Red sprays complete and perfect, beautiful onto the whitewashed wall. Whitewashed specifically for this, this dance. Sadly, the others don�t seem to appreciate the work he�s put in. Too bad for them; the show must go on!
 
Bright gleaming eyes narrowing to eldritch slits, the demon-ghost hiding in hominid form withdraws his taloned hand, spinning on his toes around the pinioned stag. When the sleek arcing deltoid muscles come into view, their plump strength is so tempting that Howl simply must strike out again.
 
His jaw gapes some to catch the flying blood, long sharp ears lifted to the music of the prey�s song.
 
Three pretty males, all Howl�s; a stag and two flat-faces. All three come with quite attractive closet-skeleton collections. Howling Silence knows very little of this, of course, and he doesn�t particularly care, either. It�s their scent-aura that drew the demon-ghost to them, their pulsating blended senses of life and death together, of innocence demolished, unkind sentiments and unholy lusts all in a mingling miasma.
 
This was the aroma of a gourmet buffet to the lurking hunter, and so he had followed, and snatched them �
 
And when they respawned from the first killing, after their spirits wandered lost in the Bone Forest far from this world, they found themselves in a small whitewashed room with no apparent exits, neither door nor window. From floor and ceiling three sets of hooks protrude, two to a set, each facing the other vertically. From these hooks run rope and leather straps. Between these hooks the straps hold taught a victim�s limbs, immobilizing them midair -- except for the steps of the dance, of course.
 
They have all the mobility they need for that.
 
Snick, snick, snick the claws sing across the stag�s shoulder blades. The claws catch briefly in bony nooks before sliding graceful free, their owner leaning in close to catch the crimson bow wave rising behind in his jaws, on his face.
 
Disguised as a hominid like the others, a red wolf, Howl stalks around to the front again. As he goes, he drags his claws oh-so-gently over the shuddering, gasping stag�s shoulder and bicep, then down over the twitching pectorals.
 
Such strength in this body, the hunter marvels, so useless when it counts!
 
The stag gives a pained whimper, trying to wiggle away from his tormentor, but of course the motion only sets himself swinging from his bindings.
 
Howl decides to take advantage of the motion. A grin tugs at the side of his mouth as he holds out both clawed hands, positioning them just so, such that the stag cannot help swinging into them on either end. Just a slight push with each hand at impact restores the swinging, spinning action, so the claws never impact the same way twice. Close to madness, the beleaguered cervid sucks in a deep breath to bellow with all his might.
 
Howl decides it�s well past time for a snack. Just as the first rumble of sound begins to escape the stag�s muzzle, the predator�s jaws close around his neck, cutting off his air supply, while his taloned hands plunge effortlessly through the buck's abdominal wall, immersed in steaming glorious entrails.
 
Howl does not rip the stag�s throat out immediately. Instead, he clamps down, puncturing but not tearing, sucking the stag�s expirated blood and air down his own throat as the doomed man fights desperately to get a sound out, a breath in, anything, but it�s too late, just plain too late.
 
After a couple of minutes the stag's shuddering becomes stiffer, spasmodic, in a smooth metamorphosis from throes of terror to those of death.
 
Howling Silence shudders with the dying body as he feels its spirit�s chains snap and tumble away. The stag-spirit coils around its killer as it departs, adding a most delicious spice to the taste of his flesh.
 
Jerking his own neck back, the lupinoid rips the throat free and swallows it quickly before plunging his muzzle into the dead stag�s torn belly, digging with teeth as well as talons for the life-sustaining morsels within. Totally immersed in a flood of healthful energies, awash in sensual pleasures, the predator-spirit loses track for a while, interested only in the corpse.
 
Returning to himself after some indeterminate period, Howl rises back to his hind paws, gazing dispassionately down at the scattered remains of the stag�s body. Shredded flesh, gnawed and scattered bones, and one antler are all that remain of the once-proud buck. All but one marrowbone has been cracked and sucked dry; Howl scoops the last bone from the floor and cracks it expertly between his teeth, padding over to the first of the primates as he does so.
 
�Want?�
 
The hunter offers half the marrowbone to the dangling man, who flinches away, choking and jerking as his stomach turns over. Fortunately, he hadn�t been given a chance to fill his belly beforehand, so there isn�t a mess to worry about. Politely, Howl waits until the man is finished dry-heaving, his long barbed tongue scraping marrow from within the bone with a series of contented smackings and sighs.
 
Finally, the man is done with his spasms. Conveniently, Howl is also done with his snack. Dropping the bone, the hungry ghost manifest saunters closer.
 
Streaked, painted, thoroughly spattered with the blood, fur, and gore of the stag, the hunter�s prey flinches away, and he pauses, smirking.
 
�Is it the blood, or the nakedness?�
 
The predator-spirit inquires, leaning in so close his nose leather nearly touches the tip of the man�s nose. Forced eye-to-eye, the terrified man stares into the darkened sockets of his tormentor�s eyes � there seems to be no eyeball within, just a dancing candle-flame somehow very far away.
 
Up until this point, the two men had been able to convince themselves that they had been captured by some garden-variety psycho, extra-batshit but otherwise normal.
 
The illusion promptly shatters, its shards shredding the minds of those who sought to shield themselves beneath it.
 
The third man starts to shriek, but the second man has no time to decipher the warning before, standing face-to-face and eye-to-eye, the hunter brings both talons down in a great sweeping slash, one over the other. Instantly the man�s bodily integrity vanishes, blood and gore erupting in a cerise fountain all over the demon-ghost�s self-created body.
 
Within this shower Howl turns around and around, humming some song or another to itself. Whether mockery or madness cannot be told; deadpan, casual, he rubs the blood and gore into his fur as if he were literally taking a shower. The spray seems to continue far longer than it should � FAR longer. Dizziness encoils the last man's consciousness, a seductive viper, but his nose begins to bleed before he understands what�s happening �
 
Finally, the feeding is complete.
 
Howl drops to all fours, to full animal form, and sits down to groom himself, utterly uninterested in either the two mangled bodies or the third. This third seems to have somehow been completely drained of blood and viscera, including a significant amount of muscle tissue, without suffering external wounds of any kind.
 
This would later puzzle the hell out of the hominids who would discover the bodies and Howl's manufactured "crime scene", but the seeming miracle made no impact on its effecter. It was far from the first time he�d gated flesh, after all �
 
Utterly relaxed, full-bellied and satisfied, Howling Silence curls into a ball, tighter and tigher, until his created flesh dissipates back into the spirit world from whence it first came, intending to return to the Bone Forest to rest.
 
The White Room shines, spotlessly sterile, standing clean and ready for its next guest.