Chapter Text
“This is Alastor Leblanc , signing off for the evening~” His voice is smooth, slipping into the ears of his listeners, soothing them after their long day at work. He’s been hard at work too, talking for hours about everything from finances to his new favorite recipe.
Speaking of recipes, it’s time to get fresh ingredients again.
He pulls on his coat and gloves before stepping into the frigid air. About fourteen inches of fresh snow lay comfortably on the ground, squeaking beneath his feet as he walked to his car. Ruby red, it shines in the dark. It’s a single dot of red surrounded by white, like a bloodstain on a button-up. He’s about to step in when an orphan approaches, tears in their little eyes. How pitiful, a beggar. He waves them away after sparing some change, driving off without a merciful thought. He had been in that position once, if the child knew what was good for them then they’d focus on getting out of it. Best of luck to it.
He drives slowly, road slick from sleet and windows fogged from his breath. The lamps blur into yellow lines as he speeds, a chill seeping through his body before the thrill of the upcoming chase. He hadn’t been on a haunt in so long, hadn’t tasted the succulent flesh of a freshly murdered man- he was ravenous. The car screeches to a halt when he sees a cloaked figure dip into the road. Fool. Was he trying to get hit? He looked like a drunkard, stumbling along the sidewalk without a care in the world.
He looked easy to kill.
And he was, falling down and painting the snow beneath him red the moment Alastor’s knife pierced him. He was glad his new tool was working, he had made it himself after all. It was a small needle-like blade with a slim handle, easy to whip out and it could even fold into itself. Convenient, efficient, lethal. Carrying the body was always the hardest part, Alastor was a lean man after all. His car had enough space for four, although he only carried one body at a time during hunts. The backseats were dyed red from his previous kills, so much so it almost looked natural. Almost. He had stopped bothering to cover them, it’s not like anyone got into his car these days.
The man’s low cries filled his backseat as he drove, pulling him from his thoughts. On occasion, a cut would be enough to stop but not silence, he would have to aim for the throat next time instead of the chest. Alastor decided to let the man bleed out in his backseat, at least now the meat would taste a little fresher. He turns up the radio to drown up the pleas of the man, humming along with the Jazz song playing.
“… Oh, so tired I could cry …” He’s singing quietly, a rasp that seems to quiet the dying man down. “... Woman, I could just lay down and die …”
His house is too big for him, he shares it with the spirits in his basement. Most of them have turned to bone, the rest too weak to do more than groan. He kicks his door closed behind him, dead man slung over his shoulder as he stumbles into his butchery room. It’s a quaint closet, buckets of blood littered on the floor. He doubts he’ll need to do much draining with all the blood the man has lost on the way but decides to follow his usual method.
The human body is an interesting thing. So weak, so flexible, so juicy.
The man hangs in front of him stripped down to nothing. Alastor skins him, after all, he has no use for such ugly blemishes on such succulent meat. Without a face, most are unrecognizable- yet this man has scars deep into his flesh. He wonders if he was a former dealer, or perhaps an abuser. Maybe he was a soul led astray by addiction, regardless, none of that mattered now.
The man was dinner.
He had learned how to pop bones out of place to make dismemberment easier. Alastor cuts the body into chunks, legs separated from the torso along with arms. Now he can get to the premium part, knife carving a shallow hole into the chest. He peels the flesh away, mouth watering as blood trickles from the oozing wound. He wanted to drink, savor it, but his gut was telling him to wait, to be patient. He’s close, he’s dug into enough people to know where it is, where to stop slicing. Slowly, a heart weakly throbs in his hand as he rips it from its cave, spurting what little remains.
Alastor has always felt hollow.
Heartless, at least that’s what the men he’d kill would say while pleading for their lives. At first it angered him, but when he sat in his study and thought on it, the men were right. He had never felt love besides the love he had felt for his mother, and she had died a decade ago when he was just a boy. Now he was a man, always alone in a crowd. His fame had given him plenty of women but he never got the thrill he got from killing, no matter how many he laid with. His father had been with hundreds of women before he died and loved none of them, not even his wife, maybe Alastor was dealt the same cards.
No, he wasn’t his father.
He was going to find the love his mother promised existed- no matter what it took.
Even if it meant killing a dozen more men, torturing them, eating them, he’d do it. The men he killed were all street scum anyway, either abusers taking a walk before returning to beat their wives or thieves who tricked the most vulnerable. He was doing what the cops wouldn’t, corrupted bastards too busy filling their pockets to notice the disappearances in their own neighborhoods. They should be thanking him really, he was cleaning the filth, purging the town, freeing wives who were bound like his mother had been.
And all he asked for in return?
Human hearts.
The heart is the vessel for love, or so every book he’s read says. Every man he’s eaten has loved something or someone, even when it drove them to debt and decay, they gambled their lives away for a taste. He wanted that same taste, but it would never last. The thrill would be as short as the life he took, a moment of bliss that simmered into disappointment. He wasn’t sure what love felt like, but it wasn’t this.
A shame really, he’d just have to keep looking.