"Steal Often, Live Well"

by Anne Hutchins

Please don't call me a vampire.

I hate that. I really, really do.

Besides, I'll be out of this shit-hole in a few weeks and you can forget you ever met me. No one would ever believe you should you tell of me -- hell, you might not even believe my story once I've told it to you. But it doesn't matter -- I'll be gone and you shall have this tale of mine. Go ahead -- try telling them after I've taken my final leave of this place, they'll lock you up in a cracker factory for it. Who knows? Might be worth it -- better food, no work detail...

Anyway.

If you want to attach some sort of romantic moniker to how I gain my sustenance, then call me a "taker of souls." It's still not quite accurate, but a bit closer to the mark in defining what I am. I mean, the term vampire is so...over-used, it's become colloquial.

Excuse me?

I don't have time to explain "colloquial," you dolt. Get a dictionary for Christ's sake.

Anyway.

Vampires drink the blood of their victims -- some of the ghouls even gnaw at flesh, or so I've been told. What a nasty, distasteful procedure -- and a mess, besides. And you still must grapple with your victims a bit -- personally, I don't care for that sort of close contact. I have no desire to have the taste of human flesh upon my tongue. And always hunting at night, fearful that sunlight should turn them into a mound of ash. Oh, and if they don't feed soon enough, their flesh begins to corrupt and suppurate into the corpse they should be... Well, I digress.

So.

I absorb bits of a person's life, his personality -- even his appearance -- until there's nothing left of him. I assume his life, simply put. I slip into it the way you'd slip into a piece of clothing, one item at a time: underwear first, socks, pants, shirt, shoes, belt. You get the idea. Soon you have a complete package. That's basically what I do -- it's how I've survived for nearly two centuries.

Yes, two centuries. That's two hundred years.

I've been living this way for so long that sometimes I can barely remember just who I was when it all began. So many lives have passed through me. So many lives consumed and poured into what I really am: a formless lump that is no longer a part of humanity.

I'm a fringe-rider, a shadow-hugger.

You don't really see me when I'm near you, but you might feel me in the prickles at the back of your neck. You turn round suddenly, see no one. You smile and shake your head -- so silly to be frightened by a spring of shadow beside you. Why there's no one there at all. You continue on, perhaps whistling away your unease and putting a jaunty bounce in your walk -- a bit embarrassed by your abrupt, child-like fear of the bogeyman.

But it's me and I'm close behind.

But only when I'm hungry.

The "condition" was gifted me in 1830, the year before the Reform riots in Bristol, England -- which was where I'd found myself at the time. My employer then, the great engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, had won a contract to build a bridge over the Avon Gorge at Clifton in Bristol. Before that, I had worked for Isambard's father, Sir Marc Isambard Brunel -- joining in the elder Brunel's employ in 1822 for the Thames Tunnel project. My name then -- sometimes now I can scarcely recall it -- had been Hodge Bascomb.

I had been recruited directly from University by Lord Brunel himself -- quite to the envy of my peers, of course. My facility with drafting and with statistics had attracted the attention of University officials, which in turn brought me before the great elder Brunel.

Soon, at twenty-one, I had secured myself a nice room in a townhouse in Finsbury Square for a tolerable six pounds per month -- which included some meals and laundry. The reasonable sum was no doubt a compromise of sorts by the landlord, an elderly widow, since her townhouse sat between two madhouses: Old Bedlam and St. Luke's Hospital. Each night my prurient ears listened for the keening howls of the insane -- but to my disappointment, none were ever heard.

My annual salary of £350 was enough to guarantee a decent roof over my
head and entertainment suitable enough for a young London dandy. My fellows
and I would each Saturday evening hire a Barouche carriage and first journey
to Coal Hole, a club in Fountain Court off the Strand. There, in between games of faro and jeu d'enfer, we would feast on chops and kidneys, washing the food down with rum punch. Eventually we would find ourselves at Brown Bear or The Cock at the Haymarket, gambling and carousing, before finishing the evening at the Craven's Head as we guzzled port and played a last game of blind-hookey. I was often lucky with the cards and would leave the clubs with a fuller pocket than when I'd first entered.

