MANEATER

The clean up is undignified. Messy. Degrading. It’s also necessary. I can’t very well walk around in public with blood all over me.

It’s everywhere: caking my hair, dripping from my mouth, coating my hands, splatters dotting my skin like freckles.

I still haven’t figured out a cleaner way to do this but maybe one day I will.           

As I scrub myself clean in the bathroom my pupils slowly shrink down to normal and my teeth retract one by one until I am left with the standard twenty-eight. I’m not too worried about leaving my DNA behind because I already know I’m not human. No matter what is discovered here, this won’t ever look like anything short of the work of an animal.

My phone buzzes with an incoming notification while I’m drying my hands. I swipe up on the screen to reveal a match on a dating app. I wasn’t expecting another match so soon, but it seems like this is my lucky day.

My match is like most of my others: milquetoast in appearance, someone who doesn’t stand out, average. Just the way I like it. I know people like this don’t get many matches and they usually have a small life too — fewer people to question their absence when they disappear.

I don’t do this for love. I don’t do this because I like a blood bath either. I do it because I have to. I do it to survive and if it comes at the cost of a random guy no one will ever miss, then so be it. 

Of course, it helps when the guy is terrible, like if he’s committed some crime or is just a jerk and the world would be better off without him. I tried that for a little while, but I had one close call too many to continue doing that. I can overpower most men, but it seems the menaces have a little more will to live than a typical nice guy.

So, nice guy it will be.

Victim number… who am I kidding, who’s counting anymore?

He wants to meet next weekend. I’ll be too hungry by then, too weak. It won’t do. I shoot off a message asking if we can do Tuesday or Wednesday instead, because of my ‘busy schedule’. 

After a little back and forth, we agree to meet for lunch on Tuesday. 

Satisfied with this, I tuck my phone in my back pocket and head out of the bathroom. I pass by the body on the bed, not exactly admiring my handiwork, but I’m not ashamed either. He was a nice guy; there was nothing wrong with him. He just met the wrong woman at the wrong time.

He was tasty though and his fingers were the best. I don’t usually go for digits; they’re kind of like the tips of chicken wings: not a lot of meat. But he was one of those ‘I work with my hands’ guys, and once I sampled one finger, I devoured the rest. 

His toes, not as enjoyable. His feet are a little mangled but most of the damage has been done to his arms. There are ragged strips of tendons hanging off his bones where I’ve torn the muscle off with the sharp teeth that erupt from my gums. The torso is mostly intact since his arms were so filling, and there’s the usual bite out of his neck from when I had to incapacitate him.

Blood soaks the sheets underneath him and it doesn’t look as much like a crime scene as it does an animal attack. There’s no telling how long it will be before he’s missed or when he’ll be discovered, but when that happens, I know that no one will suspect this was done by a human.

It helps to live on the edge of wilderness — anyone would suspect a bear or puma attack. Before I leave him, I open the windows in case any other small animals are hungry, like a racoon or a bobcat. They’ll help throw off the scent from the wreckage I’ve caused.

***

Hayes texts me all the time, and this morning he told me I needed to stop by because he has something he wants to show me.

I first met Hayes when we were in high school and we worked at the same restaurant. I was a waitress and he worked in the back as a dishwasher. He didn’t stay there long though, because he always had ambitions to be a chef and open his own restaurant someday. He went from dishwasher to prep cook to line cook to sous chef, all while going to culinary school.

On the other hand, I was less motivated, so I continued my dead-end waitressing career for as long as I could stand it and then pursued more prestigious pastures of being a bartender. The tips are much better, but that’s about all it has going for it.

When I was younger and more desperate, I had considered preying on men I met at work. That’s too risky though, plus the whole shitting where you eat thing never appealed to me.

My morals may be dubious but at least I have standards. 

Back to Hayes, who not only went from dishwasher to aspiring restaurant owner, but he also went from co-worker to friend to… I’m not really sure what he is to me now. 

The truth is, I’d like to be more than friends, but I care about him too much to do to him what I do to others. He can’t be a meal to me, and I know if I let the relationship go too far, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from eating him.

I’ve tried everything. Raw meat, bags of blood from the black market, even shellfish. 

So far nothing has curbed my appetite or lessened my cravings for a fresh body. I do eat regular food of course; I’m not a vampire. It doesn’t satiate me the way it does for ‘normal’ people though, and I can’t go more than a couple days without a human.

