’s tower in the center of the city.

Oh I’m sorry…I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Darren Dimalco, and I used to be a vampire hunter.