Garbage Day
@obsxjuri
Jiho had so many better things to do right now, according to him at least. He was angry, angrier than he had been for a long time. The stench of death radiated from the alley behind his residence, and it had been this way for over a month now. He was the first to notice the smell by a wide margin, but he didn’t see a point in taking action. The corpses weren’t his problem, so why would he bother? But they just kept coming in; more than half a dozen dead hunters had made their way through the dumpster next to his house. They were carried off each time after someone else noticed the smell, he wasn’t certain who, but no one even questioned let alone sought out the source of the bodies. So now, it was his problem.
In truth, the smell hardly bothered him, it was admittedly somewhat refreshing. Yet this had to be dealt with. There were people that knew where he lived, knew who he was. People who knew how he preferred the scent of rotting flesh, how he would leave meat out to decay in the sun before putting it between two slices of bread. People on his block were used to the smell of rotten meat, but this was too much. The last thing he needed was for someone to have suspicions, someone to call up DSEM and report a man-eating supernatural that was storing his kills in the alley behind his home to consume at a later date. He wasn’t about to give someone the chance to connect the dots and make that assumption. He didn’t even like the taste of human flesh. If he was going to be hunted down for a crime, he at least wanted it to be a crime he committed. The fact that the corpses were hunters made it even more concerning. Hunters were one thing; a hunter with a vendetta was something considerably worse.
So here he was, waiting in the dead of night like a dog for the mailman. He sat atop the highest perch in the alley, the back roof of the building across from his own. He wanted to catch this assailant, if only to convince them to dump their garbage somewhere else. The bodies had been arriving overnight every weekend for the past month, sometimes one at a time, sometimes two. He was aggravated that this had become his problem. He wanted to go to bed, but he remained vigilant. His wings were at the ready, folded back and encompassing his body for warmth. His talons were shifted as well, gripping to the edge of the rooftop. In the darkness, his silhouette was reminiscent of a stone gargoyle standing watch over its fortress. His avian eyes penetrated the darkness of the alley with little effort; he saw every passerby, every stray cat, every scrap of garbage rolling by with the wind. His night vision wasn’t perfect, but it was sufficient. His quarry would not get past him, so long as he was able to keep himself awake to notice them.