"What does it mean to be a real predator?" I have heard those words echoing in my mind every day since the day I first heard them.

I twitch an ear to the sound of the door closing behind me and turn my head to see her standing there. I smile a toothy grin, "come." I invite her, as I beckon her closer. I sit on a nearby chair and pat my knee for her to sit in my lap. I see her silhouette move toward me in the dark. The lights are off because I thought it would make me seem more ominous, somehow the idea appealed to me, that i could be the monster in the dark that everyone feared as a child, although now I realize how boyish that is.

She crosses the room to me but stops just short of me. She is trembling. She is terrified.

She is prey

Who wouldn't be? I sigh and reach out for her. She whines, but doesn't run. With large, muscular arms, a killers arms I lift her up and sit her on my knee. She cries, but when I don't immediately tear her to pieces she calms slightly, just slightly. I bounce my leg rhythmically as thought rocking a babe to sleep and I pet her ear, trying to put her at ease. "Are you alright? You aren't hurt are you?" I know she isn't, but I ask anyway. She shakes her head. "Just afraid?" No response, only sobbing. "It's alright to be afraid. You should be afraid." the words are spoken softly, tenderly, but their message cuts deeper than any knife could. "Tell me about yourself. I want to know more about you."

She looks at me, surprised, confused. "Does it matter." she whimpers.

I guess I'm not what she expected. I'm much much worse. "No, but does it matter that it doesn't matter? I want you to tell me why you came here."

She nods. "Well, I..." She tells her story, one that's tragic, but all too familiar. Family, poverty, medicine, living on the edge of starvation. The world is a cruel place, for some more than others.

It isn't easy to live as a predator in modern society. I spend many hours wishing I had been born a prey, to live in fear of predators rather than living in fear of myself. A prey might look at me and think I have it easy. Sometimes I feel like they may be justified to think that with all the compromises that need to be made to accommodate someone like me: my size, my diet, my hunter's instincts. My community has made adjustments to accept me and at the same time adjusted me to accept it. I am a polite, kind, helpful, productive member of society. I am neutered.

When I see a prey on the street, walking to his job, talking on his phone I wave and say good morning, and he says good morning back to me. We are friendly, civilized people, but every time there's some small, inescapable part of me that wonders.

What does he taste like?

The person I am in the real world is like a mask that I wear. I wonder sometimes which is more real, the mask, or what I am underneath. I remember one day in school another boy, a prey, said I wasn't a real predator, could never be one. what is a real predator? He hit me, dared me to bite him, even pressed his paw into my mouth, it made me gag. "What does it mean to be a real predator?" he asked me. I didn't bite him. Thinking back to it I believe he was just trying to get out of a homework assignment, not understanding the danger he was in, not realizing that I could have killed him. In that moment, being prodded and beaten and told to embrace my feral nature I could not do it. The mask does not come off just because someone else wants to see what's underneath. To be free of the mask I need the freedom to take it off myself.

Freedom is atavism, pure and perfect. To act without fear, or remorse, or consequence on every selfish impulse that crosses your mind.

How beautiful it is to be free.

How terrible it is to be free.

I could destroy her with a single motion, and there is a kind of satisfaction to that, like smashing an expensive vase, or setting a house on fire just to watch the shapes of the roiling flames. But this isn't just catharsis.
To devour her now would be to satisfy the darkest of desires, that nebulous drive of instinct that pushes me closer to what some might call insanity, but all predators know to be the purest truth.

She concludes her story and I nod as though I had been listening. "I am sorry for you, desperation is terrible, I would not wish your situation on anyone, but I am also thankful for your desperation because it drove you to me." She nods, perhaps thinking that if she humors my thoughts I will go easy on her.

I won't.

"I don't hate you..." I stroke her cheek and she looks at me with tear-stained eyes, "but I'm going to kill you.." I wrap my arms around her frail body.

"and I will enjoy each moment of your suffering as you die."

