Your Way Wednesday Prompt:
I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
I think my name was Hannah once.
It’s weird because every now and then I get flickers of the human I once was. My world has changed dramatically since –
FOOD.
I freeze. My limbs are slow to respond, but the drive of getting more food overrules everything. I make a wide turn to the left. Sharp turns are a joke with this broken husk of a body. I have a vague tugging sensation somewhere on my right calf that stops my progression. I look down, frustrated that something is preventing me from moving forward.
A large serrated edge of metal jutting out of the wall has hooked through the soft flesh there.
A soft moan of irritation seeps out of my throat. The small part of my brain not focused on food wonders how that’s possible seeing as how there is a part of my throat dangling in a way that is… what’s the word?
I yank at my leg and finally, the tugging sensation is overridden by a chill as air hits the newly exposed flesh. What was once there has torn away and now hangs limply on the protruding metal. I stare at it for a second, my vision hazy.
Grotesque. That’s the word. My throat is grotesque. Now my leg is grotesque.
FOOD.
I shuffle forward, following the scent that drives my every waking moment.
“You have to wake up early tomorrow, Hannah. You need to go to bed.” The memory comes at me unbidden. I feel it knitting together in my head.
There’s a woman in a doorway with wet long, dark brown hair. She looks tired and is wearing a large, white bathrobe.
“I’m working on something. I’ll be fine.” There’s a faint shock that rolls through me as I hardly recognize my own voice from the memory. I haven’t heard my own voice in ages.
“Sweetheart, you need sleep. You need sleep more than you need followers.” On my desk is a computer, a pad of paper with a bunch of words that are close to my heart, but covered in various scribbles and edits. I have a pencil tucked behind my ear. I’m holding a ukulele and have my eyebrows knit in thought.
Did I really have that much control over my muscles before I became this? I think absently.
“It’s not for the followers, Aunt Kim. This is for me.”
“Sleep is for you too, kid. One day, you’ll be my age and realize that all those late nights catch up to you eventually.” Aunt Kim said this as she checked her face in the hallway mirror poking at the bags under her eyes.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead. And you look beautiful, Aunt Kim. Not a day over twenty-five.” I wink and just the shadow of the movement makes me wish for –
FOOD.
I can smell it. My deadened senses are swimming through it, rejoicing in the pungent –
FOOD.
I turn slowly, looking for it’s source.
A small animal that must’ve weaseled it’s way into this debilitated building left over from the end of the world managed to get caught in a trap. It’s small body is still fighting for life.
Thank God it’s not human, the small sliver of humanity left in my brain groans.
Thank God it’s still fresh, thinks the rest.
Food… my whole, messed up shadow of a human body purrs with the anticipation. I stumble forward and, unceremoniously, rip into the thing. I eat it all, but save the walnut skull for the end. I manage to crack it open and suck out the nugget sized brain like I did as a human eating oysters.
My body hums with the fuel. But the satisfaction only lasts for a moment once I realize that it’s all gone and I need more of it.
I stagger to my decaying feet.
My endless wander for food is on again.
And I thought I’d get to sleep when I died.
Allie Marin 