When I walk into the restaurant Hayes is working at on Tuesday morning, he looks out through the pass-through window at me and smiles. The smile reaches his brown eyes, and they crinkle at the corners. He’s in his element, working with food, and he loves to share his creations with me.

“Blair!” he says, grabbing a white kitchen towel and wiping his hands.

The restaurant is quiet; it’s before lunch service so there are a few cooks in the back with him and some front-of-house employees rolling silverware in napkins, but no customers. I visit often enough that the staff considers me an extension of Hayes, a fixture that belongs here.

My smile takes over my face, and I probably look like a lunatic, but I’ll take as much of Hayes that I can get, and every interaction lights a spark in me. We meet on either side of the pass and while it’s wide, we manage a hug over the counter. 

He smells like everything he’s been cooking: onions and garlic, fresh loaves of sourdough, housemade berry jam. He’s told me before that his least favorite part about being a chef is smelling like food all the time, but to me it’s just Hayes.

“You’re just in time,” Hayes says as we pull away from each other. “I was working on a new special, want to try it?”

“Sure,” I say, going for casual but still sounding eager. 

He can barely contain his excitement as he retrieves a fork and a plate of food from the kitchen. When he sets it on the pass in front of me, all I can do is stare. Bread and… bones?

“Bones?” I blurt out.

My first thought is: this must be some kind of joke. But I know Hayes would never do that, and furthermore, he doesn’t know my secret. I’ve managed to keep it from him, so he can’t be trying to mess with my head.

He laughs at me, but it’s kind. “Bone marrow. A delicacy.” He nudges the plate towards me..

It doesn’t exactly remind me of what remained of my dates, but I can’t help noting the resemblance. It doesn’t smell too bad either, and the bones are browned from being roasted, the bread mostly crevices to soak everything up. There’s a dainty salad of greens and at restaurants like this one; I never know if it’s a garnish or meant to be eaten.

“Have you ever had bone marrow before?” he asks.

Human, maybe, although mostly the bones just get scratched up from my teeth. I don’t dig any further since I like the parts that are easier to get to. Then I get full too quickly, which is a shameful waste of good meat. 

“No,” I say.

He scoops some out with the fork for me and holds it up. While Hayes has cooked plenty of food for me over the years, he’s never fed me like this. I take a moment to swallow thickly, enjoying the intimacy of it, and I open my mouth for him to slide the fork past my lips.

The marrow is creamy and mild, not at all like what I had imagined it would be. It’s buttery and nutty, slightly salty and… Oh. My. God. It’s perfect.

I nod my approval and Hayes hands me the fork. He smiles with pride while he watches me devour every bite. I slather the marrow on the toast and hope I don’t look manic as I eat, but I also can’t bring myself to slow down. I stop only when Hayes laughs softly, and I realize I’m holding a bone in both hands, and I was ready to lick it clean.

That’s too far, even for me. 

Hayes will not be a witness to my ravenous appetite, no matter how much my tongue aches for those last traces of marrow.

I drop the bone back onto the plate with a quiet clink.

“Yummy,” I say, and that silly word does nothing to describe it.

“Thank you,” Hayes says, almost bashfully.

He’s looking at me now, and I know that look. He’s going to ask me out and I’m going to have to decline. There is nothing more that I want than to be with someone I don’t feel like eating. Someone I can move through the days with, someone to be my partner. To talk and share and love. To grow old with.

But that life will never be mine. I’ll never have that.

I’ll never have Hayes, not how I really want him.

What I have instead is my lunch date, who I’ll eat after sitting through some tedious get-to-know-you conversation, that I’ll unfortunately have to be very invested in, otherwise I won’t get an invite back to his place.

“Our favorite band is playing on Saturday and I’m actually off,” Hayes says. “We should go.”

We should go, he’s right. But I can’t, because I know he’ll want more. I’ll want more too, but I’d rather have Hayes alive than dead with me.

“I can’t,” I say lamely, and the disappointment is all over Hayes’s face. He should be used to it now but, like me, he’s not. Every time I decline, my heart dies a little inside my chest, and I imagine it’s the same for him. “I have to work.”

“Okay. No problem.” He’s hurt, but trying not to show it. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

“I have to run,” I say, thinking of my upcoming date.

