#then the dna ball clicks and clacks so good

[kollector-of-stims]

So we went on a road trip and I went to a Learning Express for the first time! It was a DREAM COME TRUE!! The closest one was in a neighboring state, so for my bday we took a road trip there! It was a BLAST seeing stim toys in stock that I had never seen in person before, only online! I love everything I got! And the little electronic drawing board with the axolotl case is good for drawing stims and non-verbal communication!

[taocastleprincess]

inktober for writers // day 4 // spell

He only goes hunting at night. Jay has lived in the row houses across the street from DeLereon College since before they were even row houses, when they were just unconnected frat houses that had the entire block smelling like cheap beer and bad weed. It was such a long while ago that Jay really had no business still being in such close corners with college kids anymore. He had a career, a 401k, his mom just started hounding him about “settling down.” He discreetly pulled back the curtain of his front window and watched the college freshmen pour out of the school’s side gate, dressed in tube tops, mini skirts, and strappy heels, just to get drunk at the shitty bar down the street with the watery vodka and the bad DJ. Harry’s has always been shit, Jay recalls fondly. Its only saving grace is that it’s a DeLereon staple, a rite of passage. Jay huffs then, an unintentional puff of laughter. It also doesn’t hurt, Jay licks his lips and continues to watch pretty girls stream out of DeLereon’s side gate in pairs and trios that’ll disintegrate halfway through the night, that it functions as a candy store.

