Prey Drive Read online

  Next was a picture of the transvestite prostitute and her pimp Joe had murdered at that rundown motel in Washington. After that came an image of the orderly he’d murdered to gain access to Damon Trent. This one did nothing for him. That had been a crime of necessity, passionless. Then Damon Trent’s corpse flashed on to the screen and he felt a surge of white-hot rage sear through his mind. His teeth clenched and his muscles tightened. He was surprised by how much hatred he still had for the man. Even knowing the fat pedophile hadn’t been the one who’d made him into a monster, he still hated the man for what he’d done to him.

  Next came another crime scene photo. This one was of Joe’s father, a stake through his heart, mouth filled with garlic and Bible pages. Joe’s anger came roaring back. If Damon hadn’t been responsible for the disease that had made Joe a murderous cannibal, then it was congenital, inherited from his father. Before Joe’s anger reached its limit, a new image flashed before his eyes. He gasped. His erection swelled anew and a warm smile softened his features. It was a picture of Alicia.

  The photo had been taken long ago, before Joseph had ever met her. She was wearing a black lace negligee, cut low to reveal her massive cleavage. Her breasts were almost falling out of it and Joe thought he could make out one of her nipples peeking from the top of the garment. Her hair had been straightened and her long black locks spilled out over her shoulders and down her chest, framing her breasts. Her bow-shaped lips, painted dark red, were pursed as if she were preparing to blow a kiss. Her makeup was dark, almost sinister. She looked every bit the sultry vixen he’d followed around the sex club, desperate to meet. He began stroking himself again as he took in Alicia’s long thick legs and voluptuous hips and remembered how they’d felt and how they’d tasted.

  Then the next photo flashed onto the screen. It was a picture of Alicia taken the day she’d been admitted to the hospital, after Joseph had eaten her breasts down to the ribcage, unable to control himself. Next came a photo taken at Alicia’s home. It was of her skeleton, picked clean, not an ounce of flesh remaining. Joseph stared at it and stroked himself more vigorously, tugging at his hardened flesh, remembering every moment of his last days with Alicia, how she’d begged him to eat every morsel of her flesh. She said she’d wanted to be part of him forever. He closed his eyes and recalled Alicia’s drowsy smile just before she succumbed to the drugs and the blood loss and the trauma of being slowly cannibalized. Her eyes had looked so peaceful. So beautiful. Joe wished she was here with him now … so he could fuck and eat her all over again.

  Seven

  “Hey! He’s jacking off in there! That sick fuck! Pull him out of there!” the CO said. He was in the booth with the professor and the SORT guys behind lead-lined glass to protect them from the sterilizing radiation from the PET scan.

  “No! The experiment is not finished,” the professor answered.

  “He’s getting off on this shit! What kind of experiment is it? Are you showing this sicko porn movies?” the CO asked.

  “In a sense.”

  “What? You trying to see what turns this twisted fucker on?”

  “Yes, in a way, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  The large corrections officer’s jaw dropped and his eyes bulged like they were ready to pop. “Y- you’re doing what? Does the warden know about this shit?”

  The professor sighed. “Officer?”

  “Belton.”

  “Officer Belton, do you have any idea how much it costs to house a federal inmate?”

  The burly corrections officer shook his head.

  “It costs between twenty-seven and thirty-five thousand dollars a year. Now, do you know how much I’m paying the state of Washington for access to Joseph Miles? We have received hundreds of thousands in grant money and most of that is going directly to you guys. I’m paying your salary right now as we speak and if I don’t get what I want I’ll use all my influence to have Joseph transferred to another facility where the officers are more accommodating. My grant money will leave with me. It would then be your duty to explain my departure to the warden.”

  The professor never raised his voice. His tone remained calm and non-threatening, but there was no doubt that he had just issued a very pointed threat.

  “You win, Doc. You and your psycho can have your little peepshow. But I’m telling the warden about it.”

  “Be my guest, Officer Belton.”

