Butch And The Blade

by Phil Geusz

It was about 10:30 at night, and Butch was having a ball. Carefully, he concentrated, waited, waited, waited...

..and dropped. The car zoomed by underneath, and the sound of a heavy metal object hitting concrete came clearly up from the highway below. Damn! Too late. Carefully, Butch pulled another railroad spike from underneath his jacket, and set himself to wait in the cold some more.

There wasn't much traffic. People avoided this neighborhood after dark, if at all possible. But Butch lived there.

Another gleam from over the hillcrest. Headlights! Butch set himself again, pressing the spike halfway through the cyclone fence intended to prevent such potentially fatal shenanigans. His heart beat more quickly as he considered what might happen. A rewarding smash, followed by squealing tires and an exciting wreck, maybe flames. He might even get lucky and drill the driver through the head, if he hit the windshield just right.

That would be so cool. This was one of the best ideas he'd ever had.

Butch was glad he and his friends had robbed the boxcar, sitting on the siding. Too bad the others hadn't realized the possibilities in what they'd found...

Instead of coming straight through and becoming a target, the car seemed to take a long time to crest the hill. With his street senses at full alert, Butch pulled the spike back and dashed for the stairway at the far side of the pedestrian walkover. It might be The Man, investigating the one glancing hit Butch had already scored. But no spotlight lanced out when the vehicle finally came into sight- it was a minivan limping along on its last legs, steam pouring forth from under its hood.

From his perch in the shadows, Butch studied the situation intently. This had potential...

The hill had been the van's last effort- overheated, distorted metal was beginning to rub on other heat-distorted parts, creating more heat still in a vicious cycle. The dying engine finally seized, and the driver used the last of the van's momentum to get it onto the shoulder, where it sat inert.

"YES!" thought Butch.

Almost immediately the driver's door opened, and a boy emerged not much older or bigger than Butch himself. In the glare of a nearby billboard, Butch could make out that he was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a nice warm parka the sight of which made Butch shiver even more intently. The kid opened the hood, cursed, and went back to the driver's door.

A truck whistled by, not even slowing.

Inside the van, the driver turned on the dome light, so that Butch could clearly see him trying to use the cell phone. He dialed again and again, and finally threw it down on the seat in frustration. Either it wasn't working, or Mommy wasn't at home. Clearly, he hadn't gotten the help he wanted.

Butch smiled. Mommy hadn't been around to help him for years. This was justice, simple justice. He began his stalk.

Carefully, using all the street smarts a hundred burglaries had gained him, he used the shadows to get back across the bridge unseen, and worked around the highway's outer fence until he found the well-known hole. Worming through it was easy enough for the still not fully-grown, and Butch had gotten within striking distance of the van in no time at all.

Another truck zoomed by.

Butch waited.

Finally, as expected, the kid driving became frustrated and stir crazy. Like all boys, he felt that he could deal with any problem best by moving and doing, rather than by sitting and being bored. He went to look under the abbreviated hood again...

..and Butch struck. Bursting forth from his sprinter's crouch in the darkness, he was behind his victim before the poor child knew what had happened. God, he was dumb, Butch thought, as the Blade emerged from hiding, and carefully, lovingly, slit the driver's throat.

The driver fought, of course, and tried to scream, but he only sort of gurgled. And the struggles were futile. Butch had jumped back out of range of retaliation and most of the huge gout of blood. This was much messier than the cats and dogs Butch had done. Finally, in a last desperate effort the kid had grasped Butch by the lapels, staring directly into his eyes as his mouth worked.

"Why?" his silent lips asked from a terrified face.

Then, still facing Butch, he died.

Butch had a massive, intense orgasm, creaming his jeans like he'd never done before. It was the most powerful feeling he'd ever known, better than any of the animals. His voice cracking, Butch screamed his pleasure and joy into the uncaring night. Now, he was a man!

Then, working carefully and quickly, he took the left ear as a trophy and the expensive if somewhat stained sneakers as booty. Then, like when he did animals, Butch took a few licks of the blood. As always, this was good for still another orgasm. When it was over, he vanished into the darkness, proud and excited about what he had done.

