Here, in the company of strangers, there’s an unspoken obligation to do what must be done. Let the bloodlust blossom through and let us be as we’ve always been. Cursed at birth. Sick with sanguine thirst.

Gleaned from the streets and shadows and desolate domains, the lonesome are lured into the subterranean lair in which we gather. Unassuming. Unaware. Unprepared for what awaits them.

“Let your appetite be a tool for purification. Help us cleanse this world of those who would watch it waste away. They are weak and they are worthless. The time has come to commit this necessary evil.”

As such my invitation read.

Slid beneath my door by someone privy to a truth I’d never told.

Had I been followed?

Included with the message was a date and location.

This is how us strangers came to be. Similar in our affliction. All gathered via the invitation. Suspicious as it was, we were seeking a remedy to starvation. To be fed is better than to find food, is it not? It is more certain.

Hunger be damned.

So we shall feast on filth because it is what we are given. The sick and wretched. The poor, the addicts, the maniacs. Those who sleep along the streets. Alone with no one to know they have vanished.

Ushered underground into our unlit corridor, they are at first confused and soon concerned. It’s the feeling of heedful eyes. Or perhaps it is the uncertainty of the dark.

It is too late for them to escape. The door has been sealed. Fear overwhelms. They begin to panic. Blindly pace. Their hearts falter. They are like cattle sent to be slaughtered.

All at once, we swarm them. Drink from them. Drain them. Soon they lay empty at our feet. Cold and pale

And when all is done, the door unseals and masked men move in with body bags. One man observes, and when the floor is clean of the viciously slain, he looks to us satiated parasites, and says, “thank you.”