When I arrived on Earth the first thing I had to do was shape shift into human form. Normally my real form consisted of a humanoid mosquito-like appearance. Everyone in the Underworld had a “mansquito” appearance. But once I ended up here on this freezing, smelly surface world I knew I had to disguise my appearance. Back home I was considered a stud and there was always a flock of women to greet me everywhere I went. But on the surface world my appearance was considered nightmarish.
The weird thing about being on Earth was the fact that I had the sudden urge to eat which was a feeling I had never felt before. Back home none of us had to worry about nourishment. So once I got settled on Earth I went to random bars and strip clubs and picked up women. At first I would lure them into back alleys. But eventually I stole a van and I would lure them into the back of the vehicle. With a needle like appendage that extended from my snout I would jab it into the tip of their skull and start sucking out their brains as a source for nourishment. It’s how I ate. I drained their brains.
The main problem was always getting rid of their bodies. I had to dig holes to hide the remains. But the funny part was the look on their faces when they would see me transform. I always found their horrified expressions hilarious. But then they would start to scream which was really annoying and not to mention I was always worried about the police showing up. So I’d usually keep a rock in the van so I could knock them out before sucking out their brain.
But after a while eating their brains just got old. I was getting pretty lonely because instead of meeting the right woman I had to kill them for survival. I really just wanted a companion but anytime I tried to get to know a woman on this realm of existence my survival mode took over and I would just end up using them as food.
My hunger became so insatiable that people started to discover the bodies and noticed the holes punctured through the base of their skulls. The media started to call me The Brain Drainer because they didn’t know my true identity. My name was Billy Ross. I took the name Billy Ross after I saw a cover of Jock Illustrated, featuring a famous athlete named Billy “the Behemoth” Rossdale. Apparently he’s a famous ultimate fighter on this world. But looking at the athlete I could tell he would’ve made a great warrior in the Underworld. So it made sense to take his name. I still couldn’t shake the name The Brain Drainer since it was all over the news and police kept finding the bodies. Luckily I had no human D.N.A. So I was untraceable.
I will admit when I first arrived on Earth I found humans amusing. They’re so juvenile. None of them would survive one hour in the depths of the Underworld. Besides, one glimpse of our “mansquito” appearance and they would have a meltdown. An example was the following night I drove my van to some run down strip club. I lured one of the strippers into the back of my van. She had this powdered white substance that she sprinkled onto a compact mirror. She began snorting it through one of the dollar bills that some drunk idiot from the audience gave her.
“Here, try it,” She said, sprinkling more of the substance onto the mirror. “This shit will kick start your heart, Motley Crue style.”
“Motley… who?” I responded.
The stripper busted out laughing. “Come on,” she said. “You’re fucking with me, right? Just snort the line.”
I leaned forward and snorted the white powder which ignited my senses. I felt like I could breathe. Normally I had difficulty breathing but this stuff allowed me to breathe Earth’s atmosphere.
“What is this?” I said.
“It’s cocaine,” she said, laughing. “Jesus dude, where have you been?”
The stripper sprinkled more onto the little mirror and began to cut it with a razor. I leaned forward again and began snorting. This stuff made me feel invincible. I felt a sense of warmth which was something I’d never felt before. Coming from a place like Hell there was no such thing as love and warmth. The only warmth we felt down there was from the endless ocean of Hell’s fire. But what I didn’t realize was the drug was affecting my shape shifting abilities. My human appearance was slowly regressing back to my demonic “mansquito” appearance.
I could see her facial expression drop to a look of pure dread. She screamed and grabbed a switchblade from her pocket and jabbed the blade into my throat.
I pulled the knife from my throat and attempted to chase after her while gripping my neck. But needless to say, she got away. It’s too bad. I was getting to like her, but even she couldn’t accept the fact that I wasn’t even human.
“You’re doing it all wrong, slick,” a voice
said from down the alley.
“Mind
your own business,” I shouted back.
The figure was sitting and leaning against the wall. He got up and approached me. He held up a lighter, revealing his face which contained two long scars on each side of his mouth. The scars formed a Glasgow smile. In fact that was his name.
“The name’s Johnny Glasgow. You might want to shape shift into something more settling there, slick.”
