When I was much, much, much younger I was sloppy and ate live mice and squirrels and sometimes cats, or whatever I caught in my crude traps in the woods out back of my parent’s house. The little animals would claw and scrape and tear at my face while I ate them and I had to come up with explanations for the cuts on my face. I told my parents I was doing it to myself so they sent me to a shrink. He couldn’t find anything wrong with me. He said I was a very pleasant, bright young boy and should take care not to do foolish things. I didn’t tell him the truth.

I was stupid back then, but one adapts to circumstances or one dies, and I didn’t die. I learned techniques that became necessary, because soon I had to eat more often, and bigger animals. I didn’t start to eat people until high school and then it was just one kid, a gawky freshman. People are different from mice and a lot harder to get, but the nourishment has become absolutely necessary.

The only person that knew that I was a vampire when I was a kid was my grandfather. He caught me eating a raccoon in the bathroom and I was covered in blood, there was no way to hide it. I think I was twelve or thirteen. I say vampire because that’s what he called me. He was really calm, and looked kind of disappointed and said that it was okay and he would leave me alone until I was finished feeding. That was good, because stopping in the middle is exceptionally hard to do, harder than pissing. When I was done he came back and he told me to clean off my face and chest. He took the rest of the coon out back and burned it while I cleaned up. When he came back in he sat down on the toilette and told me about another vampire like me he had known in the war. The rest of the platoon made fun of him, and he had to keep stealing away to eat animals and people (never any of the other soldiers, he was good about that) but apparently he was a decent guy. My grandfather told me that my life was going to be rough, on account of having to eat people and animals from time to time, but as long as I kept my head and didn’t eat anyone I loved I would do fine.

He said vampire, but that’s not really what I am. I’ve never met anyone like me, but apparently there was someone like me in the war, so I bet there are some more. I eat food, but not much and I am thin, and I can go out during the day but I sunburn easy. I don’t have fangs, or anything else different. I can’t turn into any animals, or become fog, or hypnotize anybody, but then, I’ve never tried to do any of those things. Once, sometimes twice a month I have to eat a live person. When I was younger it was more often, but I could get away with smaller stuff. Now it’s a person or I don’t even feel right.

It’s a matter of nutrition. Without eating live meat, I get restless, then angry, then I go crazy because I feel my body dying on the inside. If I were locked in a room alone with all the regular food in the world I would die from malnutrition in three weeks.

I live in the city now with my cousin Paul. He’s a big shot and manages a bar. He’s never at home, and he’s got a big apartment and I kind of watch it for him. I had no place to go after college.

I majored in philosophy in California with big pretty girls. I never went back to eating guys, I just don’t feel right about it. I ate seventeen girls who attended the University while I was there. It was in the news, but only for a little while. I was pretty careful, and I planned, and I would bide my time, and in between I ate people’s dogs (everyone had a dog in college). I ate a lot more girls than seventeen, but for those others I took the bus into the city and did it quietly in alleys. Originally I made a deal with myself that I was never going to eat any girls at school, because it would endanger my education if someone found me out. But it was not long before the philosophy classes were getting to be too much for me. My god, have you been to California? The girls were all big and tan and smiling, and they raised their hands way up high when they wanted to talk in class. They chewed their pens and licked their lips. They had great big hair and full breasts and legs and buttocks and I would drool uncontrollably. One professor asked me to leave.

The first student I ate was named BECKY and she had on a sports bra thing. She was supposed to work on a project with me. She looked so friendly when we were randomly selected to be partners; she just whipped her head around and smiled at me. They were all so friendly in college, not like high school. We were doing a project on Nietzsche. She asked if she could come over to my dorm room that night and I said sure you can BECKY.

I chanted to myself over and over not to eat her. She came to my room and my roommate left. We worked with our books spread out on the floor, and she kept bending over on purpose and revealing herself. She was so plump and healthy that she looked ready to explode out of her sports bra thing. I lost control when she was talking about the child and the lion and the dragon, and I hit her with the hard cover anthology. She lay unconscious on the floor, hair spread out over the books. For an awful moment I had thought I had killed her, but then I heard her little breathing noises.

I was mad at myself for what I had done, but I made the best of it. She was of manageable size, so I bound her hands and one leg behind her back and put her into my hockey bag. I put her books in there too. I hoisted her into my beat-up car and drove to the desert. I revived her.

I apologized for hitting her with the book and took my first bite out of the leg I had not tied up; I start near the ankle. The taste was so amazing that I think I went into some kind of frenzy; I don’t even remember hearing her make much noise or anything. I know she must have been screaming for a good while, before she passed out from the pain. All I remember is that I was more than halfway up her calf when the meat changed in taste, and I knew that she had died. That’s the only firm rule people like me have to me observe when feeding. The meat must be alive. I lay down on my back in the desert for hours before I got a hold of myself again. Then I buried her and her books. After that I knew I absolutely had to eat college students, and so I worked out a schedule that I could live with.

