oct 17 2021 2:47am

they were hungry. it had been weeks since they were locked down here, and they felt like their stomach lining was going to eat its way through their skin soon. they were starving. their voice was as raw as their bloodied, broken fingers, as days ago in a hunger driven fit of delirium they had tried to claw their way out of this basement. their voice was a gravelly, broken rasp now. they had used it all up. they were so desperate not to hear anything. they didn't want to be left in the silence. their eyes were already making up impossible creatures in their vision, as the human brain is a desperately social brain and if there is nobody to talk to it will create a partner. they knew that at one point, they were just screaming for the sake of screaming. screaming for someone to hear them. nobody did.

what an attention seeking brat.

their brother's corpse was decomposing next to them. and if they were quiet enough, they could hear the maggots burrowing their way deeper and deeper into him. so they would talk to him. they pretended he was still there, just resting, pretending that the cold, barely liquid substance on the ground wasn't his blood hemorrhaging over the course of a few weeks and congealing on the floor. they pretended that he wasn't shoved down the basement stairs weeks before. they pretended that he wasn't spitting up blood just inches away from them. they pretended that their father didn't leave the without any food for the past few weeks because they were a fat fucking pig already and needed to lose weight anyway.

they could pretend the smell wasn't making them vomit the very little food they had in their stomach.

they needed to eat.

so far their only meals were their own vomit, when the smell would get so strong and their head so light headed from the constant yelling. they would discharge bile into their own hands, wait until their stomach settled, and drink the disgusting sludge just to feel their stomach full. half of the time they would end up spitting it back up because their body physically couldn't eat that. before their brother fell, their father at least came down every few days with a bland meal. now they had nothing. they wanted to cry. they wanted their brother to hold them. weeks ago, they tried curling up next to him when he first fell, and they wrapped his arms around themself as they sobbed into his shirt. blood was gurgling from his mouth as he so weakly tried to talk. his neck was broken but he was still moving, they remembered. they had never been more scared. they wanted their brother. they wanted him to tell him everything would be okay. they screamed for help. they cried for their mother. they cried for their father. they cried for anyone who could listen. they cried to the forest outside their house and the animals who lived there. they cried for god to send an angel to save them.

he stopped moving not even a day later.

they don't even remember what happened to get them sent down here. maybe they were playing in the sun too much. maybe they slept in. maybe they weren't being a good daughter. they didn't know. nobody told them the rules. they didn't know what they needed to do. they didn't know what they wanted. they just didn't want to be here. they kept waiting for themself to wake up back in their bed and not here. they had been down here for weeks before their brother joined them, and they remember their father came in a few days afterward. they asked him for food. "meat. you have meat there." he said. jess' stomach turned. they knew what he meant. they didn't want to. they didn't want to. they didn't want to.

they were so fucking hungry.

they didn't know what happened to him. they didn't know why their father pushed him down the stairs. they didn't know why he had to die. they knew he was studying to be a lawyer, that he promised them and himself he would be the first person in their family to get a university education and use it. they knew he promised over and over that one day he would take them and get them out of this house, and they would be free to eat and sleep and play however much they wanted. they didn't know that he set up hidden cameras around the house to catch their parents actions on tape and wanted to present it to the court to prove his parents couldn't be their legal guardian. they didn't know that their father found out. they didn't know their big brother was doing everything for them.

they knew that they missed him, though.

they couldn't hold out much longer, they knew that much. they were going to die in this basement underneath a house that does not love them and there would have been nobody who would have ever noticed. they didn't want that to happen. they had to eat.

his skin sloughed off in chunks, like his flesh was preparing for this to happen. it was waiting for jess' desperation and it was revelling in their suffering like they were destined to be inhuman. they brought the meat to their lips and it writhed against them. they dropped it and scrubbed at their hands fervently, a kind of obsessive action that devolved into scratching at their own appendages until they bled. they couldn't get the feeling off their hands. they didn't want this. they had to do this.

they scraped the maggot infested meat together and back into their hand, and they could feel the larvae attempt to dig into their cuts. they felt tears well up in their eyes as their stomach turned. they wished they couldn't feel the tingling buzz of flies in their mouth, crawling and scrabbling at the back of their throat. they gagged loudly and started crying. they couldn't do this. they couldn't do this. they had to do this.

they couldn't let their brother die in vain.

the next few weeks were a blur of consumption and disgust. they ate slowly and deliberately, always giving the maggots some time to lay more larvae so they wouldn't run out. they wished they didn't do it. the police came, apparently. they don't remember that. they don't remember any of this happening, to be fair. they threw up in the back of the cop car and the officer nearly vomited when he saw it squirm. they were sent to the ER. if they remembered any of this, maybe it would explain the way they are. but they don't.

instead their throat closes up in the dark, they cry when they see maggots, and they want to claw their own eardrums out when they hear the buzz of flies.

funny thing isn't it, the human mind.