Prologue

The memories were fresh, not quite a year old, but still the urge was upon him. Colors were brighter. Sounds more distinct. His skin crawled with need. The cravings were coming closer together. Two years had passed between the last urge and the one before. This one assaulted him after only a year.

Go out among the revelers, the urge exhorted. Hang back and watch. An opportunity will arise.

Hunt! Stalk!

With a groan, he grabbed a jacket and left his hotel room. In the elevator as it descended to the street below, he adjusted the feathered mask to his wide face. The urge had become a compulsion, an overwhelming need directing his mind and driving his actions more and more each day. It now had complete control.

"Time to hunt," he muttered malevolently as he moved into the costumed crowd, a mass of bodies moving like a wave crashing on the shoreline called Bourbon Street. The masses grabbed him and carried him away without his volition. He didn't mind. The hunt was on, and he'd become an anonymous masked face in a sea of uninhibited revelers.

Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday. New Orleans.

"Show us your tits!" Someone screamed. Others echoed the sentiment. "Show us your tits!"

Standing on a second-story balcony, an overweight girl in her late teens jerked up her t-shirt. Pendulous breasts flopped out and jiggled, and their large dark nipples hardened and lengthened. Excited by the crowd? No, more likely the chilly air.

Ugly, heavy breasts. Like his mother's. He grimaced.

The frenzied crowd thickened and undulated like a school of anchovies in sunlit waters of a sea. Not attuned to the group, they crushed him with their bodies, pushing at him from all sides. He wanted to scream, but knew his cries wouldn't be heard over the roar of the crowd. Hundreds of eyes focused simultaneously as if they were one eye, like an eye of a fly, all fixed on pendulous, jiggling breasts.

"Show us your tits!"

Another girl on the same balcony turned her back to the crowd, dropped her pants and panties, if indeed she wore any, and bent over, exposing her ass to the hungry eyes looking up from the street. From his vantage point, he could see her cunt between her legs and the massive globes of her ass, an ass unattractive to most males at any other time. The crowd cheered raucously as she waved her fat ass, a dimpled ass, wide and gross, nearly as wide as his mother's. The large globes jiggled no less than the gargantuan breasts of her girlfriend.

Tits and ass! That's why the crowd had assembled on Bourbon Street, but not him. He had another purpose, one more sinister, more compelling. He watched two police officers move into the building with the balcony. Soon, the crowd would disburse and would carry him down the street until it thinned enough to let him escape its grasp.

Then he saw her. Another girl, but younger than big tits and fat ass exposing their ugly body parts to the crowd. The young girl's long, shiny black hair, hung straight and was parted in the middle of her head. A flat chest, tiny waist, girlish, narrow hips. Gangly legs, like a colt. Dark eyes wide with wonder behind a painted face.

The one.

She was alone. Where were her parents? He swung his head searching the crowd, looking for a frantic mother, a distraught father. No one resembled either parent. All eyes were fixed on the lascivious sights on display from the balcony. Had the crowd jerked her away from the clutched hand of a parent? Had the masses moved her with them as they'd moved him?

The hunt was done; the stalk began.

He fought the crush of bodies and moved slowly, inexorably toward the girl. She didn't appear afraid or lost. Instead, her painted face turned here and there, taking in the sights around her. A small, sly smile lifted the corners of her thin, narrow lips.

She's excited, he thought. She's pleased to be among the revelers, to be one of them, pleased she'd escaped the shackles of her parents' confining presence, to pretend she was an adult if only for a short time. That night, she'd probably lie in bed and relive the sights and sounds she'd experienced that day while she played with her little-girl pussy. That is, if she were still alive.

I'll be the one reliving the sights and sounds, he thought. I'll revisit the feel of her youthful, smooth skin, her tidy aromas, her luscious flavors. He felt his penis start to grow as he finally stood directly behind the girl. Fondling the switchblade deep in his right pocket, he moved with the masses toward the gay end of Bourbon Street where men dressed as women, some of them more beautiful than Las Vegas strippers. He knew about such men, knew more than he wished to know.

He'd need to get ahead of the girl, but first he had to position her at the edge of the moving crowd. He bumped her, pushing her toward the desired location, aided in his attempt by a fat woman dressed as a pumpkin. She'd probably used the same uninspired costume for Halloween. Expecting the girl to turn toward him, he sighed with relief when another woman on another balcony exposed her tits and the crowd surged toward the sight, aiding his attempt to position the girl so he could grab and pull her from the street.

He pushed and shoved and moved forward, leaving the girl behind. He wanted to look over his shoulder to make certain she'd remained at the edge of the crowd, but he stifled the urge until he arrived at a large door facing the sidewalk, a door to a courtyard hidden from the street, from the crowd, the door to the building he'd occupied as a child with his mother. She'd passed away ten years before, and for eight years he'd rented the apartments in the building to others. Today, as they were last year during Mardi Gras, the courtyard, the apartments, the rooms inside were all vacant.

Not for long, he thought, as he grasped a key and unlocked the door. He stepped through the opening and closed it behind him, leaving it cracked wide enough to observe the crowd on the street. Was the girl in the right place? Could he pull her through the door without anyone noticing?

The stalk had ended. Next, he'd take his prey. Then...

Chapter 1 »