  Inside the big computerized tomography scanner, Joe smiled.

  Eight

  Back in his cell, Joe watched a guard slide mail through the slot in his door. It was a small stack of ten letters. There were fewer and fewer letters every day as Joe’s name faded from the headlines. At one time he’d received fifty or sixty letters a day from the curious. Most he never answered. Joe felt uncomfortable being a celebrity and found the idea of gaining fans by eating the woman he loved more perverse than the act itself. There were a few he answered, like Selene, the nude model who’d visited him in jail and fed him her nipple; a few “long pigs” he’d recognized from the now defunct long pig message board—long pig being the slang for human flesh (Joe often wondered what made these people tick … what made someone volunteer to be someone else’s dinner?); and several doctors, scientists, and professors—including Professor Theodore Acker, a psychologist from one of the big Ivy League colleges in Boston who was a rival of Dr. Locke—who were interested in his theories about what turned people into serial killers. There was even a celebrity sushi chef in San Francisco who sent him new recipes for the preparation of human flesh for consumption. The recipes all sounded delicious and inspired many fantasies. As the months passed, however, the communiqués dwindled. Now only his most hardcore fans wrote to him.

  There was a letter from Selene in the stack. He smelled it. She’d sprayed it with perfume, but she’d also saturated it in her vaginal fluids and speckled it with her blood. It was a way to send Joe a message the guards could not understand or censor: I’m yours. Take me. He shuffled it to the bottom of the pile, saving it for later, wanting to savor it. He opened the next letter. It was from his younger cousin, Dirk. Dirk was one of those kids who was obsessed with serial killers, horror movies, and Goth music. The kid had been delighted to discover a famous serial killer in his own family, unlike the rest of Joe’s family who’d promptly disowned him. Dirk was now Joe’s only link to the rest of his family. Recently, Joe had been inquiring about his grandparents.

  Yo, Cuz,

  I asked my dad about Grandpa and you wouldn’t believe the crazy shit he told me. Your dad was adopted! From what they told me, Grandpa’s brother, Mike, went to prison for (get this shit) attempted murder! He tried to murder his own damn wife. She took off after the trial and Grandpa took you in. Your dad was Mike’s kid. Your dad and my dad had different moms and dads. They don’t know what happened to your real grandfather, this Mike dude. He never came back after he was released. Ain’t that a trip, Cuz?

  Anyway, I just thought you’d like to know. I know everyone else in the family is kind of trippin’ about you killing your dad, but I understand. That fool was evil! All those kids he killed. He had it coming. Don’t worry, Cuz. I’m behind you 100 percent. You just let me know what I can do to help.

  By the way, I’m saving up the cash for a bus ticket to come see you again. As soon as I get a car I’ll be coming up every weekend.

  Talk to you soon, Cuz!

  Luv,

  Dirk

  Joe smiled. The first time Dirk came to see him, Joe had given the kid a message for Selene, something he couldn’t put in a letter, something he didn’t want the guards to read. He was happy to hear the message had been passed along. He couldn’t wait to read Selene’s letter now, but he knew the guards were watching. They were always watching. Instead, he took the letter and rubbed it beneath his nose. He’d never made love to Selene in real life, but he did so now in his fantasies.

  He reached into his pants and freed the monster. It was already hardening. It only took a few stro
kes to bring it to full mast. If the guards were watching him now, they would get a nice show.

  In Joe’s mind Selene was in his bed, in his old apartment in downtown San Francisco. She was naked and she’d put on several pounds. Her hips, thighs, ass, and breasts were round and full. She cupped her breasts in her hands and lifted one up to her mouth, licking the nipple and then biting and sucking it as Joe stood above her, removing his clothes. She let one hand slide down between her thighs and began flicking her middle finger rapidly across her clitoris, which had swollen to the size of a grape. She rolled over onto her stomach and the most voluptuous ass Joe had ever seen wobbled into view. It was perfectly round, perched high on her back, and it was familiar. It was Alicia’s ass on Selene’s body. He lay on top of her and began kissing Selene’s neck, shoulders, all the way down her spine to the voluptuous cream-colored mounds of her buttocks.

