Death comes mercifully
for prey. The fear, the pain is all in the chase, the struggle. Peace comes
with surrender. There’s such peace in surrender. I always feel it when my prey
ceases to struggle, that wave of peace that comes over them. I feel for that
certain moment when the breath stops and the body relaxes, so limp as to be
water. At that moment, I envy them. I’ve never in my life been able to sleep
that deep, to rest so completely. I don’t want to die, but only wish that I
could feel that kind of serenity. I’ve been finding myself wishing that more
and more in recent years. There’s a perfect completeness to death that is just
so lacking in my life.
So that’s what she did.
She exhaled no more and became like water. She wet my face as I ripped her open
and bit by bit, she disappeared into my stomach.
I ate until I felt ill
and sat down on my haunches, tired and
stupid, smarting from the wounds and contusions she’d inflicted on me, my
muscles quivering from exhaustion. Someone could have come along and kicked me over
and I would be too stupid to fight, too full to run. That’s when I’m at my
weakest, after I’d gotten what I wanted. Such a quick descent isn’t it? To fall
from the power to take a life to the impotence of being unable to save one’s
own. There was nothing for me to do then but find a safe place to hide and get
some sleep.
