Chapter 21
I’m so tired of being eaten. I’m so tired of handing over pieces of myself so that someone else can fill their mouths in the vain hope of being satiated.
Can’t say I don’t understand though.
Because now, with my mouth slick with blood and raw meat sliding down my throat, I get it. The god’s flesh is a summer ripe peach between my teeth.
It feels good to eat.
Black blood pours from its chest with every fistful I pull out. The smell of deep earth and sweet decay fill the room until I’m swimming in it.
It—the god, the thing, the monster—spasms, but doesn’t move away. It doesn’t even let go of where it has me in its teeth. I feel its surprise like it’s my own. There’s something else there too, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is filling my mouth.
Ellis is yelling. That doesn’t matter either.
There’s a gunshot and then another. Both hit the body above me. It shrieks and grows heavier, but still it stays.
I plunge my hand in up to my wrist and pull out more meat to put in my mouth. There’s a black hole in my gut. I’ve thrown in bits and pieces here and there, but nothing came close to filling it up. Howling hunger rips through me until all I am is gnashing teeth and a throat swallowing.
There’s running feet and coughing. Is Ellis gone?
I don’t care. I don’t care because I’ve been hungry my whole life, and now I can finally eat.
It’s finally my turn to feast, to take bites out of something alive, just like how living in this world and for someone else took never-ending bites out of me.
Finally, the god pulls away. I follow, fingers hooked in the sharp angles of its shoulders.
There’s blood in my eyes, in my nose, drenching my skin. The wound at my stomach glows coal-hot. My jaw stretches until it threatens to come undone, and then it does. It might hurt. It might feel like something. Mostly it makes it easier to push hunks of meat down my throat to the cavern below.
The god chokes and shakes while I gorge myself on more and more and more. I burrow my arm down its throat. Its tongue comes away easy and comes apart in my mouth like butter.
Eventually, it’s still and I’m left panting.
Buzzing insects stuff my skull with white noise. I didn’t know it was possible to feel like this—so full and filled up and warm.
A twitch wracks my body. And another and another and now I’m on my hands and knees.
Bile and meat spray out of my mouth. Pressure builds up behind my eyes, making my vision go red as my blood vessels pop pop pop.
Convulsions grip my arms and my legs. My fingers twist in the blood-soaked blanket spread out under Ripley.
Every nerve ending is a shining beacon of pain. In the movies, characters pass out when they’re faced with insurmountable pain. They squirm and shriek but eventually fall quiet to blessed unconsciousness. The pain no longer pains them; the horror no longer horrifies them; they are allowed to rest.
There is no rest, and the horror does not stop no matter how I beg.
This isn’t what I wanted.
Except it is, isn’t it? It’s exactly what I wanted: to take back every pound of my flesh that’s been consumed by others till I’m so full, I’ll never be empty again.