I guess I really shouldn’t say I eat people. Rather, I eat parts of people. Generally from the ankle to the back of the knee, if I am lucky. It has, I have found, the most good meat that you can eat in one stretch before the person dies of blood loss. I can only chew and swallow so fast, and the blood really does come pouring out of there. And it’s not the blood I am after, really, not like real vampires. It’s a meat and nutrition thing.

When three limbs are tied or secured, the eating is easy. Actually, the person I am eating generally helps out by struggling, because in the intense pain of biting through their legs, the person reacts by trying to bend their leg, and kind of force-feeds me, because I eat from behind.

But now I live with Paul in the city. I watch his house, do his cleaning and cook his meals. He is the only other person aware of my behavior, and he tolerates me. He let me furnish a room in the basement to which none of the other tenants has access. It is sound proof and has an old dentist’s chair that I stole and bolted to the floor. It has belt straps for three limbs. I generally meet the women at bars or pick them up on the street if they are hookers and bring them down to the room. Some think it’s kinky when I put them in the chair, some don’t care. Some get very nervous and I have to knock them out, which is hard for me to stomach. I get rid of their bodies in a brilliantly simple way, but I am not going to tell how, or everyone will do it. I ate one of Paul’s lady friends once, and he got so mad I thought he was going to hit me. We eventually worked it out, and I realize now that it is very important that I never eat anyone he knows ever again. I am lucky enough as it is to have somewhere that I can live.

I like the sounds of the city, and bright sunny days that make everything look warm and comfortable. I go for my walks every day, for hours. I walk everywhere and talk to policemen, who like me very much. Most walks are just walks, I don’t work or anything. I get something to eat, I think about my writing, and just kind of wander around and nestle into crowds. Sometimes I wait in long lines, and at the end I just leave, and continue my walk. When I go on hungry walks it’s completely different.

I don’t do anything stupid. I don’t hang around campuses, stalk playgrounds, or wear a trench coat. In fact I dress in a suit, usually, and carry a briefcase and look at my watch a lot. I pick them, follow them, and watch them for a long time, and sometimes I let them go. I just don't get a very good feeling from some girls.

The meat in the city can be good or bad. On the whole, the big sunny campus girls were much better in every way, but that is a risky game to play for very long. People really notice when big pretty girls vanish from colleges. I took home one girl that I met on the subway that tasted exactly like bananas. I’ve had some girls that tasted so foul I couldn’t eat them at all. That’s a strange situation, me with a small piece of her leg in my mouth, her screaming all bloody hell, and I have to stop eating. It’s only happened a couple times and once I dressed the wound and let the girl go, because she was crazy and nobody would believe her if she told on me. I apologized and told her it was nothing personal. The other girl that tasted awful wasn’t crazy, and she certainly would have told and I would have gotten into terrible trouble, so I killed her with a shovel.

It’s funny that some girls taste awful on the inside. It makes me think maybe that they are bad people, to be rotten on the inside like that. The two that tasted terrible had little in common; it would be nice if there was some sort of distinguishing characteristic, like bright blue hair or something, that told me which girls were rotten. Then this kind of thing wouldn’t happen.

Just last night I was having dinner in the kitchen with a hooker named BOOTS when Paul came in from work. It was late, and BOOTS thought it strange that I wanted to have dinner with her before anything else, but she played along because I was paying her. Also, she was a street person and was hungry. She said that I had a nice place here, and I did not eat very much. I was salivating into my food watching her black calves.

Paul had never really seen any of my girls beforehand, except for that lady friend of his that I ate by accident, and looked surprised as he stumbled in. He was drunk and his shirt was open at the chest, showing his gold chains. He stared at the hooker and swayed a little. I said hello, and introduced him to BOOTS. He staggered to the table and slammed his hands down on it, shaking our food. He laughed angrily and leaned towards the hooker.

"You stupid bitch." He said, "Do you know what this little bastard is going to do to you?"

I said that that was enough, and tried to calm Paul down, but he was really drunk, and must have had a bad night at the bar. He pushed me aside and continued talking to BOOTS, who became distressed.

"He’s gonna tie you up downstairs and eat you. The sick little fuck eats people. He ate my best waitress. He eats…" Paul stopped at this, and threw up all over BOOTS. She gasped in surprise, and then stormed out of the apartment, yelling awful things and wiping vomit from her eyes. I was too shocked to stop her. Paul finished his vomiting in the sink, and I went to my room.

After a while, Paul came in and talked to me. He was more coherent after his spasms, and he apologized. This morning we had a big breakfast and talked more. He told me that last night was awful at the bar, and that he was so drunk that he lost control of his emotions. He said he was sorry for scaring off the girl, and that he had no right to interfere in another person’s way of life like that. We all have our needs and our practices, he said, and mine were as sacred as his were. We went for a walk after breakfast and looked at girls in the park.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I feel life is a beautiful thing. For someone like me to come out of college and have no place to go, and find a place to live with someone as understanding as Paul, is nothing short of a miracle. This afternoon’s sun gave an angled, holy glow to the shapes in the park, and the duck pond could have been made of gold and fire. I told him what girls I would like, and he showed me the ones he liked, as they jogged or skated by. We fed the birds and I shuddered with joy at how alike we were.