He moved away from the boy, who was bent nearly in half. Blood still leaked from his body, but slowly. Another burst of panic set in, and he hated himself for hurting the boy, for hurting Chelsea’s brother…
Chelsea!
He ran back to her room, collapsed beside her body. Tears and saliva dripped from his face, soaked into the gaping wound of her mouth. Chuck rested his forehead against hers, wept, held her hand in his.
But as her cold flesh touched him, he realized it wasn’t because of her he was filled with such abyssal sadness. It was because of the absence of Kip. If he could just be with Toad again, everything would be okay, everything would be perfect.
Now he remembered perfectly well. Chelsea had been trying to take it from him. That’s what she did. Her family too. They all got what they deserved.
Chuck stood, stomped on Chelsea’s split head with his heel, as hard as he could. Meat squished and bone cracked, and he kept pounding down on her, screaming, muscles aching from being so tight and tense.
A weak moan floated into the room from somewhere in the house. Chuck ran toward the noise, stormed down the stairs until he found the woman. Her crooked legs were being dragged behind her and she clawed at the ground. When she saw Chuck, a scream exploded from her throat.
A man lay on his back, his head cracked open like an egg. Gray meat oozed out, and there was so much blood. But he wasn’t moving, wasn’t screaming. So it was the woman Chuck went after, lifted her into the air with ease. She was small, light, could barely fight back.
When her body left the ground, she made a series of gurgling and coughing sounds, as if she was trying to scream but couldn’t get it past the blood in her throat.
Chuck walked her across the room toward the wall by the front door, roared as he threw her against it. Her body slammed into it, hit the ground hard. She gasped, groaned, writhed slightly. Chuck bounded toward her broken form, grabbed both ankles, spun until her body hovered over the ground, then slammed it into the wall again, painting it red where her face smacked it.
She stopped moving then. Stopped making any sounds at all.
“The Toad is mine!” When he said it this time, his voice shook, the need making him weak.
He was out the door and sprinting down the street then. The sun was gone. The night sky was littered with gray feathered clouds and the air smelled electric.
Chuck’s body throbbed with withdrawal, but it only made his legs pump faster, working double time to get him back to Toad’s place where he could beg for another hit. Anything. Just something.
I’ll suck his dick if he wants me too. I bet his cum is just as good as his pus and blood…
It didn’t take him long to get there. The closer he got to Kip’s house, the more powerful his need became. It was like the house itself was radiating heat, and by the time Chuck stood in the front yard, staring at the kids as they feasted on Toad’s motionless body on the porch, he felt completely engulfed in flame.
A few of the kids lay in the grass, giggling, rolling around and touching themselves. The first boy that Chuck ran up to caught Chuck’s foot to the middle of his face.
Stomp stomp stomp.
They started to run away then, as if they had had enough. As if they had reached their peak and no longer needed Toad. Which meant there was nothing left for Chuck.
Most fled at the sight of Chuck rampaging toward them, cackling into the night as they scattered in all directions. Those too fucked up to move off the lawn were pummeled out of frustration, but were numb to their own pain, and they eventually joined the others and disappeared into the blackness surrounding them.
Only Jade remained. She held Toad’s head in her lap, sucking on his forehead, but she sobbed, shoved the boy’s head away and buried her face in her palms.
Toad wasn’t moving, didn’t look like he was breathing. His skin had taken on a purple, almost blue color. His eyes were completely white, rimmed with a neon green, that same green ringed around each nostril and at the corners of his mouth.
“There’s nothing left,” Jade said and shoved Kip’s body completely out of her lap.
“But… but there has to be. I need him.”
Jade paced the front porch, then started slamming her forehead into the door, again and again, muttering something that Chuck couldn’t decipher.
Chuck ran his hands over Kip’s body, looking for any bumps the others might have missed, but they were all craters now. And no blood ran out of them. Some blood stained the concrete, and Chuck quickly ran his tongue across the rough surface, hard enough to strip layers of skin, but he kept licking, desperate for any taste at all.
Then he smelled it. He wasn’t sure how Jade could have missed it. Or maybe she was too fucking stupid to realize. Chuck wanted any part of Toad. Anything.
It seemed that at some point in his struggle, Kip had shit himself. Maybe it was like Chuck had heard—he couldn’t remember where—that people shit their pants right after they die. He couldn’t tell if Kip was dead or not, but the scent of shit was heavy in the air, and though it didn’t spark his addiction, he knew it would work. It would work just like the pus and blood.
Chuck looked up and Jade was still slamming her head against the door, crying and screaming. There was another quick spark of the old Chuck, just quick enough for him to remember how much he loved Jade, how badly he wanted to be with her. He had an urge to scoop her up in his arms, keep her from hurting herself, take her away with him where they could be together and share the last offering the Toad would ever give.
And now Chelsea is gone. Out of the picture. It can just be me and Jade, forever, just like I always wanted.
But now… he didn’t want that. He only wanted to be alone with his fix, just him and Toad’s shit. Somewhere secret, where nobody would find him, where nobody could try and take his prize away from him.
He shot one last look at Jade, and she seemed completely oblivious of his presence. His eyes drank in her body, and his groin stirred, fluttered once, but remained flaccid. He had other things to worry about, more pressing things.
Kip’s pants had already been torn, his boxer shorts already pulled down to the get at the forest of acne on his ass cheeks. But globs of dark shit lay in the seat of the underwear. Chuck took hold of the soiled fabric, ripped it free of the body. When the light hit it, iridescent colors rainbowed across the surface of the feces. Greens and purples and pinks and yellows.
It’s mine… it’s all mine.
Chuck wanted to do something to help Kip, only because if the kid died, Chuck knew he would die right along with him. Without Kip’s secretions, Chuck didn’t know how he would live through the night.
He checked in every direction. Nobody was there. Then there were headlights, growing brighter and brighter, and before the car could get any closer, Chuck tucked the warm shorts under his arm and sprinted into the night, heading straight for the trees.
“Is that… is that Chuck?” Gwen had both hands on the dashboard, peering out through the windshield.
Chuck was naked, looked completely covered in blood. He held something, looked like some kind of clothing, but as soon as Zak pulled up, Chuck took off. Zak lost sight of him almost instantly, but didn’t bother trying to chase him.
“That’s fucking Kip… oh shit… Oh god!” Zak fumbled with his door handle, his hands shaking uncontrollably.
Kip lay on the porch, completely still, his body riddled with wounds. The same type of wounds as before, like empty eye sockets, but this time there was no blood. The wounds looked fresh, glistened like raw chicken. Kip wasn’t moving at all, not even the up and down of his stomach to show he was breathing. His skin looked awful, a strange purplish blue color, not the pale color of someone suffering from massive blood loss.