beguiled by night

a 10th daughter of memory entry...

The flatulent ghouls that ran City Finale had cordoned off the last productive avenue in a final effort to placate writhing, demanding citizens.

This is your street, No ghouls are permitted entry. All City business ends at the restricted zone.
Of course, that meant at some point, to do business, every citizen had to leave the street. Most chose to work and run errands in the daylight, but the real business of the City was conducted in the late hours, when the ghouls stirred beyond the sun's stretching rays of radioactive illumination, the element the ghouls referred to as 'fingers of doom'.

Ghouls were the brains, they kept what was left of the world alive with their engineering and scientific skills. They were also keen bureaucrats who knew how to look out for number one. Everyone else was slave labor, or cannon fodder. We knew it, grist for the mill...well, live and love; that was our model of existence. Oh, and 'kill the bastards', but we kept that one to ourselves.

They lived under the highrises, in fortified bunkers that would be untouched even if the buildings could be brought down around them. Without the ghouls our lives would be hard; we'd live like wandering nomads—moving with the seasons and starving. As far as we knew, we were the last citizens of Earth, and so were loathe to change. We let the ghouls lead, and they fed off our ignorance. Literally. We payed the blood tax, and sometimes died. As a go-between I was supposedly exempt, but in the interest of the citizens I often supplied my neck for concessions.

Tonight I made my way into the City to meet with the grand ghoul himself, Monsieur DeLepur.
They called me Frito Lay, as the ghouls often refer to their citizen meat as former food items. My guide Josie was Potato, or as I playfully called her, Spud. She was unimportant to the ghouls and warranted no second name.

“Mr. Lay, what business of the Street brings you into City this evening?” That was the question of one of Monsieur's goons. It slaverly ogled the curve of my neck. There were three of them, and they stood too close to one another. Potato carried a duffel bag and sewn into the sides were chunks of ice that hid the heated contents of the duffel. She stealthily unzipped the bag as the insipid ghouls licked their lips, hankering as they did for the blood rush and an end to their pasty complexions, and as they advanced on me she drove a sun heated spike into the chest of one while tossing a hot spike into my gloved hand. I drove it home while she dispatched the third.

The goons lay about me, and I heard the chortle of Monsieur beyond the death site. He had set it up, planning on weakening me for the negotiations. He was a conniving businessman above all else, and the natural head of the ghoul reich. Without DeLepur we citizens had a real chance of diplomacy; we might live on our own terms instead of remaining trapped like cattle and culled for out precious fluid. The debate among the citizens was that they we needed them as much as they needed us, but I disagreed. At least I was willing to chance it without them. I would give my life to see the people free from this degrading life of siphoned servitude.

It was a step anyway, a first step. And whether the citizens wanted to take it or not, I was about to set them on a course they couldn't back from. I stepped forward, ready to do my ultimate business with Monsieur, ready to meet my end. Spud dropped her duffel and ran, aware her intimate knowledge of the City might not save her from the lurking and famished ghouls. I wished her well.

It strode forward,the king of ghouls, caressing my warm face and leaned in to drink its fill and then do business. But it staggered back having broken the skin of an unscathed section of my neck and taken that first greedy draught. It was enough.

We had our own chemist by luck, one of the few thinking men that hadn't been turned, and he had for the cause injected the serum of radioactive isotopes into my bloodstream. This way or another I was meant to die, why not take one with me?

The ghoul winced and sat heavily down against a brick wall, and I left the gash in my neck open to spill the torrents lose. I hunkered down beside him, slumping over his cold form as the blood pooled around our sunken bodies where the night scavengers would flock to dine, and die.

I hope I have enough to go around.