“Of course. I have to get back to work too.”

“This was delicious,” I say, pointing down at the plate I practically decimated. “Thank you.”

“Anytime, Blair.” Hayes smiles at me, but his eyes are sad. I try not to feel slighted when he picks up the plate and walks back to the kitchen. We usually hug goodbye, but not this time. 

***

The strangest thing happens on my date. 

He lives.

That’s not strange for most people. Most people usually live through their dates, but not the people I go out with. The people I go out with always, and I mean always, end up dead.

It went how it usually goes: meeting, talking over food, going back to his place. I’ll fast forward a bit because the next part is generally my least favorite and only a means to an end. It’s a reason to get their guard down, get them sleepy and vulnerable enough for me to take that first bite: ripping through the jugular so they bleed out quickly.

Except this time there was no bite. I didn’t salivate like I usually do. My pupils didn’t dilate; my teeth didn’t emerge. I laid in his bed while he drifted off to sleep, willing myself to go through the small transformations but they never came. I didn’t get the least bit hungry.

And then it hit me.

Hayes’s bone marrow.

It had satiated me.

Was this my cure? Would bone marrow be the antidote I’d been waiting for my entire adult life? Could I feast on bone marrow rather than humans?

Maybe I could finally have a normal relationship. Maybe I could finally get close to someone. That someone being Hayes.

I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much. First, I had to make sure.

My date was fine, but I definitely never wanted to see him again, so while he slept and snored, I hacked into his phone and deleted our messages and my contact information from his dating app. I dressed quickly and left. This was the first time I’d ever left a house without needing to clean blood off me and it felt strange.

I felt something I’d hardly ever felt before — hope. 

***

I spent the next couple days testing my theory. I couldn’t very well see Hayes again without knowing for sure. He was too important to me to risk his safety. 

I wasn’t a good chef; I wasn’t really a good anything. But I put every ounce of concentration into my project. I found a supplier of bone marrow and nearly gave up. The prices should be a crime.

Hayes is worth it though. 

I looked up recipes and went through all the painstaking preparations. I soaked and seasoned and roasted. I toasted some bread and I ate.

I went through the embarrassing trouble of setting up another date with another rando, just to be sure. I ate my marrow, I went on my date, and again my date was alive at the end.

Lucky him.

But also, lucky me. Two survivors are hardly anything to celebrate, but it was all the convincing I needed that this actually worked.

It’s Friday and I know Hayes will be working the dinner shift, but I don’t care. I can’t wait another moment to share my good news. Not all my good news of course; he doesn’t have to know I’m a maneater who managed to not kill my last two dates. 

The night is cool like it usually is up north where we live. The snowy mountains and big lake that bracket the town help to capture the icy air. Wolves howl in the distance as I hurry through the streets to Hayes.

The restaurant is packed when I get there, as I knew it would be. The staff tolerates me, but that doesn’t mean they like me interrupting a busy dinner service to flirt with Hayes, so I get some disapproving looks as I head back to the kitchen.

Hayes is plating food and he does a double take when I come through the swinging doors. He was probably expecting a waitress picking up food, but instead it’s me.

“Blair,” he says, his voice professional and clipped. “What are you doing?”

“Hayes,” I say, bouncing on the balls of my toes, the energy in my body palpable. “I can go tomorrow.”

He looks up at me, confusion on his face. He was in work mode, thinking about purees and cuts of meat, garnishes and fingerprint-free plate rims.

“What are you talking about?” he asks, setting two plates on the pass. A waiter whizzes by me, stirring the air like a windstorm, grabbing the plates and leaving as quickly as he came.

Hayes is free now, but the kitchen bustles around us.

“Tomorrow,” I say. “The concert? We can go together.”

Hayes steps around the workstation and leads me out of the kitchen by my elbow. I’m grinning, too happy to care about what’s happening around us. He leads me down the hallway, past the bathrooms, where it’s dark and quiet.

“Blair, I’m going with someone else,” he says, once we’re alone.

“What?”

There has never been a someone else. We’ve always carried a torch for each other. My dates have never been anything more than a meal to me. I’ve never had feelings for any of them. It’s always been Hayes, the man I couldn’t have.

“You said you couldn’t go.” Hayes shrugs a shoulder, and I know he’s not trying to hurt me, but he does. 

“Who is it?”

