Death was once something I feared, an illusion that brought darkness with it, but now I plead for its mercy in this time that survivors have come to call, The New Order.
•••
It was only a cough to began with, something so simple, it had happened a t...
My head thuds, pounding against the dense bones, leaving an endless echoing sting that has leached its way in behind the sockets of my eyes, pulsing each moment I inhale the warm air in.
"Naseria, please wake up."
Hot air fans over my face as the words are uttered into existence, but through the heavy fog that clouds my thoughts, I can't pull them together, to form something from the syllables that have seeped through it. Only fragments of the outside slip through, leaving me with a cluster of puzzle pieces assorted from the collections of many, never truly meaning to fit together.
My limbs twitch as something jagged digs and burrows its way into my flesh, unrelenting as its grip tights around me.
"Wake up."
The blinding light burns as it seeps through the cracks of my lids of my eyes creeking wide, my lungs inhaling the humid air deep into me as if it were foreign. My dry, brisling tongue heavily lifts, running along the coarse roof of my mouth, the piercing maltanic taste flooding my senses. Through the yellow flourishing light, copper flames as deep as a scorching fire takes over my blurring vision and the gaze of their piercing emerald gems glisten down at me, a terror shifting through the fragmented glass.
"Naseria, you need to get up. Now," she whispers, a trembling shutter seeping through the cracks of her words as her nails dig further into my bared flesh.
"Eliana?" I gurgle out through dried, cracked lips.
The palm of her shaking hand smacks over my mouth, her fingers borrowing into the flesh of my throbbing cheek as her vast eyes stare me down, a warning written within the the swirls of her bright irises. Our hot breaths are all that can be heard for a few brief moments as the morning sun seeps through the thick curtains, blocking the blinding sphere. My brows furrow as her paled lips move, a single word being formed silently, and nothing but air pronouncing the syllables.
Listen.
For just a moment, I stop breathing, as though that'll help me as I sit here ideally, Eliana crutched beside my bruised figure, black gunk spatted across the hem of her yellow shirt and the curls of her copper hair sliping from the rose coloured ribbon tying it back from her hollow, freckled cheeks.
And then, I hear it. The small sound tickles my ears, as though it's crawling within, pulling its thick podgy frame through the small, tight tunnel of my ear, burrowing its way deeper into me, consuming the singular sense.
I've heard it once before, a few years back when I had a small blue, feathered bird; it had been my very first pet, one that i had spent hours saving up for by doing random things around the complex apartment building our mother had us staying in at the time. My small head was stuffed against the firm pillow as that sound had leach through my slumper, pulling me from the darkness that had held me moments prior as the sound had began to borrow into my ear, with heavy eyes. A crackling and a sickening wet sludge seeped through the pillow, the breaking of small, frail bones being sunken into, filled my mind. I opened eyes, my heart dropping at the site in front of me. The door to our bath room was ajar, just slightly, a low light breaking through the gap and setting light to the large cage lying open on the floor, feathers littered from the bars and lead beneath my bed.
A bile crawls up my throat, a coldness sweeping through my fidgeting body as a wet sludge fills my ears, once again consuming every thought, taking hostage of my own mind, holding me down to marvel over what it could possibly be. But deep down, there was nothing to wonder over, i knew what it was.
Flesh being eaten.
Being consumed by teeth as it rips and tares at the raw, tender flesh of a living being.
It was muffled as the sickening crunch and crackle of bone being shattered beneath teeth, consumed the air around us, almost sucking the very breath we have from our lungs. Flesh, muscle, veins being slowly torn away from a limp pile of limbs, the agonising sludge of blood spilling from it.
I didn't need to witness what it was coming from, my own mind could create an overly bright and saturated, stomach twisted from the image within me. The teeth sinking into the chuck of flesh grinding between the blunt teeth, as though it were cow's meat being ground into small lines of minced beef, ready for human consumption.
I leaned just a fraction, my hands staining with the new position. I scanned my bedroom, now in a disgruntled condition as random objects of mine lay on the floor, ideal, some chipped or cracked and others leaking into the carpet, adding just a smash of colour to the dull brown that has always been. But nothing else. Nothing like what we can hear. Nothing with bared crimson teeth.
Something cold drips onto my face and slips down the bridge between my eyes, to my cheek. Something cold and thick. And again, and again. Slowly becoming a weak steam down my face, the bright red clear out of the side my eye.
Elianas breath is fast as it fans over the side of my face, slightly blowing wisps of dried, dark red and light blond stands into my eyes, as her fingers dig into my arm.
"Naseria, look up," she chokes out.
Reluctantly, my head tilts back, a deep ache digging its way through the back of my neck with the small motion. My gaze meets the spreading patch of dark crimson staining the off white, bumpy roof as another droplet splats onto my forehead, now dripping down the side of my temples.
It's still warm.
A shaky breath slips from my lips, and another as I pull my heavy body backward and further up the bed I had comfortabley slept in however many hours ago, before the blood of another person dripped onto my face. My back smacks against the head of my bed and then the obnoxious clank of my metal water bottle as it topples over and off of the night stand, sending a shudder down my spine with the echoing vibration.
My gaze connected with Elianas, her hands shaking as she stares at me, her eyes blurring with a thin glaze filling her eyes, her mouth puckered shut.
The sludging is gone, replaced by a deathly silence that suffocates us as we sit above the wirey springs, motionless, still like statues stuck in place.
A screech howls from above and flashes of my nieghbour seep into my mind, his broken, dead eyes staring into my own, hunger festering in the depths of his white irises as he lumbered forward on all four legs, a beast hunting its prey.
A creature that no longer inhabited the man that was once Mr Merrick, now only a wandering carcass remained beneath the layers.
Nan's words peek through the folds within my mind, a steel forming behind them each time it rewinds and lets her warning play within me.
It's hungry, Naseria, and it needs to eat.
Her words were but a unpredicted gift, a bleak box wrapped up with a bright red bow, a foul and suffocating stanch wafting from within.
I hadn't known what it meant before, but I understand now, what she trying to tell me. She knew what was coming, what lurked in the shadows just beyond the human eye, why she trembled from within.
She knew they were coming.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
