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Bella and the Beast
Epilogue
Bella was no more
The two monsters, father and son, feasted on her corpse for the next several weeks. They consumed her torso and organs rather quickly. Various other parts of her remains were finished off, in no particular order. The sire wrenched off her limbs, and after he had filled his belly with the flesh of the human teenager, he allowed his progeny to have his fill, too.
After several days, Bella’s body began to rot. This was no problem for the two creatures, as carrion was as much a part of their omnivore diet as was freshly killed meat, fruit, roots, or stolen groceries.
The “housekeeping” that Bella had maintained was a thing of the past, of course. The brute animals broke off pieces of Bella’s body, bones and all, and devoured them in various locations around the den, dropping the gnawed bones wherever they happened to finish them. When they were done with her, the adult humanoid went back out to hunt and forage, bringing in the motley selection of foul foodstuffs he was adept at finding. Before long, he was taking his son out, who learned to forage and hunt by aping his parent’s skills.
The sire was protective of his offspring, until several more years passed, and the juvenile entered his adolescence. Then the parent became jealous of his territory, and drove the youngster away, to seek his own space. These are rare and secretive creatures, and their territorial boundaries of these humanoids were usually several hundred square miles. The younger one migrated across several national boundaries before he found an enclave where he could exploit ample resources of human food and garbage, yet retreat into an accessible and secure enclave such as the nature preserve he had been born in.
When and if the child had an opportunity to mate is beyond the scope of this narrative. Suffice it to say, there are females of this rare, unique specie, and over a life expectancy of a few hundred years, they do manage to find each other and mate. Other times, both males and—astonishingly—females find those rare opportunities to exploit a fertile, sexually pristine pubescent human.
Such as Bella.
Bella’s bones, scarred and marked with tooth mark and rock crushing, remained scattered about the floor of the den, where they were mixed with a wide variety of domesticated and wild animals, not to mention supermarket cuts of butchered meat. Her limbs had been broken and gnawed for the marrow, and even her skull was crushed and the cranial matter scooped out or chewed up. So an anthropologist or spelunker would have to be actively looking for indications of human remains to suspect their presence. And since the humanoid monster domiciled deep in a nature conservancy that was set apart for “re-wilding,” with minimum human penetration, the discovery of the vagina-shaped opening, deep in the cleft of a rugged rock ledge, was quite remote.
So Bella’s remains were never recovered, and her absence and demise never answered by her family and society. There were only theories and rumors to explain her disappearance. Occasionally, a story circulated that she had a secret, older boyfriend, and had run away, but these did not square with her quiet, serious, obedient nature. Her parents were not especially wealthy, and there was never a ransom note. The only logical conclusion was that Bella had been abducted by some clever fiend, probably with a sexual animus.
Her parents employed the usual modes of seeking her location and release. She was included with various missing children lists. Her picture was posted in police stations, shelters, hospitals, and the like nation-wide. There were entreaties on television. Her parents traveled at the slightest report that she had been sighted somewhere in the world. Her father explored thousands and thousands of pornographic pages on the internet in the hopes that she would surface in the sex trade, somewhere. He became quite absorbed with the “study” of young-girl porn. When his wife found secret files of girls’ pictures—which had nothing to do with searching for Bella—a series of arguments ensued.
The various strains were too much, and Bella’s parents eventually divorced.
Both the local and the national police gave her case much attention, at least at first. A sergeant didn’t take her absence seriously for a few days, and by the time he brought a dog in, there was no scent. His procrastination on the case became a legal side-show. But as the “trail” got colder and colder, Bella’s case was put in a file, which was put in a drawer, and eventually put into a cardboard box in the basement. Some people searched the area, and a few even went into the preservation land. But few people knew the terrain, and nothing was found.
Not even a scrap of dainty pink nylon!
The searching was all, of course, in vain. Bella—or rather, her remains—were secreted away in the monster’s lair. And that is where she remained, forever lost and forlorn.
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