“Blair.” He’s firm, since it’s not really my business, but I’m dying to know.

“Can you cancel?”

“Of course not. I don’t want to cancel. I’ve known her for a little while and things are going pretty good. I really like her.”

Tears sting my eyes, but I hope he can’t see them. I wonder if it’s someone who works here, some pretty waitress who had pretended to be friendly with me when she was trying to get her clutches into Hayes all along.

“I ask you out all the time, Blair. You always say you can’t go.”

“But I can now,” I say. My breathing is irregular like I’m seconds away from a panic attack. Hayes is so close but now I’m about to lose him.

“I’ve waited,” he says, lowering his voice. “I’ve waited a really long time.”

It’s true, he has. But so have I.

“I can’t be expected to wait forever, can I?” he says.

He’s right, even though I don’t want him to be. Even though that’s exactly what I always wanted him to do: wait forever for me.

***

I’m a cliched mess of devastation with all the usual suspects: a tear-stained pillow, an empty carton of ice cream, and the barest will to live.

I’ve embarrassed myself so much in the privacy of my own home and the only thing that has gotten me out of my funk before is a fresh kill. I start to scroll my dating app for my next victim when I decide I can’t do this anymore.

Hayes was so close. I can’t just wallow and mope. 

He may have waited a long time, but so have I. And I refuse to be this close to having a normal relationship to have it be snatched away by someone else, someone who doesn’t deserve him.

I need to go get my man.

When I stand from the couch, the blanket I was wrapped up in falls to my feet, along with empty chip bags and candy wrappers. I’m pathetic. First, I need to eat some marrow. Hayes will still be at the concert right now, but by the time I’ve showered the couch rot off me and eaten some bone marrow, he should be home.

***

I look pretty good, if I say so myself. I always make an effort when I know I’ll see Hayes, but tonight I’m going for the kill. Not literally this time. Only figuratively. 

He won’t be able to say no because I’ll dazzle him with my smile and the personality he already loves so much. Whoever this person is that he went out with is surely too boring for him. She doesn’t have the history that I have with him. This was her last date with Hayes, and I’m going to make sure of it.

On my way to his place, I texted him, but he didn’t answer. It’s late and I know the concert is over. I refuse to give in to my fears that he went back to her place with her, but I walk hurriedly anyway.

The aurora borealis shifts above the mountains to my right, lighting my way. The forest and lake that skirts the town to my left is basted in pinks and greens. The cool night air prevents me from getting too overheated, but by the time I round the corner of the street where he lives, I’m panting.

Lights glow through the windows of his house, and it puts my mind at ease to know he’s home. If the lights are on, he’s awake, but I just hope she isn’t here with him.

I knock on the front door and wait on the porch for a minute or two, but I can’t hear any movement inside. I’m on Mission: Get My Man and willing to do anything, so naturally I try the doorknob and it’s unlocked. We live in a safe town, so I’m not surprised, and I’m about to announce myself when I hear him.

At least, I think it’s him. It sounds more like a fight, or a struggle. My heart jumps to my throat, but I can’t panic right now. I set my purse on the floor gently and walk to the back of the house with quiet steps. His room is back here. While I’ve turned down his advances, I’ve still been here before for birthday parties and movie nights, gatherings when I know there would be other people around and we wouldn’t be alone.

The door to his room is open a crack and I stand in the hallway, carefully peeking in while sounds of struggle continue.

Blood drains from my body when I see a woman on top of Hayes. She’s holding him down on the bed, her fingers unnaturally long and clawlike, her mouth open and revealing row after row of sharp teeth — teeth that look like mine when I’m about to eat someone. 

Hayes is doing a good job of holding her back, but I can tell he’s getting tired from fighting, and this struggle must have been going on for a while before I got here.

I lose it then, all control. I see red and have only one goal: protecting Hayes.

I have never seen another maneater; aside from my mother, I thought there was no one else. Here she is though, a woman I don’t recognize, trying to make a meal of Hayes. She’s messed with the wrong people though, because Hayes is mine.

Neither of them sees me enter the room. Although I’m enraged, I’m quiet as I creep up behind her. With quick reflexes I grab her, sink my teeth into her neck, and rip. 

Blood gushes and I spit out her flesh, not wanting her taste in my mouth. I know my pupils are huge, I know my teeth have come out, and I don’t want to scare Hayes but there is nothing else I can do. The only way I can save him is to reveal what I truly am to him.