Sunday mornings found me still in tail coat, waistcoat and gray stockinet pantaloons, stretched belly-down upon my bed as if I were an injured rider fallen across his saddle. Mrs. Elphick, the widow, would call up the stairs, informing me in a shrill, piqued voice that breakfast -- my one guaranteed meal each day -- was on the table and quickly growing cold. I would gather myself together as best I could and step carefully down the stairs, my hand half caressing, half clutching the banister. Mrs. Elphick required her boarders to take their meals in the kitchen, the dining room being reserved for herself and her unmarried middle-aged son. The three other boarders, also unmarried men in their thirties and forties, always favored me with knowing looks yet they never spoke a word to me. My plate of two poached eggs, toast and cold pork -- the usual fare regardless of request -- sat waiting for me at table. My temples throbbed as I chewed the meat and toast, my mouth still dry after each sip of milk.

Some evenings, when I found myself in need of feminine company of the hoyden sort, I ventured to Spitalfields for a "lady of the town." If I'd been particularly fortunate at gaming, I would take one of the "finer" ones for £1-5 -- but some evenings my pocket was shorter and I would find an amenable girl for a shilling. There were, of course, gentle-women which would be thrust at me from time to time by co-workers -- even Mrs. Elphick herself attempted a hand at matchmaking. (Though one had to wonder at the old woman's motive: tame the dandy or pawn off a niece in danger of becoming an old maid.)

But these were women who expected only to be escorted to Vauxhall Gardens or to theatre in Covent Garden or Cheltenham, where they could exhibit their elegant dress and giggle demurely. I could not expect more than to graze my lips across the back of a gloved hand at the end of the evening. Despite the sometimes fervently puritanical nature of Society at the time, I was still a young man with similarly fervent, albeit coarse, physical needs. Whether it was intended or not, even the briefest sight of an exposed gamine shoulder, neck or limb was enough to tease one's sex into a state of near-tumescence.

Witty conversation was the only aspect left to enjoying the company of the gentle-women of Society. However, many of the women introduced to me rarely read anything more complex than The Tatler. Only a few I encountered had read Lord Byron or were familiar with John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn." I myself was a consummate bookworm, often spending hours after work at the Royal Library in Bond Street. So, if those gentle-ladies could not entertain my mind then I desired that they entertain my body instead -- though such a request could never be broached in a gentle-lady's presence. And so I turned to gentle bodies instead, ones to whom the question need not be phrased -- for it was
currency which did the asking. So long as those lustful needs were met, I could endure the inane patter of those who were not allowed to sate my sexual desires.

Such was my life in London. To some it might seem an empty life, but it served me well, for as a young man in my early twenties, I aspired to nothing more. Oh, perhaps the thought of acquiring a wife and establishing a family crossed my mind from time to time -- but that was a future which loomed at least five years away by my reckoning. Until that deadline came upon me, I intended to go on as I was. Work and Carousing were the primary elements of my life and I had no desire to alter or add to them.

Until the year 1830 arrived.

I was twenty-nine years old and bit past my "deadline." I had decided to give myself another five years, convincing myself that I still hadn't met a suitable girl to wed. It was not for lack of offerings -- I was, after all, a handsome young man with a future. A good catch, I was often told. I was now earning more than twice my initial salary and had managed to put nearly a thousand pounds in the bank. I had acquired my own small townhouse in Russell Square, not far from the British Museum. I continued my life of work, play and discreet whoring. I thought I could sustain this existence until the end of my days -- with or without a wife and family.

Until the year 1830 arrived.