He’s been doing this for awhile. The first time he did it, it terrified him. What would he do if anyone found out? What if they found his DNA at the scene? Would anyone report her missing? Did anyone see them together? Would being the prematurely balding, middle-aged guy within creepy proximity to a junior college put him on the Suspects List? But days passed. Weeks. Months. And he found the answers to his questions. When they found the body he would keep doing what he had been doing; continuing his average, lackluster life as a mediocre accountant. They won’t find DNA at the scene, whatever the woodland creatures didn’t take care of, the elements would. Parents will report their daughters missing, distraught mothers and angry fathers will call morning, noon, and night once they realize their daughters’ phones have been dead for longer than 48 hours. The school will tell them to wait another two days, don’t worry, they always turn up. Maybe she ran off with some boy at the bar, eloped for a long weekend. She’ll be back. They’ll wait another week before filling out the Missing Persons Report. The University President will sweat bullets, nonstop, for weeks. He’ll have nightmares. He’ll take an official leave of absence. Indefinitely. No one will see Jay with the girl in question. Everyone’s drunk, belligerent, horny, self-absorbed. No one saw anything. And if they did? Well. The vodka shots’ll take care of that. And, no, you won’t ever be on the Suspects List if you steer clear of “those damned fucking millennials” during the day and complain about how much you want out of your shitty neighborhood to any credible person who will listen. Play the role of disgruntled old man with no interest at all in sloppy drunk teen girls with no friends who walk around with dead phones in the middle of the night. The police are incompetent. DeLereon is complicit. The parents are immobilized. The media is uninterested. He’s free to run wild. So he does. Jay continues to watch the girls parade down the street to Harry’s. He never knows exactly what he’s looking for each time. One night he might favor a blonde, another night a girl in a pink dress or one that looks a bit dull. That’s the fun in it all. He doesn’t know until he knows. The girls go by in a never ending cacophony of tipsy shouts, the click-clacking of stiletto heels, and phone ringers marking the arrival of another ‘wya????’ text. They go by and they go by and they go by and Jay hasn’t felt anything yet. Only irritation and the mild arousal hinted at by the tent in his pants. The parade starts slowing down. And then it stops completely. All the girls who are coming out tonight are already out. Jay sucks his teeth and kicks the wall so hard he knows, without looking, that he’s made a dent. Sometimes, rarely, but it happens, his special nights end exactly like this. Frustrated and horny, angry and alone. He punches the wall one good time before stuffing his hand down his pants, stroking himself. He pumps hard, angrily, conjuring an image of the perfect girl for tonight. He wants a girl who absolutely glows. From the inside-out. He’s pumping so hard it hurts. It hurts so good. He wants a bitch who glows with a little more light in her eyes than usual. A bitch with so much light inside her, he’ll be able to see it drain from her eyes, her nose, her pores, and from her neck. From the gash he’ll make with the knife when he slashes her carotid arteries. He wants a bitch who bleeds light and blood and terror. He wants to drown in it all. He sees her as soon as he comes. She’s tall, but skinny, small; he could easily take her out. She’s dark with braids, white-blond highlights complimenting the almost ethereal glow emanating from her skin. He thinks he’s dreaming her at first but she says something. He doesn’t know what. She says it in a different language; she’s on the phone. Maybe she’s an international student. It wouldn’t be the first time one of them got left behind in the hustle and bustle. He smiles. Jay wipes his sticky hands on the inside of his shirt and lets the curtain drop. He’s found Her. He opens his front door and stands in the darkness for awhile while the girl with the braids starts walking in the direction of Harry’s. He always lets them get a head start. He loves a chase. A build up. He can feel himself hardening again. He follows her after a couple minutes. He can’t lose her even if she wanted. The girl glows like a nightlight. Like a big star. A tiny sun. He wonders, again, if he might be hallucinating. He sees her take a left turn. The wrong turn if she’s going to Harry’s, Jay thinks gleefully. The wrong turn down a deserted street. Construction is heavy during the day, but the halfway renovated street is completely empty at night. Dumb bitch. He wonders how long it’ll take her to reali— “Are you going to attack me now?” Her back is still to him but he knows that she’s talking to him. Her voice is thick with an accent he can’t place. “You’re a sloppy piece of shit. I smelled you from a mile away. You fucking stink.” She turns then and he finally gets a good look at her face. She’s beautiful, high cheekbones, full lips, a strong nose, and her eyes... They glow. They’re dark brown and they glow so bright they illuminate the rest of her features in a soft light. He’s so stunned by her otherworldly appearance he doesn’t quite understand what she’s just accused him of. “Are yo— I— ....Excuse me?” She takes a step towards him and, instinctually, his stomach twists with dread. Jay takes a step back. She smiles, phosphorescent eyes menacing. “I said, ‘I’m going to kill you.’” She walks towards him, casually, as if she were only strolling to the restroom. Jay’s mouth runs dry, his stomach clenches. He has to shit. The girl, woman... Thing... Continues steadily walking towards him. She’s such a pretty creature. Perfect, almost. Physically unoffending. Yet... something in him, some evolutionary sixth sense, is telling him he is in danger. Real danger. The kind of danger you don’t escape alive. He dashes down the street the way they came, heart pounding, legs burning, breath stilted. This is the first time he can remember being ungrateful for the lack of working street-lights in the area. This is the first time he can remember feeling... Fear. He hasn’t felt anything like this since The First Time. He’s running. He looks back and he doesn’t see anyone or anything but he still feels eyes on him. He wills his feet to go even faster. All he needs to do is get to safety. A place populated by even one other person. A bar, a drug store, a hospital, maybe, if he’s lucky. He sees it just as his lungs start burning and his legs start wobbling and his adrenaline has decided it has done as much as it can. A bright light leers at him from a distance, just beyond the next block, probably from the high beams of someone’s car, and the promise of an ending to this night propels Jay the rest of the way. Quickly closing in, he realizes the light isn’t coming from any car. Or anything at all. It floats, wraithlike, above his head. Ghostly, soft white light touches everything in sight. Chills shudder through Jay’s body; he lets his bladder go. A long, nasty laugh echoes down the street. It goes on forever. A moment frozen in time. “Big, bad serial killer pissed his pants?” Jay hears the girl, but doesn’t see her. The only thing he can focus on is the spectral light pulsing above him slowly floating within his personal space. “You dish but can’t take?” Another laugh. Another painfully long intermission. “Don’t worry,” the ball of light says, now only inches away from the man’s face. “I’ll take you out of your misery.” The girl materializes, the phantom light slowly forming her human-like shape and filling out her finer features. Jay thinks about running again, making a final last ditch attempt but, as he looks into the eyes of the girl he sees that it would be pointless. In the glow of those beautifully wicked eyes he sees bloodlust. Desire. Hunger. He knows. He’s it, tonight. Obayifo slashes Jay’s throat open with her pinky nail. His body convulses as blood sprays from the gash in his neck. It splatters against her long, Black neck and her slender chest. She shivers with pleasure as she watches the man bleed out and crumple to the street. She wipes her hand against her neck, smearing her hand in all his gore, and licks it clean. He tastes absolutely fucking disgusting. An absolute waste of a meal. She looks down to watch the man’s now lifeless body twitch. His face is frozen in an expression of terror. Eyes wide and crazed and dead. Dead. Obayifo belts out another long, demonic laugh. She’s got to get out of here. The sun will be out soon and she has other humans to really feed on or she’ll starve all day. She only goes hunting at night.

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A/N: An ‘Obayifo’ is a vampire-witch of Ghanian (specifically Ashanti) origin. In Ashanti origin, obayifo are very common and inhabit the bodies of ordinary people by possessing them with the ghostly, unnatural light that they emit from their bodies. They have the ability to travel as balls of light, which is usually how they draw their victims in. They suck blood from their victims from the inside-out.

I’ve taken some liberties with the folklore, obviously, as Obayifo did not inhabit Jay’s body and elected to drink from him the more commonly known way. I also didn’t (outright) show her having any witchy abilities... but... it still meets the qualifications for me!! lol, thanks for reading!