The woman goes limp in my grasp as the life drains from her, and Hayes lays motionless beneath us on the bed, too stunned to do anything more than breathe. Panting for air, I drop the woman, flinging her away from me and onto the floor. I hate her for what she tried to do, for what she made me become in front of Hayes.

“Blair?” he chokes out, and I don’t blame him for not being able to comprehend that this monster in front of him is me. In almost ten years of knowing each other, I’ve managed to keep this hidden until now, until his life was threatened.

Choking back tears, I scramble off the bed and run to the bathroom. I want to get out of here, but I can’t go outside with blood all over my face. 

My thoughts race as I wash my face and hands. How will we dispose of her body? Will Hayes call the police and have them arrest me for murder? Where did she come from? Are there others like her, like me? How many of us are out there?

The house is quiet when I open the bathroom door after cleaning up. I don’t know how long it took me, but I scrubbed and scrubbed until my skin felt raw. I thought maybe he’d left, but Hayes is standing in the hallway waiting for me. He’s cleaned up too and wearing a tee shirt and sweatpants. His eyes are tired; what started as a normal day and concert date turned into him almost being eaten tonight. Of course he’s exhausted.

Never in my life would I have expected him to stick around and wait for me. Run to the police and call for my execution — yes. Waiting around and not looking the least bit scared — no.

“Are you okay, Blair?” he asks.

And this is why I love him. 

He was duped, attacked, and almost died, yet his concern is for me.

“Yes,” I say. I can barely look him in the eye. I know my appearance is back to normal, or at least what Hayes must think is normal for me, but I’m ashamed anyway. I hate that he saw me like that and I’m scared of what he thinks of me. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, just…” He runs a hand through his hair, processing. “I’m just confused. What was that? What was she? What are you?”

Stalling, I bite my lower lip. The woman and I have been exposed. There’s no point in lying or trying to make him think he didn’t see anything other than what he saw.

“She’s a…” I don’t really know the word for it. Maneater is what I’ve always thought of myself as. I’m not sure if we’re a ‘thing’, if we’re a ‘breed’. “She eats people,” is all I can say.

“Like a vampire?”

“No, more like a praying mantis, or a black widow,” I explain. Only a handful of species exist where the female eats the male after mating, and in my opinion, there aren’t nearly enough. Males should be eaten more.

I’m not even sure how I got to be the way that I am, all I know is that when I turned thirteen, along with ‘the talk’ my mother explained why I never grew up with a father. She gave me some advice but beyond surviving she wasn’t much help. We grew apart as I grew up and it never occurred to me to look for others like me.

“Okay,” Hayes says, nodding, trying to make sense of this. “But wait. You said you were ready to go out with me. Were you going to eat me?” He tries to take a step away from me, but his back meets the wall. It finally occurs to him that he might still be in danger.

“No,” I say quickly, hating that he’s scared of me. “I would never hurt you. That’s why I turned you down for so long. But I found a cure. That’s why I was ready.”

“A cure?”

“Yes. No. Not a cure, but something that helps me manage it, makes me not want to eat men. It was your bone marrow.”

“Really?” He looks like he wants to believe me but after all he’s seen tonight, I’m not sure I would believe me either.

“Yes, I promise. I love you, Hayes.” My voice is strangled, but I’m prepared to walk out of here without him. 

He’s staring at me, but I can practically see the thoughts in his head. He can clearly see how I avoided being alone with him to keep him safe from me. He can see how I saved his life when that woman was about to eat him alive. He can also see that I’m willing to give him up if he says he doesn’t feel safe around me. That is how much he means to me. I will risk everything for him.

“Okay,” he says finally, nodding.

He steps towards me and cups my face. He’s so tall that I have to tilt my head to look up at him.

“Okay?” I ask, unsure exactly what he means by that.

“I love you too, Blair,” he says, smiling. “Even if you’re a maneater.”

---

Michelle Balogh’s fiction work has been published in or is forthcoming with Santa Fe Writers Project, Tales From the Crosstimbers, Cosmic Double, Root Smoke, and others. She is also a regular contributor of nonfiction to the ABQ Mom website. She lives in New Mexico with her husband and twin daughters, and you can connect with her on Instagram @michellebaloghauthor.