Butch hid out a few days with the Posse until the heat died down, scrubbing his new shoes until the bloodstains mostly came out. He'd shown the ear to the Posse Boss-man, proving his first kill, and since he was holed up anyway the Boss-man decided to beat him in that night. He'd had the crap kicked out of him, but it was worth it. After being beat in, it was for life. Butch had made his kill, and would be one of the Blood forever. Not bad for someone still 14.

The next few years saw Butch and the Blade become ever more successful. As he got bigger and stronger and smarter, the Boss found plenty of employment for him. Sometimes he used Butch as an assassin, having him pick off drug dealers encroaching on Posse turf and leaving them mutilated as examples. Other times he wielded his knife in brief, intense street rumbles, where he seemed immune to shot and slash and broken bone. And Butch became an ace enforcer, not saying a word while a more vocal Posse member collected the protection dues. Butch didn't have to speak- he knew that the aura of sheer evil he gave off would intimidate all on its own.

He was proud of that.

But as time went by, the Posse got stronger and stronger, in no small part due to the qualities of Butch and the Blade. Fights got fewer, hits more rare. Blood scarcer.

And Butch needed blood.

He turned back to animals to fill the empty times, blinding puppies and mutilating cats and even burning things alive from time to time when he thought they were about to chill anyway. But most of all he gave the Blade its freedom, letting it do what it willed. And the feelings this gave him were good, as good as anything had been when he was young. Sometimes he even got to play with a SCAB, when the Boss found him one as a reward. His home became decorated with his trophies, scorched skulls and severed tails and eyeballs in jars that he would masturbate over when catching a pet was too much effort. The rented house reeked of rot and scorched fur and stale semen, but the landlord dared not complain- he did not even try to collect rent anymore. For he wanted to live.

And even this was not enough for Butch. Quietly, on his own, Butch wandered the streets late at night, seeking to fulfill his deepest needs. Or, other times the Blade needed his own flesh. Butch had sacrificed a couple of his own toes to the needs of the Blade and his crotch, and sometimes scored his left arm repeatedly to free the flow of blood. Even the Posse began to avoid him, but as long as they kept finding him the occasional victim, that suited Butch fine. The Blade was the only friend he needed.

Then one day, Butch had become desperately ill. He had never been really sick before, and not being the thoughtful sort had never imagined that someday he might be. By the time he even began to feel scared enough to consider going to the hospital, it was too late. He went into a coma on his living room floor, between the caged hamster he was deliberately starving to death and the little cabinet where he kept his pliers and clamps and lighter fluid and such.

Several days passed, as Butch shivered and baked and cramped in the grips of the Martian flu. And slowly, he Changed. He didn't know it when the fur began to grow, or his snout to push out, or his hands and feet to grow black pads. Nor did he notice his teeth being replaced by long, wicked scythe-like growths. The whole process took place while he was having dreams of oceans of blood, bright flames, and towering erections. You would expect, then, that Butch would have been unusually upset and disoriented upon returning to the world. But it didn't happen that way; the Change was too appropriate for that. When he awoke, it was like returning to life through a long, dark tunnel. The first thing he noticed was the stench- the hamster had finally, alone and in agony, expired while its tormentor slept. It's decay would have been noticeable to a human nose, but was like a richly textured quilt to that of a predator, the decay of each sort of flesh having its own distinctive smell. The rotting stomach was one scent, the brain another, and so forth. Each odor was singular, and blurrily Butch drank in them all. Vaguely, he felt his manhood stirring...

...and it felt wrong!

Panicking, he tried to sit up, but weakly fell over. His sense of balance was destroyed! Still laying on the floor Butch felt himself all over. Fur. Muzzle. Funny penis. Paws. Tail. He'd had SCABS! Butch was a SCAB freak!

Carefully, he opened his eyes, and waited while his vision cleared. His head chanced to be pointed at a trophy case- he knew the skulls shelved there intimately. The colors were washed out and funny somehow, and it just wouldn't come into focus...

