Part 1

She awakened with the creeping dawn. People outside their pods stirred. She turned to kiss Sebastian in a dream state, but her hand couldn’t find him. When she opened her eyes, she saw nothing but blood covering her and the sleeping pod from top to bottom, with only remnants of his robe and decrepit ash inside. Sebastian was gone.

Her screams echoed through the building.

Hours later, blood barely cleaned off her face, stuck in her hair, and dried on her hands, she sat in the hotel office wearing the yellow hotel robe. She sat listless, but a beastly fury filled her veins. A female officer in a blue uniform stood by the door. A police officer in a rumpled beige coat walked in with a cigarette between his lips, searching his pockets for a light.

“Can she talk,” he asked the officer. She nodded. He approached.

“Ms. Jinno, my name is Inspector Akabane – Kenji Akabane.” He handed her a crumpled business card. “Can you tell me what happened in your pod?”

“We met in the snowstorm. We made love. He disappeared.”

Akabane squatted next to her, setting their faces level. She stared blankly past him.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but I must ask: Are you a virgin?”

“Not anymore,” she whimpered, and tears dropped to the concrete floor.

“Ah,” the officer nodded.

“Where is the man with whom you came to the hotel.”

“I came,” she giggled, momentarily possessed by madness.

“Yes. Anyway. The cameras in the hotel didn’t see him leave. So, I must ask: Where did he go?”

“He… evaporated.”

“Excuse me?”

She swiftly turned to face him and growled. “Evaporated – like milk.” She giggled and covered her mouth. More tears poured over her fingers.

Akabane shot up, grabbed her hair, and pulled her head back.

“I said where did he go,” he screamed into her face. Their eyes met. She smirked.

“That cigarette – It smells like weakness. I can smell it in your blood. Your organs are hungry. Your blood is weak. Makes me…” throw up spewed from her mouth.

“What the fuck,” Akabane let go of her and stepped back.

“Where did he go?” Akabane shouted again but from a distance. He wiped his hands in his coat. He pondered how this stranger knew about his blood disease. Akari spat on the floor and slowly turned to face him. He watched as dark blood slowly filled her eyes, covering all. The growl returned from the depth now forceful and unyielding, “e-vap-or-at-ed.”

Akabane withdrew farther, backing away but not letting Akari from his sight. He lit the cigarette. The officer pulled the cigarette from his lips, extinguished it under her shoe, and pointed to the No Smoking sign.

“Fashisuto,” he frowned, and they smiled at each other.

“I’m not a Nazi. I just don’t care for your smoking.”

“Anyway, contact her family, take her to the hospital, take statements, and all that. She needs a psychiatrist.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry, miss. It’s protocol.”

“I’m not harmed. I haven’t harmed anyone. You have no right.”

“I don’t think you are well enough to be let go. And legally we can’t let you go. It’s protocol. Actually…” Akabane, a new cigarette hanging from his lips, reached behind the officer, pulled out a pair of thick, white, zip ties and approached Akari.

“Let’s make this easy.”

“Okay.” Akari pushed her hands through the manacles, and the ties crackled as her wrists locked. She giggled.

“Just keep her here and get an ambulance,” said Akabane and walked out.

The officer stood by the door uneasy, her hands tightly pressed against her skirt. Akari could smell her blood, her stress, and the unborn in her womb. She growled at the officer.

“You don’t know yet, do you?”

“Know what?” The officer tried to sound firm.

“Something festers in you. The one thing that doesn’t make old men happy.”

“Shut up!” The officer panicked and jumped to the door, but Akari’s hunger moved faster, pinning the officer to the wall, and her hands silencing her throat. They flew up the wall and across the ceiling. With the body against the ceiling, Akari gnawed through her throat, and blood poured over Akari’s face, and she gulped down all the iron, hormones, and oxygen of the young body. Once the blood stopped, Akari, her soul still empty, licked the blood off the floor. Then she undressed the corpse. She tore it open and ripped out the heart, uterus, and spleen, sucking out the last of the blood. In the end, there was nothing more than grey limbs, discoloured viscera, and a bloodstained uniform.