The younger Brunel, Isambard, had become a renowned engineer in his own right -- and an ambitious one. He had won a bidding competition -- against twenty-two competitors -- to build a suspension bridge over the Avon River in Bristol. It was decided that I would be part of a small team sent to Bristol to oversee the project with Brunel. It was apparent that I would have to remain in Bristol for as long as it took to build the bridge -- certainly years. I had no choice but to go -- I had an established career and was now the envy of many around me.

I refused to sell my beloved townhouse and so I sublet the home to a fellow engineer, a young man of twenty-three. It was my intention to visit London each weekend so that I could at least continue my social life there. It would mean traveling the whole of a day by stage between Bristol and London and would cost me a least twenty shillings each way. Eventually I was forced to seek more "permanent" housing in Bristol, the inn near Tailor's Court where I had taken residence having become too costly. Soon my finances compelled me to limit my travels to London only twice a month. Not long after, only once a month.

Bristol seemed a pleasant enough seaside town -- but to a London dandy, it was desperately boring. The town's main business was shipbuilding -- by 1780 there were nine shipyards in Bristol alone. Though it boasted cool, salted air and the dulcet calls of wheeling sea birds, Bristol was no Brighton.

I would, on some evenings and weekends, stroll through St. Nicholas Market peering at various goods for sale and people-watching. I would take a glass of claret or port (whichever suited my mood) at the few inns and pubs, and listen to the coarse chaff of shipbuilders, fishermen and warehousemen. Sometimes they would notice my interest in their conversation and, noting the fine cut of my garments, loose gouts of laughter in my direction. Never did they invite me to their tables, nor did I wish them to do so. I would gulp down the last of my drink and leave the premises quickly, lest they should decide to make sport of me.

I did find doxies aplenty in Bristol. I also discovered that I needn't be as discreet in engaging their services as I had in London. I found none that charged me more than five shillings for the night -- all healthier than many of the Spitalfields doxies I'd dallied with when I lived in London. I had no fine gaming clubs or theatres to visit, but I would have all the wanton coitus I wished.

Then I met him. The one who gifted me with my present condition.

I had been visiting regularly a small pub at the end of Corn Street called the Crow and Duck, largely because it was not frequented by the rougher denizens of Bristol. Shopkeepers, tailors and shipping clerks were the pub's primary patrons. A boring crowd, to be sure, but one in which I was left to myself -- nor was I in danger of either ridicule or violence. It was my habit upon entering the establishment each night to quickly note the "regulars." Often there was no variance in the number of patrons.

But on one occasion, there was a new figure among the familiar ones.

As I passed his table, he lifted a hand toward me, then swept it elegantly before the chair opposite him. "Would you care to join me?" The voice itself was hoarse, but the words were finely cut upon his tongue. A man of some education. He wore a dark Garrick overcoat -- at least twenty years out of fashion -- its high lapels shielding the sides of his face like a horse's blinders. The brim of his brown felt hat tipped low over his forehead so that I could not see his face from where I stood.

Intrigued, I slid into the chair and beheld my new "friend's" countenance. My eyes must have started for the man's face wrinkled in a knowing smirk -- as if he'd expected just such a reaction to his appearance.As much of a smirk as one can accomplish when one has nothing more than a slit for a mouth.

The man before me, simply put, had no discernable features. Save for his eyes -- pale blue stone -- there was nothing to distinguish his face from a pan of unbaked dough. His nostrils were nothing more than twin holes, pulsing wetly with mucous, and with not even a hint of cartilage beneath the pasty flesh. His mouth, closed, seemed to disappear altogether -- and when he opened it to speak, it curved upward like the maw of a shark. I did see a pink tongue twist in the dark cavern of his mouth as he formed words, and some small teeth appeared as his poor "lips" lifted in a grin.

But he had no face.

"My appearance disturbs you." There was smug satisfaction in the ragged voice -- as if he took perverse pleasure in the revulsion inspired by his lack of a countenance. Then, turning his head, he coughed fitfully into the palm of his hand for a moment. A few of the other pub patrons looked his way then turned their backs, guarding their cups -- as if they feared infection might not be far behind. The man drew a lace-edged handkerchief from the pocket of his overcoat and swept it across his mouth.