He blinked, it got no better. Shit. And looking around, he saw that it was everything, not just the trophies. What else had changed? He tried to sit up again, succeeding this time, and examined himself.

A tiger man. A Bengal tiger man.

Butch laughed out loud! What a joke! He'd been so afraid there for a minute that he'd become a gerbil or a rat or something equally lame. But a tiger, that would be alright! Cool, even! What did he need to see for, with a nose like his? And the ears! Butch took a few moments to enjoy them, too.

But what about the important thing? What about the Blade?

Butch shivered for a moment, thinking about it. What if the Blade didn't turn him on anymore? But as soon as he thought of it, he felt a new variation of a familiar stirring. "Whew!" he tried to say, but a deep coughing rumble came out, startling him for a moment until he began to laugh...

Life was still good. In fact it was even better than ever.

The Posse took him back in of course. Blood was Blood, even if Butch was a little touched. And while it was awkward sometimes, he made a better enforcer, a better assassin, a better cat in a fight than ever before, especially once he learned how to turn himself all the way into a tiger when he needed to. He was a berserker then, spraying guts and hair and blood and hide around him like a lawn mower, all the while yowling in sexual ecstasy. Even his friends, killers that they were, backed off when that happened and watched in fascinated horror as he single-handedly shredded rival gangs with the claws he called his "Blades".

The survivors always accepted peace on any terms. When there were survivors.

Seasons turned. The Posse became the top gang in the City. Practically the only gang in the City. The Boss found himself connected, getting respectable, making contacts among the more genteel elements of organized crime. Spending more time enjoying his wealth and less on the streets. And, wasting increasing amounts of time cleaning up after Butch, making discreet payments to men in blue uniforms to fail to notice certain clues at bloody murder scenes. Keeping a tiger, or a least keeping Butch as a tiger, was proving expensive.

Rumbles and killings became still rarer. And Butch's needs only increased. More and more, he spent his time in full-morph form, eschewing speech and human company while gnawing on old bones between "hunts". The Boss put a slave in charge of feeding the tiger and keeping him groomed and healthy, since he didn't morph out and do it himself anymore, but the slave ended up as a playtoy. Hearing screaming, one of the Blood had come charging into the Posse's lair one morning to find Butch slurping up the slave's drawn out guts like so much spaghetti while she watched with wide eyes. It had gone on and on and on.

That was the last straw. A special meeting was held. The Posse had never turned their back on Blood before, but Butch was their first SCAB. You could only cover for so much when you were trying to become respectable. And SCABs were animals- everyone knew that. Butch was gone- The Blood was gone. So turning him out was OK. Right?

Right.

While he was asleep, they had drugged him and loaded him onto a truck. Then, they drove him hundreds of miles across country, and dumped him in a likely looking park. Even as a SCAB, they wouldn't rat out a Blood. Instead, they'd let him find his own fate.

Butch had awakened laying on a strange river bank, remembering nothing of the trip. But he wasn't dumb, and it didn't take long to figure out what had happened. He'd gone to sleep in the Lair, and wakened here in the alien darkness. He started to roar his rage and betrayal, then, realizing his mistake, he choked it back stillborn.

He was hungry. No need to alert the game...

Carefully, he moved through the brush, casting about for promising scents. Working upwind, he detected lots of old rabbit and deer trails, but nothing less than a few hours old. This was the most difficult hunt he'd ever been on- what was taking so long? Gradually, Butch realized that this was his first real hunt, the first time he had sought animal instead of human game. Of course, the prey was more wary.

Finally, he had come across something red-hot fresh, nectar in his nostrils. It was rabbit scent, and rabbits were too small to bother with. But this was so powerful, so intense! It hypnotized Butch, captivated him, entranced him. It was just a rabbit- why was it so strong?

And then the answer appeared to him in the distance, a streak of white bouncing off into the darkness. A big white rabbit. A bunny-SCAB, weighing a hundred pounds or so. Probably feral, off to feed in the river-bottom.

The tiger grinned. He was downwind, his tiger instincts told him, and clearly undetected.

Rabbit sounded delicious tonight...

