Prolog
The knife slipped easily into the salesman’s abdomen. He turned the blade and sliced diagonally; spilling his intestines onto the concrete floor he was standing on. The man stared bug eyed down at the mess that had been his insides with disbelief. This can’t be happening to me, he thought, and tried once more to free his hands from the duct tape that bound them, over his head, to the water pipe that ran the length of the basement. This can’t be happening, there’s no pain, shouldn’t there be pain? He stopped struggling for a moment and looked into the man’s eyes as if looking for confirmation that yes, this is all just a dream that you will wake up from in a second. But the man only stared back with those blank, dead fish eyes, watching as the light that had been the salesman’s life slip from his eyes. The last thing the salesman saw was the man pulling his large intestine taut between his hands and taking a bite out of it, whipping his head side to side violently, to tear a chunk off and swallow it. And then the salesman was dead. The young man stood in front of the dangling dead salesman for a moment watching him before he continued to chew his mouthful of rubbery gut flesh and listening to the sounds of the salesman’s insides wetly slapping the concrete in a pile between them. He took a step back and surveyed the naked, fat body, trying to decide which piece of him to cook first. Finally, after careful consideration, he took the long, curved shaped knife and cut a thick slice of meat and muscle from the salesman’s thigh and went up stairs to put his roast in the crock pot. He added two quartered potatoes, a few plump carrots and two cans of cream of mushroom soup, just like his mother used to when he was a child. When he was finished getting his meal started he went back down to the basement to dress the man out. He put the rest of the intestines and organs in a wheel barrow and rolled it to the big basin to be rinsed off and cut the rest of him into meal sized portions. When he was done butchering and sealing his prize into zip lock freezer bags the only thing left of the man’s carcass was bones with hands, feet and ribcage in tact. Chunks of meat and sinew still hung raggedly from the exposed arm and leg bones. The last thing he did before burying the body was to very carefully saw around the skull to remove the brain. It would make and excellent dessert in the form of a pie or a nice pudding. He put all his packages into the  stand-up freezer and went up to take a shower and finish preparing his meal. Later, when he was done eating he would go and get his new vacuum cleaner from the salesman’s van and then drive the van into the barn to dispose of later.
A few more fat ones like him and I’ll be set for the winter, he thought to himself as he finished spraying the blood and smaller pieces into the basements floor drain. He liked it when they came to him, to his home. He wished all his food would just come up and knock on his door. Traveling around the countryside looking for prey was such a pain in the ass. Although he had to admit, He did enjoy the thrill of the hunt which he would have to do a lot of very soon. Here it was the end of September and his freezer was nearly empty. There was no way he would make it through the long, cold winter with the freezer empty. Stalking his food was such a slow and tedious process. Dangerous too, he thought. It gets harder and harder every year and he had to range further and further from home to keep suspicion down. You can’t have too many people disappearing in one place. Especially close to home. But that was okay, He had already rented a storage shed (with a drain) and put a stand-up freezer in it near the University about a hundreds miles away. If there was one thing he really enjoyed, it was a nice, juicy college student. The young ones were so much easier to digest. They had less fat and fresher tasting than the plump, old salesman upstairs cooking in his crock pot. The full moon was only a week away. He could already feel his muscles ache in anticipation. There was a lot to do between now and then. If he didn’t get started soon, he would have to stay here for the cycle and he had already done enough damage locally. He liked it here. He had to be very careful if he did not want to move again. Of course, it could all wait until after dinner.




Chapter One    College
Lydia stood before the postings board located on the wall between the students bathrooms in the crowded main hall of the University of Omaha. As other students hurried to and fro going to their next class she surveyed the field trip sign up page to see if anyone else she knew had signed up yet. Most of her friends had taken the folklore class for the same reasons. It was an easy class with very few written assignments and it was worth two credits. For her, it was an added bonus that the professor was simply put, the cutest, and dreamiest professor on campus. Everyone she hung out with had signed up plus several names she did not recognize. The trip, to a small town about a hundred miles from campus named Logans Bluff promised to be a blast if it were anything like the last one. Ten students had gone to a town just outside of Branson, Mo. To explore and expose a local folk tale that involved a supposed ghost that haunted an old mansion turned Bed and Breakfast. The “ghost” as it turned out was nothing more than a story the owners had conjured to try and drum up business and a semi serious rat infestation. She and her then boyfriend Robert and spent almost half of the four day trip in Branson partying and seeing the sights, which included a Tony Orlando concert. She frowned when she spied Roberts name on the list banishing the hope that he would not come on this trip. She didn’t want anything to spoil her plans for her new beau Antonio.
As if summoned by her thoughts of him she felt Antonio’s muscular arms slip around her waist from behind. “What’s the sad look for, Babe?” he whispered into her ear. “Hope you weren’t thinking of me just then.” She turned into his arms, brushed her long brown hair out of her pretty, blue eyed face and flashed him her beautiful smile. “Nope, it’s just that BOB is coming on this trip. I hope he doesn’t start anything.”
“Well. I could erase my name and let you two rekindle your old flame.” She pinched his ass hard and said “Don’t even joke about that. I don’t know why I ever hooked up with that loser in the first place. Now I can’t get rid of him.”
“Jeez, sorry, sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I just hate to see you frown.” He pulled her closer and gave her a kiss.
“Get a room, you two!” Linda rolled her eyes when she walked up, accompanied by her inseparable friend Linda. The two ‘Linda’s’ were always together. They grew up together, went to the same high school together, both dyed their hair platinum blonde, wore almost the same clothes, took the same classes, shared a dorm room and more often than not finished each other’s sentences. Everyone called them Lin and Lindy and rumors of their sexual orientation abounded. “Hey, are you two going on the trip? Antonio asked. “Of course we are!” The two girls answered together. “Lindy and I have plans for Professor Anderson.” The two girls smiled at each other mischievously. “Yeah,” Lin replied, “We have a big surprise for him!”