“How do you know I’m a shape
shifter?”
“I’ve encountered your kind before. You’re demons. Yeah, the minute you guys fuck up, Satan banishes you here for a while. But then you guys always go back. I’ve seen it happen several times before.”
“Well, I think I’m banished here
for good.”
“Then it looks like you need a
friend,” Glasgow said, patting me on the shoulder.
“Pssh, you should talk,” I responded, lighting a cigarette which helped my lungs breathe the atmosphere.
“Touché,” Glasgow said. “Here, I got something for you. It’s inside my shed, which is also where I live. But at least it’s a roof over my beautiful face.”
“What is it that you have?” I
asked.
“I’ll show you, but let’s step
into my office before the popo' sees us.”
“The what?” I asked, sounding
utterly confused. I still had to grasp their lingo.
“The police,” He said, “Where have you been… in a cave? Pssh, what am I talking about? You’re a demon...of course you’ve been in a cave.
I followed Glasgow to his shed. He unlocked the door and inside everything was neatly in place. I mean for a hobo he was pretty well organized.
“You live here?” I asked.
“Correctomundo…
now please, sit.”
I sat on a chair chewed up by rats. The entire chair was covered with little teeth marks punctured across its surface.
“So tell me about that girl you were trying to bang before everything went to Hell, no pun intended,” Glasgow said, reaching for a needle that was full of some shady substance.
“I just get so lonely,” I said. “I had this crazy thought that her and I could possibly copulate without me sucking her brain dry.”
“And that’s why they call you
The Brain Drainer,” he said.
“You know about that?”
“Pssh, the entire country knows about The Brain Drainer,” Glasgow said, tying a tourniquet around my arm. He injected the needle into a vein. “Now this will fix your whole complexion,” he said, pointing to the "mansquito" side of my face. “Next time, ease up on the blow...if you want to keep your human form intact. That shit will dehumanize your looks...if you know what I mean.”
I must admit once the heroin took hold, the euphoric effect made me feel invincible. I could feel the tingling sensation of my human skin replenish itself. Within a moment my human face was whole again.
“You’re all set, slick. I wish I had that ability. It could take care of my whole disfigurement problem,” Glasgow said, pointing to his two mouth scars.
“Too bad you live on Earth,” I said. “The women down in Hell would drool all over you. Scars are considered a sign of masculinity down there.”
“Hmm, I’m not sure if I go for that whole insectoid look. That’s not my type,” Glasgow said, lighting a cigarette before plopping himself down on a seat next to me. He tied a tourniquet around his arm before injecting a needle. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “I’ve been thinking,” he said.
“Thinking about what?”
“You and I should go into business together. If the two of us work together and join forces, we can kidnap victims and sell their body parts to a Chinese market on the dark web. We could make a fortune. I mean you do have to eat, right? So instead of going through the painstaking effort of burying bodies like a dog, we should work together, and sell the parts from your victims.”
His idea made sense. Both of us were a couple of outsiders living in a world that despised anyone that didn’t fit the norm of society, so the two of us hit the streets in my van. Glasgow loved cruising the darkened streets at night. He said that the two of us were like Duke and Gonzo. Not being from around here, I didn’t catch the reference.
Glasgow was too fucked up most of the time to do much driving. He mostly just tripped on acid in the back of the van while I cruised the streets. I swear there were times I didn’t even know why I kept him around. It was maybe so I could use his big shed which is where we packaged our victims.
After I knocked them out with a rock, we drove back to the shed and got right to work on dismembering the body parts. We stole a heavy duty bone saw to dismember the bodies. I will admit, it was a lot of fun. But the best part was when we actually began selling the body parts to the Chinese market. I couldn’t believe it worked. The two of us were making a living. We were like a couple of peas in a pod. With the two of us joining forces, I claimed more victims than we could count, and I’d never felt fuller in my life. I was draining more brains than my appetite could handle.
We went out again that very night and it was so easy to lure a victim into my van, or as Glasgow jokingly called it, the “Free Candy Wagon.” The victim was a local guy people referred to as Ganja Jim. He went back into the van thinking that he was getting stoned with a couple of crazy guys, without realizing what fate really had in store for him.