"I'm dying," he said simply -- as if that were explanation enough.I was loathe to ask of what the man was dying -- leprosy was something that had occurred to me, but he bore no lesions or wounds upon his face and hands (and he seemed to possess all of his fingers and thumbs, thankfully).

"Consumption?" I said in what I hoped was a sympathetic tone. I was curious now that I had decided the man was not a leper.

"Before I tell you of my...illness," the man said thoughtfully as a few tiny bubbles of saliva popped at one corner of his mouth, "let me introduce myself. You may, after all, be the last person who will hear my name spoken aloud. At least, my true name -- the one with which I first entered this world...so long ago. More than a thousand years ago, my new friend, I was known as Werwesios. I was a sixteenth century bc Minoan fisherman in Knossos -- you know, in the isle of Crete? You are familiar with that particular Greek island?"

The faceless-man, Werwesios, paused a moment, his mouth disappearing into the blanched pulp of his jaw once more. I'm certain he suspected I didn't believe him, that the periodic nod of my head as he spoke must have seemed patronizing. "Passingly familiar, I suppose," I told him, hoping my voice sounded earnest enough. "Go on, please."

Werwesios tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing, as if suddenly suspicious of my seeming genuine interest. "Well, then I needn't give you an overview of the period. Good -- we haven't time for that. Is your home not far from here? I would not wish to tell of my story...in this place."

Now my own suspicions were heightened at the man's suggestion. Could this faceless gentleman be, in fact, a brigand setting me up for a fork of my pockets and belongings? Still, something in the man's plaintive tone told me otherwise. "I have a small apartment near Tailor's Court," I said slowly, pensively -- hoping the man would read the caution in my voice.

Werwesio's lip-less smile curved upward like a line drawn in sand. "You think I'm some cutthroat cull after your worldly possessions, eh? Well, do I really look as if I might be capable of such thing? If anything, perhaps I should be wary of you." The man turned away and coughed dramatically into his handkerchief, no doubt in emphasis of this last pronouncement. "I wish to offer you a gift."

We sat in the tiny parlor of my apartment: I on a small chaise lounge, Werwesios settled in the armchair opposite me. I had offered him a glass of madeira, but the faceless man had waved it away. "I am beyond the need
of drink -- or even of food. I only desire now to tell you of my story.

"As I told you before, I caught fish off the coasts of Crete more than a thousand years ago. I was not an ambitious man -- working the nets was the only vocation I saw before me, all I ever expected of life. It was hard labor, but still I enjoyed the freedom of it. I enjoyed the taste of salt on the air, the hollow squeals of the gulls as they circled above the wharves.

"But one day I caught my destiny among the nets. Amid the squirming fish I saw something long and solid: it resembled a woman's slender neck. It was an urn, stopped with a bit of rough cork. I scooped it from the churning catch and held the urn in my hands, turning it over and over. There were markings, but I did not recognize them; I knew how to read script and ideograms -- my uncle had been a scribe. Even the urn itself was not of any style I was familiar with.

"I uncorked the urn and brought the rim to my nose. I smelled a honeyed wine within -- so sweet that it made my jaw ache. I decided not to tell anyone of my find and so I secreted the urn home. I drank nearly half the wine that evening, falling into a deep sleep.

"The next morning, as I washed, I noticed something unusual about my face as I peered into the water in the bowl. Somehow, my nose seemed flatter, less defined; my lips appeared thinner. I thought nothing more of it until the second day. I awoke with a weakness in my limbs and chest which turned into a yearning...for what, I did not know.

"I feared I would not be able to perform my tasks and so I did not go to the boats that day. Instead, I lay upon my pallet tossing and turning, my chest aching.