I squeeze her, enveloping her not in a hug, but a prison. She squeaks in fright but does not resist me, can not resist me.

She is mine.

Not just because I bought her, money is only paper.

She is my prey.

She cost me two years savings. my father, such a frugal man, would never understand never understand such an expense for so small an indulgence.

Two years of my own life for the rest of hers.

The smell of her fear fills my nostrils. worth every penny.

Buying a prey is a luxury many predators cannot afford, usually only the rich partake.

The rich, how I hate them. Were riches measured with water rather than paper they would drown themselves in their own private oceans just for the gratification of seeing the rest of us boil in the sands of the desert, and those of us with the will to survive would disembowel our brothers and sisters to quench our thirst with their blood.

Blood!

I need blood. I extend a claw, sharp as a razor and trace a gentle curve over her trembling cheek leaving a thin cut behind. The red liquid of life oozes from the laceration, a single drop, but once the smell of it is in the air, in my nostrils, in my lungs I know

I am a carnivore.

What does it mean to be a real predator?

I know what drove her here, the decisions she made, but now that the decision has already been made... is she as resigned to her role as prey as I am resigned to mine as predator?

"If I were to let you go, would you run?"

I would chase you

She is silent except for her shuddered breath, and then, "...Yes." in such a low whisper I almost miss it.

I would kill you

I squeeze her chin between my thumb and index finger, forcing her head back to stare up at me. I look into her tear filled, terrified eyes. I want to witness this. I want to watch the light leave her eyes, see as she ceases to be a living, breathing individual

and becomes nothing more than meat

Her breaths come rasping and short, her eyes well up with tears as she squeezes them tight shut, trying to block out the horror of what is about to happen to her.

"Look at me." She does not.

"LOOK! AT! ME!"

She manages to force her left eye open a sliver, then both eyes go wide as she sees the long, sharp fangs, the viscous strands of saliva, the long, dark, tunnel of my wide open mouth.

My tongue slides from between my lips and laps over her cheek at the cut I made there. I can taste her, I taste her blood, taste her fear.

The tamed man is struggling to let go of his morals

The instincts of a killer animal cry out for blood.

Can I really do this?

Can I really do this?

Child.

Prey!

Lover.

Food!

Friend.

Meat!

Artist.

Kill!

Dreamer.

Eat!

Eat.

Eat!

Can I really do this?

I can really do this!

What does it mean to be a real predator?

And then I release her, not from her body but from mine. I draw my arms back and she is free, no longer a meal, no longer mine. She hesitates for just a moment, as though not comprehending that she is still alive. Then she flees. she pushes herself off of my knee, forgetting that she is two feet off the ground. She falls on her face with a thud but scrambles to her feet and runs to the door, tears streaming down her face. She opens the door and slams it shut behind her. I can hear her crying as she runs away.

Why did I do that? Why did I let her go? Could it be because I can't afford her? Not at all. She can keep the money, it's just paper after all. Was it because society's grip on me is tighter than I thought? Could I not slip my mask even if I wanted to? No, in that moment when I held her I wanted nothing more than to embrace what I had been denied for my whole life. Then why is she still alive?

Perhaps it's because I love her. I have known her for less than an hour, but I do love her. She is loved by many, and she loves them as well, enough that she would die for them. She is beautiful and she is unique, but most importantly she is alive.
What does it mean to be a real predator? What does it mean to be a real prey? The answer to both questions is the same, even if they are different. What does it mean to be alive? All living things have a primal nature and just as my nature is to kill, hers is to survive. She was meant to run, to escape, to live. I love her because she is driven by her own instincts just as I am driven by mine. When given the choice she ran, and so she will run.

Run, run, run little prey. Run away from the monster.
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Here is something a little different from the norm. I had a lot of fun writing this.
If you couldn't tell I was inspired to write this after watching Beastars which I loved.
I may build on this story and write a part two at some point in the future but for now I'm very happy with the way this came out.

as always
Feedback and suggestions are appreciated