Always, the hunger.

He stares at the empty bag in disgust. Sometimes, even after ten or twenty or fifty, he still turns into a monster.

No, it is impossible to keep her here like this now. He needs to let her hunt.

He taps down on the metallic tabletop, letting his ideas resonate with the sound.

He could hunt with her. Teach her how to feed. Watch her humanity deconstruct into beautiful red carnage every step of the way. But then what? To be with her for every hunt thereafter would be infeasible. Without him as the constant variable to her joy, she would build up too much confidence in her independence. Suffering is a foreign concept when her daddy is always there to show her the way. He has made her life simple, easy—spoiled. Unaware of the opportunity to evolve beyond him.

He desperately fears that fate, yet still it rushes closer.

On her own thereafter, she will expand into a chaotic force, an eternal horror, a perpetual-motion machine of beauty and rage. Then she will realize that he is of no use.

And then, she will leave.

He steps out of his sterile office and takes the stairs up, veins in the concrete wall traveling with him. The lollipop twirls in front of his face, hypnotizing his rattling mind. He reaches the top of the flight and walks down the hallway toward her door.

He needs to let her hunt, yes. But he needs to know he has control. Absolute control, regardless of his presence. The times when she will have to venture on her own, he needs to make sure she will return. He must prove to her that she needs him. That without him, she will be nothing. He needs to make her permanently dependent.

He pinches the stem. His nails make indents in the paper without snapping it in half.

Such a pity. All this time and energy spent on making her life painless, wasted. Now that must all unravel like a ball of string until it is just one weak, breakable line.

And still he foresees one potential hiccup in this painful lesson:

How will he do it? How will he crush her into submission while avoiding a conditioning that will remove him from her favor, while avoiding the urge to hate him rather than depend upon him? She must fear his absence, not yearn for freedom.

She must love me unconditionally.

He stands in front of her door at the end of the hall. With a sigh, he hangs his head, fatigued from his thoughts. There is an answer to his dilemma—it is only a matter of finding it. Of digging it up from beneath the heavy gravel of one’s psyche. The perfect balance between necessity and hate. Love and possession.

There is a vacancy at his side. He turns his head and sees another door, the one for the room against Vanilla’s to his right, ajar. He must have been careless and forgotten to lock Vanilla’s room. She must’ve stepped out and explored the few feet she mustered enough courage for before returning in a pang of fright. Yes—he can smell her now.