The Monster
The man was sitting propped up on ratty pillows on a mattress on the floor of his bedroom. Vanna White was turning letters on a black and white portable T.V. that was almost obscured by all the trash, clothes and junk strewn across the dresser. The room, like the rest of the house, had an odor of turned food and dead animals. Dozens of cats of every shape and color roamed freely about the house, adding to the carnage. There was, however, a distinct absence of dogs. You wouldn’t find one within five miles of the place. Even the cats knew to stay a reasonably safe distance from the man. Most of the older, wiser of the felines stayed at least five feet away and always kept their eyes fixed on him.
He sat there, staring at the T.V. but not actually seeing it. He was thinking about the notice he had seen posted at the college. It seems he would not have to range very far from home after all. It was ironic to him that the stories, the folktale, the urban legend that he had labored so hard to keep quiet was the very thing that was to feed him this winter. He let out a loud, phlegm-filled laugh that startled every cat in the house. They were coming to him this year. His mouth watered at the prospect and he wiped it with the grimy, pungent sheet he lay upon.
On the T.V. Pat Sajak’s smug, smirking face was replace with a dog food commercial. The commercial he had been waiting for. As the dog started to bark, every cat in the room looked at the set. At that moment he snatched a charcoal colored one year old by the scruff of its neck. The movement was unimaginably quick. As he held it before him he raised his other hand in front of his face, The knuckles suddenly gnarled and the fingers became elongated and unnaturally curved. The fingernails stretched out over and inch and sharpened into razor like claws, black and cracked. The hair on his hand and wrist became thick and coarse. At the same time, his lips sank into his face and his teeth grew large, yellowed and pointed making his huge grotesque mouth too huge for his face. He buried his gaping fangs into the cat’s belly and ripped a mouthful of its stomach all the way to its spine nearly tearing the animal in half. His features began to convert slowly back to normal as he noisily chewed and slurped his morsel. He slung the carcass into the corner and the rest of the cats that had been cowering and hiding began to slink over to finish his meal.
Cats were good in a pinch, but he was glad he had taken the salesman’s kidneys out to thaw.


The class
The chatter in the room dimmed only slightly when Professor Anderson entered the classroom. He did not gain their full attention until he completed his ritual of talking off his sweater and hanging it on a hanger that always hung on a nail by the door, putting his brief case on the small metal file cabinet and opening it, taking out, shuffling and placing the inevitable pile of papers on the desktop and then coming around and sitting on his desk facing the class. He would then take his glasses off and start to clean the lenses with a handkerchief. At that point, the room always became silent. This amused him to no end and sometimes he would draw this ritual out, a funny little smile on his face. He rarely had any problem students in his classes. Everyone liked him. Most of the girls secretly loved him, either for his boyish smile, his keen intellect or both. He was nearly a spitting image of a young David Soul, pre-Starsky and Hutch years with his wavy blonde hair swept to one side and his light blues eyes that sparkled with young intelligence. It would have been perfectly natural for him to suddenly produce a guitar and start singing “Don’t give up on us, Baby”.
He paused a few moments as he surveyed his class of young college student, girls over boys at least two to one and the boys that were there, were there for the girls.
“How many of you” he started, “signed up for the trip this week-end?”  Instantly, the room began to chatter again as eight hand s went up. He let it, picking out snatches of conversations of why this student could not and that student would give anything if they only could and various excuses around the room. He held his tanned hand up and the chatter stopped just as instantly. He smiled. “Fine, fine.” He said and folded his hands in front of him. For those of you who could not go this time around that’s just fine. There will be other opportunities and I will be expecting a paper from each of you upon my return with suggestions of other urban legends we might investigate later in the year. As usual, please be thorough with locations, dates and a complete breakdown of the legends. And please, this time, just facts. Neatness and originality count against you in this class.” Chuckles bounced around the room. “Now, who...

If anyone would like me to finish this work, please let me know. Bronxbishop