  Joe rubbed his cheek across the two corpulent globes of muscle and adipose tissue, delighting in the way the smooth flesh jiggled against his skin. He kissed and sucked each cheek and then flicked his tongue across the crack. Selene quivered and moaned. Joe kissed them again. He bit down hard on one of her buttocks, drawing blood, and then sucked it until it bruised. Selene screamed. It sounded like ecstasy. Joe licked the cleft between her buttocks, which sent another shiver through her, and then he wriggled his tongue deep into her clenched anus.

  He could feel her tense and then begin to shake and thrash. Her body went wild as he fucked her tight ass with his tongue and then with a cock the length and girth of an infant’s arm. He bit down on the back of Selene’s neck like a mating lion as he thrust deep inside her, slow and easy at first and then with increasing force and urgency, racing toward orgasm. Joe ejaculated silently— alone—in his cell. His seed shot up onto his stomach and chest. He still gripped Selene’s letter in his hand, unopened. As he lay panting on the bed with his back pressed against the hard concrete wall, he marveled at the fact that he was able to reach orgasm without a single violent thought. Perhaps the professor’s treatments were working after all.

  He picked up a few sheets of loose leaf from a stack on the floor by his bed and used them to wipe the semen from his hard, striated abdominal muscles and then placed each sheet on the floor to dry. He would use those to write her back.

  There was no delaying it any longer now. It was time to read Selene’s letter. If the perverted guards were still watching after he’d masturbated, at least they wouldn’t think that it was something in the letter that was getting him off. If they ever thought that, Joe was certain the letters would suddenly stop coming.

  Joe ripped open the pink, perfume-and-pussy-scented envelope. Selene’s neat, elegant handwriting greeted him. Joe was aware that his isolation from the rest of the world was affecting his perspective. He was aware that he was grateful for any contact with a woman and writing letters to someone you couldn’t see or touch was different than having a conversation with someone sitting in front of you. Letters could be rewritten a dozen times to get just the right wording. In real life, people were rarely so thoughtful and eloquent. In real life, there were myriad distractions—work, friends, family, and other women. Locked up, there was no one for Joe to think about but Selene. She had his undivided attention. As a result, the amorous emotions he was developing toward her were highly suspect though no less profound. He had to work hard to suppress them, but it was getting harder and harder each day.

  This was why so many lonely women wrote to men in prison. An inmate was a captive audience. There was no competition for an inmate’s affections. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. Despite Joe’s attempts at caution, he sucked in a deep breath and his chest and face flushed with warmth when he read the first words of the letter.

  Dear Joseph,

  I LOVE YOU!!! I know we haven’t spent much time together, but I feel like I’ve known you for a lifetime. I still have the painting you did for me when we first met at the university and all the sketches you’ve done since (including the naughty ones. Tee hee!) You are such an amazing artist. So full of passion! It still blows me away that I could inspire that in someone. I wish it had been me (redacted). I would want nothing more than to feed your tremendous appetite.

  I had a dream about you the other day. In the dream, I was lain out on a table and you were—(redacted)

  I have been thinking hard about your request and I would LOVE to help. It’s funny, because I’d been trying hard to think of ways for us to be together and everything I could imagine was just … well … extreme. I’ve hired a lawyer to help. I never told you, but my family has a bit of money. That’s how I was able to come see you before they banned me. My dad gave me the money for the plane ticket. I just work as a model because I think I should make my own money. You want to know something funny? I have been getting more modeling jobs since I gained the weight. Beautiful plus-sized models are in high demand right now.

  Anyway, my lawyer will be filing a motion for a new trial based on your public defender’s incompetence. That should hasten our reunion. I can’t wait to (redacted). You’re all I can think about. You’re my very own cannibal Casanova. I love you sooo much!