"And then I knew what it was. The ache whispered to me: If you would find someone and stay near him -- you will survive. I did not question that voice inside me, for I raved with an un-named hunger. I knew instantly which quarry I would choose. There was a man -- a scribe -- who noted the number of each catch as we brought it in. He seemed to live a good life: his hands were soft and he ate well. I stayed behind him as long as I dared -- luckily he took no notice of my presence.

"The longer I remained near the man, the more my hunger eased. I followed him as he walked home that night, staying close behind. Suddenly I knew with absolute clarity my purpose in pursuing the man: I was to assume his life and his identity -- and then I would not disappear. I knew I must make a final, physical contact to complete the transfer.

"He turned round once, perhaps sensing someone following him. I did not try to hide. I threw myself against his chest. He dissolved into me, vanished. I became him. I felt his thoughts mingle with my own -- as if they were mine. I knew where he lived, I knew his tastes in food and in women."And so I lived this man's life until the hunger came to me again -- little more than a year later. And so I hunted again -- this time I searched for quarry of a higher station. I tried to make each taken life last -- some lives I kept for a year or two, some longer, often less. Century after century I hunted and assumed the lives of others: and always a mantra running through my mind as I hunted, Steal often and live well.

"I heard the voice as my own, but they were not my words. So many different, exciting lives I took as I traveled across the continents. But now, after a thousand years I am ready to rest -- and that repose is coming swiftly behind me now. I have learned to ignore the voice within which has now grown weak.

"I saved the urn and the remainder of its contents. I offer its wonders to you now. I have watched you for weeks -- I have observed your apparent dissatisfaction with the life which has unfurled before you. I give you the chance to live a thousand years as I have, to enjoy as many different lives as you choose. Steal often and you shall live well."

I had been leaning toward Werwesios as he spoke, my elbows balanced upon my knees, chin cupped in my palms like a dazzled schoolboy. Of course the story was preposterous -- but what a wondrous fiction it was! I could not help but be entranced by its telling. "You carried this ancient urn of yours for a thousand years?"

The faceless man's head lolled against the back of the armchair as if the long story had dizzied him. His legs were sprawled open in a drunken manner, arms hanging limply over the armrests. After a moment his head came upright to face me and his right hand lifted weakly, fingers spidering beneath the folds of his overcoat; from it he withdrew a dun-colored clay urn the size of bottle of gin.

Werwesios carefully removed the cork and held the urn out to me, the vessel trembling slightly in his grasp. "Drink of it -- what can it hurt if you do not believe my story? You will have tasted nothing more than some wine offered by a stranger."

Indeed, I thought to myself. What could it hurt if I took a swig of the stuff? "You wouldn't be attempting to poison me I pray?" I said as I took the urn from the faceless man. A sweetly sour scent came from it, making my cheeks ache for a moment.

Werwesios managed a hoarse wheeze of a laugh. "Now you suspect that I am some murderous thief? Can you not see that I am dying? The only thing left to steal would be another's life -- and I am quite done with that. Go on -- drink!"

I said nothing more as I peered into the neck of the urn. I tilted the vessel, swirling the liquid within it gently. Once more the sour sweetness touched my throat, cheek and nostrils. What could it hurt? I thought again. If it is simply a harmless bottle of wine, then I should suffer nothing more than a bout of pleasant dizziness. Or I might simply retch the stuff up into a chamber pot later.

But what if the man's story were true? Would I awaken as faceless as he, with a hunger urging me to assume another man's life? I closed my eyes tightly for a moment, squeezing until I saw lights spiral in the darkness behind my eyelids. Then I opened them and gazed at the faceless man, this Werwesios, now leaning back sloppily in the armchair like a discarded doll, head thrown back. He seemed to be sleeping -- except that there was no rise and fall of his chest.

I rose, still holding the urn in my hand, and moved toward the dozing
man.

Gingerly I took Werwesios's wrist in my hand, but felt no pulse there. For all I could tell, the man was dead.

