Posted by PK on December 29, 2001 at 18:40:13:
Belinda woke in a hot sweat. How long had it been? It seemed like a second ago but it must
have been years, she thought muzzily. She was in her own bedroom, safe and warm. The
light of the full moon lay stripes on the bed, shadows of the window frame. As her mind
focussed, she came to herself and realised it hadn't been that long at all. Eternity in an hour,
as Blake had it.
Blake. Right. Belinda's bladder was full. She got out of bed and relieved herself on the toilet.
Bliss. Getting back into bed she couldn't help noticing that the moon was full. She shivered.
It must have been the interview that triggered it, she thought. Reason against the Fall of
Night. Amanda on TV.
An image rose unbidden. A lair in the forest, Amanda spawning there, producing cubs? What
rough beast would mate with her?
"Why?" she had asked at last. "Why do you..."
No, that's not the way it happened. The order was all wrong. Belinda realised she was still
half asleep. Had it started when she defied Amanda?
Oh, yes. "You're going to kill me then?" She had asked. "Go ahead. I can't stop you."
No, not there. It must have been when she saw the interviewer - a pretty Asian girl - sitting
opposite Amanda on a cosy couch. Morning TV. She had wondered how the viewing public
would see the tall, urbane redhead in her black dress and elegant sandals. Not as she had
done, she knew.
She saw a tiger smiling. She saw Amanda's eyes appraising the girl as food, saw the easy
patience of the superior predator, something that....
"Not right now," Amanda had said at the time. She seemed amused.
The interviewer had asked 'probing' questions about Amanda's involvement in the hunting
fraternity, and a few about her new film. It was clear as crystal to Belinda that the huntress
had had some agenda in mind all along. It couldn't have been an accident that she'd come
along just at the right time...
And then, the offhand comment Amanda had made. The smile again, the one that challenges
you to see it as mere irony and is something far darker.
Why?
"I just like eating people," Amanda had said, smiling charmingly to camera.
That wasn't the worst of it, Belinda knew. She had seen the look on the face of the
interviewer. She had been pretending not to take it seriously but the body language gave it
away.
She's creaming her pants if she's wearing any, Belinda thought. Amanda could eat her raw
right now.
And she'd wanted to see it.