Once the bunny was out of sight, Butch followed up the trail. When he got close enough, he could see that the rabbit had emerged from a concrete tube placed in a kid's sandbox. It was the best cover in sight. Butch thought about it. Probably, the rabbit would come back this way after eating, and use the tube for cover again. What could he do?

There were trees a few yards away, out of line of sight of the open ends the tube. Carefully staying downwind, he picked a spot, and waited.

Predators are patient, even twisted ones like Butch. Hours passed, but the only part of him that moved was his restless tail, invisibly swishing in the darkness. As his hunger burned and his sexual need for blood and suffering intensified, Butch became more and more tiger. When the white splotch returned, he stayed frozen except for the stirring in his groin. He wasn't going to ruin things now...

As planned, the bunny took cover in the tube again. Silently, ready to make his spring if the rabbit emerged, the tiger inched up to the pipe. And waited.

And waited.

What was taking so long? He could smell the delicious food, almost taste the bloody meat. And his erection was getting harder, harder, harder! It was intolerable!

Come out, you damned rabbit!

But it didn't.

Maybe Butch had been scented? The idea excited him still further, and he dribbled a little semen picturing the bunny trembling in terror. This was intense, far more so than hunting dull humans. The joys he'd been missing, trying to stay with the Posse! They'd done him a favor, dumping him here.

But still the rabbit didn't move, and Butch realized he faced a problem. Surely it had detected him by now, unless it was a complete idiot. And the concrete pipe was 8 feet long. The rabbit could emerge from either end, and Butch couldn't guard both... The tiger had just decided to watch where the bunny had entered and started moving that way when the rabbit hopped out the other end. Cursing his bad luck, Butch made an off-balance spring and...

...just barely drug his Blades across the slow-moving lapine's back. Instantly, the bunny dug in and took off at speed, throwing sand back in the face of Butch as he gathered himself and followed.

The chase was incredibly stimulating, like nothing Butch had ever known before. The rabbit hung just before his face, tantalizing him with its bobbing tail and pumping legs and even brushing his nose with its toes sometimes in full extension. Twice the bunny swerved, and with fully heightened reflexes Butch reacted amazingly quickly, more so even than he had done in street fights. And the scent of fear, oh it was so sweet! Butch began to have his orgasm...

...just as he ran into a couple trees! WHAP!

The blow would have stunned him had his adrenaline not been fully up- it was a mighty impact and Butch had taken it full on the head. But as it was, he just roared in frustration and took up the chase again. The rabbit would pay for that!

Yes, indeed he would pay! The bunny was clearly slowing now, and Butch was closing in with no cover in sight. Again, as he approached Butch became entranced with the bobbing tail, pumping legs and the scent of fear. His own legs were tiring too, but he just needed to hang on a bit longer...

The rabbit's toes brushed his nose again. Just a bit longer...

The tail was getting larger. Steady...

Butch felt concrete beneath his extended Blades and had just enough time to think about them being dulled, when the impact came like the end of the world.

Butch thrashed in agony on the pavement, He didn't know where he was, or even who he was. But as his head cleared the image of a bobbing tail and the scent of fear came to him, and despite his injuries he knew what he had to do. Grimacing in pain, Butch got up and looked around him.

A few feet away, among the crashed vehicles and yelping in delicious fear, his prey thrashed helplessly with a broken bone sticking out of a hindleg. Butch roared in final triumph, and advanced as his maleness began to harden again. He was weak, and a foreleg wouldn't work, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the blood, the thrill, hot semen squirting on the pavement. Limping, not even knowing that his own wounds were fatal the tiger towered over the bunny, and roared mightily in the ecstasy of anticipation. Then, choosing his spot carefully- he owed this rabbit- Butch sank his mouth-Blades into the sweet, tender meat around the broken bone. Salty blood pulsed as the rabbit screamed the end of his world, and Butch chewed in ecstasy as the climax came...

...and went as a pale, sweating policewoman pulled the trigger on her shotgun, spattering the terrified rabbit with Butch's blood and brains and stilling his Blades forevermore.

Butch And The Blade copyright 1998 by Phil Geusz.