CAR-NIVORE

Prologue

Timothy Bowman, a middle-aged balding fat man, entered the kitchen of his decrepit, two-story ranch home and opened the refrigerator. It was empty aside from a bottle of A1 steak sauce and a half-finished case of Bud Light.

Tim loved steak, especially when they were fresh and cooked rare. Luckily, he had some more. Tim grabbed a can of Bud, opened it, and headed to the basement.

While descending the stairs and sipping his beer, Tim could hear a faint sobbing. Hanging from a meat hook in the center of the room was a bleeding, naked, teenage girl. The hook pierced just below her shoulder blades, suspending her three feet above the ground. Four-by-five-inch slices of flesh had been removed from her legs and buttocks, each carved with a butcher’s precision.

At the sight of Tim a primal scream wracked the girl’s body. He set down his beer and picked up a butcher knife and dinner plate from a blood-stained table.

“Please mister, don’t do this,” the girl begged in a whisper. “I need to get to a hospital. I need to go home.”

“Relax honey; this will be the last time. I promise…all the tender cuts are almost gone,” Tim said, almost robotically.

His stomach growling, he cut into her right buttock until the sound of approaching police sirens broke his concentration.

The girl laughed weakly. “You sick pervert, you’re finally going to get what you—”

Tim’s blade cut deeply into her throat, turning her last words into wet gurgles.

The sirens growing louder, he ran to the garage in a panic—but only after taking a moment to lick the bloodied knife clean. Tim started his navy blue 1970 Cadillac DeVille, turned up the radio, and didn’t bother waiting for the garage door to open. Tim ripped through the aluminum door, sped down the driveway, and turned left—narrowly missing the first two police cruisers arriving at the scene.

Looking in the rearview mirror he could see the police fast on his tail. Tim weaved between cars in an attempt to swerve oncoming traffic into the police cruisers. Tim abruptly turned into an alley, but quickly realized that he had made a deadly mistake—it’s a dead end. He put his car into park as police lights flooded the alley.

“Exit the car with your hands over your head!” one of the officers ordered through a cruiser loudspeaker.

This is it, he thought.

Then it happened.

It was as if time stopped. The sirens on the cop cars froze as a red light shimmered inside the Cadillac. The only sound Tim could hear was his own breathing. He noticed a movement in his rearview mirror. Someone—or something—was sitting in his back seat. The figure looked burned beyond recognition and had two black horns protruding from his temples.

“I am not who you think I am,” the creature said. “I am not Satan.”

“Then who the hell are you, and why are you in my backseat?” Tim asked nervously.

“I am simply a fallen angel, and as an angel my mission is to help people like you,” the creature smiled, revealing sharp and crooked yellow teeth, “especially people like you.” “What do you mean people like me?”

“You have the attention of my boss; he’s a big fan of your work. In fact, we all are, and we want to give you a chance to continue with your…vocation.”

Just then the seatbelt tightened around Tim’s chest. Wires from the dash wrapped around both of his arms, then ends piercing his skin and sliding into his veins. Tim screamed in agony as the wires pressed further into his body, from his wrists to his neck then to his head. Looking into the mirror he watched the wires squirming their way under his cheeks and forehead. That was the last image Tim ever saw as two wires burst from his eyes.

Tim screamed in horror. “You’re killing me!”

“Quite the contrary, I am giving you a new life. You want to be free, you want to keep killing, and you want to keep your car. So be it.”

Tim felt a surge of electricity then nothing.

The cops had surrounded his car with their weapons drawn. When they opened the driver side door there was no one to be found.