This victim was easy to lure because like everyone else, he was fixated on a small rectangular device which seemed to zombify him. Glasgow told me the devices were called “smart phones.” It must’ve been the illuminating glow from the screen that seemed to put them in a trance. So snagging an idiot like this guy would be a no brainer, no pun intended, especially since I was ready to feed.
Ganja Jim was too stoned to even realize that I was about to suck his brain dry. He was tokin’ on his bong when the needle appendage began to emerge from my snout. I jabbed the protuberance into the tip of his skull before he even knew what hit him. I began my nourishment. I feasted freely until I felt full again.
Glasgow was up front, but he was asleep at the wheel. I nudged him on the shoulder and told him to get going. When we drove back to the shed, all seemed quiet. We had no clue what was about to ensue.
We dragged Ganja Jim’s body into the shed, which was now full of body parts from prior victims. Their various organs were stuffed into jars full of dry ice chips, ready to be shipped. Glasgow and I began to use the saw to carve up the body. Both of us giggled like a couple of high schoolers as we dismembered the body parts. I admit we were having fun, and now I felt there was a reason why I was banished here. My best friend and I were running our own business. I felt like I could be happy here...or at least that’s what I thought.
My heightened hearing picked up on footsteps approaching from outside. At first I thought it was another hobo attempting to break into our little compound, but I was wrong. The door flew open, and in came a swarm of swat team members.
“Get down on
the ground...NOW!” The swat leader shouted.
Glasgow ran toward a duffel bag full of the body parts. He scooped up a couple of the dry ice jars and made the attempt to run toward the exit door. But before he was able to reach the door, he was shot in the back.
That was the moment when I felt something I’d never felt before…fear. I mean, sure I’ve encountered other feelings before, like loneliness...but that hole had been filled, until this raid. I watched as another bullet plunged into Glasgow’s throat right before he was dragged away.
The police pinned me to the ground and were about to handcuff me. But once they caught a glimpse of my physical form shape-shifting back into my “mansquito” appearance, they backed away. I stood up, and the swat team couldn’t help but gape at my inhuman features. But it was when they spotted the bright flashing light of Hell’s gateway that really caused them to flee. Through the temporarily opened portal, many screams of tortured spirits could be heard from within.
Now I had to admit, I didn’t want to go back without my buddy, Glasgow. But I knew it was time. I had completely screwed things up on this planet. I knew Earth wasn’t ready for our kind. When I had teamed up with Glasgow, I felt like I had found a brother. He filled that lonely void. The two of us were the dynamic duo of murderers.
I lay on the ground, completely transformed into my original “mansquito” form. I lay there the same way I came into this world…alone. The officers had all fled because of the portal.
My father, the Dark Lord’s number one servant, had stepped through the portal. He reached his hand out, assisting me. I staggered up, and noticed that he was surrounded by a group of his own soldiers from the Underworld, followed by a female. I must admit that I found her enchanting. The horns on her head looked very neatly trimmed, and her flaxen insectoid skin looked well-manicured.
For me it was love at first sight, or maybe it was the fact that I was lonely again, since my best friend was killed execution-style right in front of my eyes.
“It’s time to come home,” my
father said.
We entered the portal leading back to the Underworld. I was hoping to see Glasgow’s soul there, but I never found him. That could mean he wasn’t dead, or out of some weird glitch in the Afterlife’s system, he ended up in heaven.
But as time went on, I forgot about Mr. Glasgow, because I had found the love of my life...and what a feisty woman she was. She really wore me out. We made love anytime and anywhere we could. Our favorite spot was near this stream of molten lava. The two of our humanoid mosquito-like bodies intertwined with each other. I couldn’t remember a time I felt this much at peace...especially here in the Underworld.
The two of us looked deeply into each other’s large, oval-shaped insectoid eyes. We leaned forward to kiss. Our antenna moved erratically because of the intense feelings we had for one another. I poured her a glass of blood wine which came from the sins of the many souls trapped in the Underworld. The both of us spent the rest of that romantic evenings for two, sharing the sin-filled bottle of wine.
I love this story, Flesheater. You really bring the pathos!
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