What had been left of the man's features: eyes, nostril-holes and mouth -- had at last disappeared. It looked as if a lathe had smoothed Werwesio's face with pale clay, leaving only shallow thumb-prints where his eyes, nostrils and mouth had been. Horrified, I realized that the man must have suffocated.

I felt my heart pound in my chest, throat and head as I gazed at the dead man before me. Panic mingled with excitement as I remembered the urn still in my grasp. I looked at it suddenly as if it were my salvation and my inheritance -- that I was some sort of prince offered a divine gift.I had never allowed myself to question whether or not I was happy with my life -- I had only accepted that I was satisfied with it. Now Werwesios had articulated the feelings I must have tamped down -- that my current life was leading me slowly to the inevitable conclusion of every man's life: death. That my life would be as anyone else's -- the tiresome progression toward the grave one day, one year at a time. No one would miss me as I was now. That last thought jarred me as if I'd been slapped.

I lifted the mouth of the urn to my lips gingerly, hesitantly -- as if the thing might suddenly grow teeth and bite me. The sweet scent of the wine beckoned and I touched the rim with my tongue, letting a small drop of the wine fall onto it. The sweet-sour taste of it ran a light razor along the inside of my jaw. The wine was seducing me, teasing me to down the whole of it.

In one mad tilt of the vessel I swallowed its contents, the volume of it nearly choking me. I fell to the floor, the urn rolling across the carpet as if to escape. I writhed fitfully, curling my fists beneath my chin -- but I was not in the throes of tactile pain. It was far worse: I had gained the threshold where the lines of pain and pleasure cross and then merge. I moaned softly, my hands now clutching my bent knees, rocking until I fell into darkness again.

The next morning I realized the faceless man's story had been truth. Just as Werwesios had discovered more than a millennium ago, I too found it as well. Only I knew what had happened -- I would not have to wait for the hunger to tell me what I needed to do.

I had awakened the next morning still sprawled upon the floor of my parlor. Slowly I began to remember meeting the faceless-man and listening to his tale of rebirth after rebirth courtesy of a bottle of wine. I came fully awake then. My head snapped up and I turned frantically toward the armchair, expecting to find in it the body of a dead man with no face.

But there was only an arrangement of clothing draped upon the chair, as if someone had set it out to be worn that day. For a moment I wondered if I had dreamt the meeting, the story. Suddenly I felt my bladder swell unbearably and I ran for the closet, opening my trousers and relieving myself in the chamber pot.

There was a small mirror on the wall above the chamber pot and I gazed into it absently. And learned of the horrible -- and wondrous -- truth.

Gazing back at me was a face I did not recognize as my own. The sharp bridge of my nose was gone and my lips had lost all definition. I should have panicked -- and I would have had I not listened to Werwesio's tale the evening before.

My thinned lips formed a canny smile.

It took me some time to choose my quarry. I had decided that I would not assume the life of my employer, Isambard Brunel -- for he was a man I considered brilliant and had much to contribute to society. I would not truncate the life of such a man. I would choose someone instead who had gained lucre through lucky happenstance: whether it be at gambling or inheritance or birth.

And then the Reform riots broke out.

The Bristol Mansion House was sacked by a seething mob as a Tory recorder arrived to hold quarter sessions as prescribed by the new Reform Bill. The angry mob turned to the prisons, opening them before burning down the bishop's palace. Only the arrival of a cavalry charge restored order, but the town of Bristol still held pockets of unrest.

By this time I was much weakened, not having had the time to settle on the life I would assume. My face now resembled Werwesio's as I knew him and I had donned his abandoned overcoat and hat. The hunger was now a living thing within me as I clung to the darkness within each street corner. I soon moved to posthouses, desperately hoping to spot my quarry in the new arrivals.

Just before I felt my strength would last no longer, I found him, my prey at last.

