=Prey on Me=

It was so difficult back in those days just to put on my face in the morning. And to keep my head erect, ugh, it took just about all my energy. It felt as heavy as a cannonball. I was fitted with an elaborate plastic and aluminum brace to ease the strain, but it wasn’t much help.

Around that time, a lion had gotten loose in the neighborhood. If its furtive presence in our midst hadn’t been caught on surveillance videos and Iphones no one would have believed it. As it was, no one could guess where it had come from. There were no zoos anywhere near the town and no one could remember a circus passing through. Maybe someone had it as a pet when it was a cub and let it loose when it got too big.

It had already dragged off a chemical engineer, a half-dozen housewives, a stay-at-home dad, and three children. After several days missing, the eviscerated corpses of the victims were found along the highway, or at the beach, or half-concealed in the trash at the back of the Chinese restaurant.

With my head feeling as heavy as it did, I knew I’d be an easy supper if I happened across the big cat. I began to linger in the far corners of parking lots at twilight. I haunted empty playgrounds and cemeteries. I didn’t admit it to myself in so many words but I was offering myself up as prey.

It’s sacrilege! But I wanted to feel his heavy paws upon me, his carnivorous rank breath at my jugular. I wanted to be mauled. When my boyfriend and I made love, I had him take me from behind, I shyly asked him to be rougher, to bite me on the shoulders, to draw blood. He was excited at first, but as my thirst for my own immolation grew, he became frightened, then disgusted and, at last, wouldn’t touch me anymore. Doom was in the air, but I didn’t care.

I pictured those animals of the veldt you see on television nature shows, surrendering, falling to their knees in the dust, shaken by the neck until their spinals cords were severed. They say a natural endorphin is released, that they feel no pain, no panic, who really knows what hell or ecstasy they know? All the same I emulated them during masturbatory fantasies. I orgasmed to visions of my blood on whiskers, the great beast’s toothy red yawn over a body I no longer recognized, a body turned inside-out.

If you’ve read this far, chances are you have at least a passing interest in how this tale plays out. In that sense, you’re like me. I do, too. 

The lion is still out there, though sightings are sporadic and blurred, and I’m still offering myself as victim. Nothing’s changed. Except that, as a victim, I can’t help play my role to perfection. I’m furtive, quick, and alert. My nostrils quiver at each change in the wind. My eyes are bright and my head, once so heavy, is erect and humming . My entire body is nimble and trembles with energy. At the slightest twig-crack, I’m off like a shot. But evolution, knowing better, or maybe just perverse, or, is it possible both, has equipped me with a little white tail which, twitching and teasing and taunting as I zig-zag at top speed for my life, all but cries out in so many words, “Come get me lion! Come get me!”