  Love,

  Selene

  Joe read the letter three times. As much as it pissed him off that the guards had cut out so much of the letter, he could fill in the blanks. He grabbed the loose leaf paper he’d set aside to dry and began writing his response. He was hopeful for the first time since his incarceration. Freedom now seemed more than possible. It seemed inevitable. Even if he had to die to do it, he’d be free one way or the other. He began the letter with his usual sappy, overly romantic flourish. He’d always been a fan of Lord Byron and the longer he was incarcerated, the more he lost touch with reality and imagined himself as a Byronesque romantic hero.

  My Luscious Dream Girl,

  I miss you so much. The taste of you haunts my dreams. Every waking moment is spent dreaming of holding you in my arms and making you feel like the most desirable woman in the world. You are my universe now, my only connection with the world. You are my only hope for normalcy in a world of madness and chaos. No one understands me but you. I knew you were the one from the moment I painted your picture. The passion you inspired in me then, the hunger you inspire in me now, is every bit as powerful as what I felt for Alicia.

  I can’t wait to see you again. I cannot wait. Even if the world stands between us, I will find my way to you. With your help, we will be together again.

  Sincerely,

  Your Cannibal Casanova,

  Joseph Miles.

  Cannibal Casanova sounded so ridiculous that Joe was happy he was writing it rather than trying to force the words out past his lips. He’d never be able to say it with a straight face. But he knew enough about women to know that Selene would be delighted he’d adopted her little pet-name for him, silly and embarrassing as it was. Joe needed her now, so he was willing to say or do whatever it took to further endear her to him. Besides, his emotions were out of control. He didn’t know what he felt. Isolation had made him needy, dependent, every bit the sappy romantic he was pretending to be. Selene elicited a confusion of emotions within him from lust to love to raw, carnal hunger. He didn’t know if he wanted to eat her, fuck her, or marry her. Worst of all, he still missed Alicia.

  As long as Joe remained in supermax, his chances for escape remained hopeless, but if Selene’s lawyers could get him transferred to general population, he’d have many chances. The problem was his record for violence. Getting him transferred was going to be tricky.

  Part II

  Braised Buttocks in Wine Sauce

  2 ¼ pounds of gluteus maximus (buttocks), trimmed and skinned (female preferred)

  1 ½ cups dry white wine

  2 celery stalks, finely chopped

  1 carrot, peeled and chopped

  1 white onion, coarsely chopped

  1/3 orange with peel intact, thickly sliced

  4 whole star anise

  1 tablespoo
n whole black peppercorns

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  2 cups veal stock Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

  2 tablespoons unsalted butter

  1 tablespoon sherry vinegar

  Place buttocks in a large bowl and toss with the wine, celery, carrots, onions, orange, star anise, and black peppercorns, making sure that the meat is coated in the wine. Cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours.

  Remove the buttocks from the marinade, pat dry with a paper towel, and set aside. Strain the marinade into a small bowl and reserve.

  Warm the olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add the buttocks and sear for 2 to 3 minutes on each side, or until evenly browned. Add the marinating liquid and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes or until the liquid has reduced by half. Add veal stock; season with salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil once more, then reduce the heat to low and cover the saucepan. Gently simmer for 2 hours, or until buttocks are very tender throughout. Long slow cooking gives the meat an unctuous quality and rich succulent taste. Stir in sherry vinegar. Serve drizzled with sauce.

  Nine

  There was an announcement over the PA system. “Inmate number 177252! Miles! You’ve got a visitor!”

  It wasn’t lost on Joe that his prison number was the same as the late Jeffrey Dahmer’s. It was an inside joke between the inmates and the COs. Minutes after the announcement, Joe heard the sound of boots on the tier, heading toward his cell. There were only three people on Joe’s visitors list: Selene, his lawyer, and his cousin. Between the three of them, Selene was the only one he would have been excited to see. But getting out of his cell for even half an hour was reason for excitement.