He was a dandy by the cut of his fine clothes and the disdainful way in which he regarded his surroundings. Ostlers and stable-boys grimaced as they hauled the young man's heavy luggage behind him. I guessed him for some well-moneyed Londoner come reluctantly to check on Papa's shipyard.

I hadn't much time left and so I acted quickly, rashly. The next time I would learn to plan ahead, take my time in researching and choosing my prey. But the "condition" had taken me so abruptly -- and I hadn't really believed the story true anyway. And so I followed him, closely.

The next day his life was mine and I was back in London again.

That first life lasted two and a half years -- the next lasted three, the one after only a year. I could never tell how long each taken life would last -- and if the life I had was a very good one, I prayed (not that God would grant any wish to such as I) that the life would go on and I would not have to hunt again. The longest of the taken lives lasted four years -- in nearly two centuries I should expect no more.

I stole often, and so I lived well.

The stolen lives took me to London, to Paris, to Rome -- and finally, to the States. Arriving in America, I took lives as I moved from New York to California -- there from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where I eventually found myself in the last decade of the twentieth century.

I had run out of prospects in San Francisco. I had assumed several lives there, a few in the city itself, the others in Marin County to the north. The first life lasted only a year, the others two -- I was afraid that too many mysterious "disappearances" might arouse some suspicion. Or perhaps not. But I wished to take no chances and so I decided to move south, to Los Angeles.

I scouted out a producer of films which went directly to video -- you know, "slasher" and "soft-core porn" movies I believe they're called. He seemed wealthy enough for my needs -- nor once vanished off the face of the earth would anyone other than his family miss him. His absence from this world would not change one tiny fragment in the course of history. I do care about this world, after all.

Life would be very good with this one. The man's personal wealth was more than suitable: five million dollars stateside, another three million in a Swiss account, tax-free. I would have a nice two-storey Tudor-style home in Pacific Palisades, a Porsche and a Range Rover in the garage. I would have a beautiful Titian-haired twenty-two year old with a 38-C bust named Nicki sharing my bed. Nicki had been the "star" of the last two soft-core video-movies produced. Oh, I hoped this one would last a long time once I'd taken it.

Still driving the gold Lexus from my last stolen life in San Francisco, I drove to the man's studios in Santa Monica. Sitting in the parking lot, my fingers twitching impatiently on the leather-wrapped steering wheel, I watched as my prey slapped open the door of the studio. The man stood in front of the glass door for a moment, a look of confusion twisting his features, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. Then he strode purposefully toward the Porsche, opened the door and slid into the shiny black car. The car's door closed with a harsh, cruel sound.

As I heard the Porsche's ignition growl into life, I moved the Lexus slowly forward. I followed the small black car as it turned sharply onto Wilshire Boulevard. Once the man had turned onto 26th Street, then again onto Sunset, I knew the man was headed home.

It was mid-afternoon -- a curious time for a film producer be headed home, I thought. I had assumed him headed for a power lunch in some trendy Beverly Hills bistro, and that his pique might be due to a deal gone awry. No matter, for it would be much easier for me to assume the man's life now -- I would take him in private, with no possibility of spectators.

I parked the Lexus a few houses down, leaving the keys behind for some lucky teenager. The man had already entered the house before me, and I heard muffled voices upstairs. Had I known what would transpire in those moments and had I not been so hungry for the man's life, I would have fled. But greed and hunger are stronger than reason and logic. And I had dallied far too long this time.

I was halfway up the stairs when I heard the shots: several rapid, crackling bursts of sound. Before I could turn and run, the man appeared before me, a 9-mm Glock in his right hand. He reached out to gab my shoulder and...disappeared into me. Just before the man's life spun into me,his wild expression settled into one of grateful calm -- as if he knew what was to happen, as if I would spare him the consequences of his actions. But he couldn't have known, of course.

Now I found myself holding the warm gun.

I staggered to the master bedroom where he'd just come, knowing what I would find. His thoughts were now mine after all.

