Page 20 of Stream & Scream

Then, I hear it. A whisper. Just one. A girl’s voice, warbling through a psalm like she’s trying to baptize herself in the shadows, and she’s trembling. I don’t have to see it to know. I can hear it in her breath. The catch. The quiver.

She's scared. She should be. I fucking love the fear. It’s what gets me off.

“Dear Lord, protect me from evil.”

My cock twitches.

She thinks this is evil?

She doesn’t know what evil is.

She’s repeating phrases like a spell. A girl who’s never seen the inside of a back alley at night. Who thinks “bad boys” are guys who vape outside Sunday school.

She deserves better.

She deserves the truth.

I slip closer, my boots silent against the damp earth. I smell her before I reach her. That nervous sweat layered beneath cheap drugstore shampoo. Peach-scented, sickly-sweet. It makes me salivate. My blood feels sharp.

She hears me too late.

A twig cracks, maybe on purpose, maybe not.

She jerks upright. Her braid swings. “Hello?” she whispers.

Her eyes scan the trees. Her breath hitches. She sees nothing. I’m a fucking shadow.

“Is someone there?” Her voice cracks.

She stumbles backward, almost falling. Dirt stains her knees. Her fingers tremble on her wristband, like she’s debating whether to activate a panic alert.

But even if she presses that button, there is no one coming. They won’t save her.

Just a blinking light, capturing every inch of her terror.

She turns slowly in a circle.

Her chest rises and falls in panicked jerks.

“I’m not afraid,” she whispers.

Liar.

I step out from the black.

One step.

Then two.

She sees the helmet and goes rigid.

My boots squish in the mud, slow and deliberate. I don’t rush. There’s no need. My body is a ghost among the trees, swathed in forest-patterned camo, designed to vanish into the tree line and bark. Reinforced vest. Tactical gloves. Every inch of me is geared for war. My helmet gleams dully under the moonlight, the visor blank and unforgiving. Night vision tech juts from the crown like the eye of some mechanical god, trainedon her as she trembles. No face. No soul. Just the reflection of her own panic staring back at her.

Her scream gets caught somewhere in her throat.

It never makes it out.

She turns and runs.