He'd shot them both as they'd writhed together on the bed. Nicki and her lover, her co-star in the movie they'd been filming together. The bullets had struck her first as she straddled her young lover, blood matting the auburn hair around two small ragged holes in the back of her head. More bloody, powder-blackened holes peppered her upper and lower back as she lay collapsed upon her dead lover. A single bullet had made its way through the lover's forehead, just above his unfocused death-glazed stare. From the look of the ragged, upturned flesh around the gaping hole, the young man must have been shot at point-blank range, perhaps with the barrel pressed against his forehead.

I felt the heat of adrenaline prickle through me. I had just assumed the life of a murderer! In a century and a half of stealing the lives of others had I never made a bad choice. I knew that I could not make another choice until the hunger came upon me again. I was trapped in this one -- there was no escaping it. In an instant my fate was sealed.

I was still clutching the Glock when I heard a scream behind me. "Ay, Madre Santa!" A woman's trembling, hysterical voice. "Él les mató! Oh mi dios! Ahora llame al policía! Nine-one-one!"

I turned in time to see the heavy-set maid bring her plump hands to her face as she backed away, half-stumbling. Stunned by the accusation in the woman's voice, I made no move to stop her as she swung away the from the door, her heavy shoes thudding down the staircase as she ran.

I threw the gun away from me as if it alone were responsible for the heinous deed. The Glock landed at the foot of the bloodied bed.

As I ran down the staircase I heard a rush of Spanish and broken English: the maid on the phone to the police. Having no idea where to go, I ran out into the bright Los Angeles sunshine.

They caught me within an hour.

I had foolishly taken the Porsche -- the keys after all were still in my pocket. Desperately I had tried to make my way to the 405 Freeway, manuvering through the thick lunchtime traffic. It was my hasty plan to reach San Diego and then to slip into Mexico (impossibly, the Swiss bank account number had been committed to memory). The police had stopped me just as I'd reached an on-ramp to the Santa Monica Freeway.

The trial was a short one of course -- with both an eyewitness and circumstantial evidence, how else could things have turned out? I suppose I should consider myself fortunate (though I choke on the word nevertheless)
that I received only "voluntary manslaughter." No doubt there were those in
the jury who'd experienced similar rage at least once in their lives -- severe enough to commit a "crime of passion." Jurors are human, and humans can be very sympathic creatures -- despite the admonitions of judges and lawyers to the contrary.

I was gifted with a maximum prison sentence of eleven years. My Armani-suited attorney told me with a polite smile that I could be released in six years with "good behavior." I suppose he thought this bit of information a glimmer of hope -- but it might as well have been sixty years and not six. I was determined to spend not even a fraction of that time in some wretched gaol.

I would have to hunt. Soon. But it was not time -- the hunger had to be upon me before I could steal the life of another. It did not take long for my interment to be arranged -- soon I was shackled and put upon a bus, the gray towers of the prison itself looming down the road. But I would hunt. Soon. I promised myself.

So you understand my dilemma. And you also realize what I must do next to remove myself from this unfortunate situation.

Oh, don't look so alarmed -- I have no intention of assuming the life of a fellow inmate, even one with a shorter sentence than my own. A year has passed since I entered this hell-pit and I can feel the hunger beginning. Already my nose is losing some definition. I only have to choose.

And what do I have to choose from? The guards, of course. I'll have to take one of them soon. It's the only way I'll be able to walk through those gates, the only way I can avoid being hunted.

What a pisser-life this one will be: pittance salary, a nagging gutter-snipe of a wife, snot-nosed brats accusing each other of ill deeds. Or perhaps a loner with no social life who lives in a tiny studio apartment and drives a battered, oxidizing economy car. But no matter, I will do what I must to escape this purgatory -- even if it means exchanging one hell for another.

But it's only temporary, I'll remind myself.

I only hope it'll be a shorter life this time.

THE END

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