Kssh
Kssh
I woke to darkness and hunger. I was lying down.
A muffled sound, somewhere above me, apprised me of my supine posture and a thick, unshakeable darkness. All around me was black, asphyxiating and restraining. In such pitch environs I saw naught, but was not senseless.
There were grains and splinters beneath me. They prodded and punctured under shifted weight. There was a scent upon the darkness, something old and earthy. I smelled something…organic…in that impenetrable shroud. Most of all, though, was the taste. There was a taste to that blackness…something faint, as if seeped in from above. My chest rattled as lungs filled with shuddering whiffs of…something. My innards growled.
Kssh
Kssh
Kssh
Kssh
The repetitious sibilance hastened above me. It sounded far off, blanketed. Instinctively I felt my right arm reach out to the source, and I heard joints pop in protest and yield with the effort. I could not see the movement, but I felt it stopped abruptly. A wall, or a ceiling. My other hand shot out with like resistance. A series of wheezing grunts coughed up from my chest as my hands probed the pitch with a rigid clawing sound. What…? It was something splintered, pliable. I pushed on it, pounded on it with a hollow clacking accompaniment, growing not so much angered as hungered. The smell…there was something red in it. Every breath seemed to rim the darkness with crimson, a rhythmically beat vermilion. It wasn’t here, though. It was out there, and I was so hungry. My head was a mass of grinding teeth.
Kssh, kssh
Kssh, kssh
Kssh, kssh
Kssh, kssh
The shifted sound increasing overhead, growing closer, louder…the gnawing need each decrepit breath loosed behind eyes and below gullet. My desire to break through that rigid pall grew, inflated with every increasingly seasoned breath. Hands thrashed up and down the particulate pitch without thought. The dark splintered, buried itself beneath nails and under cuticles. My neck creaked and heaved serpentine as the darkness became more and more…savory…sanguine. Teeth ground and gnashed, bouldered molars tumbled down my throat.
Then with a knock the noise stopped…
And a sevenfold sensation sliced through the darkness, rushing into orifices a maddening savor. Starved pining rumbled up my throat, a stoked craving clawing insatiably from within knotted bowels.
In return, something hushed and thick with effort filled the stillness from outside…a voice…unintelligible…
˙˙˙ɹıƃɥʇ’ ɥɐup ɯǝ ʇɥɐʇ ɔɹoʍqɐɹ˙˙˙sʇɐup qɐɔʞ’ ɐup ƃɹɐq ʇɥɐʇ qɐƃ˙˙˙ʇɥǝɹǝ sɥonlp qǝ dlǝuʇʎ ɟoɹ qoʇɥ oɟ ns ıu ɥǝɹǝ˙˙˙ƃolp’ ɾǝʍǝls˙˙˙olp ɟool ʍɐs qnɹıǝp ʍıʇɥ ıʇ˙˙˙ɐup uoʍ ıʇ,s onɹs˙˙˙
There was a hesitant whine from above me…from right above me…
˙˙˙ɟoɹƃǝʇ ʇɥǝ pɐʎs oɟ ʇoıl’ ɯʎ ɟɹıǝup˙˙˙ʇɥıs ʍıll ɯɐʞǝ ns˙˙˙ʍɐıʇ˙˙˙ʍɥɐʇ ıs˙˙˙po ʎon ɥǝɐɹ ʇɥɐʇ˙˙˙ɥǝɐɹ ʍɥɐʇ uoʍ’ ʎon ʞuoʍ ɯǝ ɥǝɐɹıuƃ,s pouǝ ɟoɹ˙˙˙
…and a blinding sliver split wide scarlet-turned pitch overhead. Autonomous grey hands rushed to the light. I shook by force of hunger-incensed roaring…tantalizing bloody breathings at last promising satiety…
To seize that savor in the widening light, I rose…
All I saw was red…all I heard were screams.
* * *
(As mentioned by The Lincolnshire Watch in an article covering a series of arsons: “On the night in question [October 30th], a curious sight was observed and anonymously reported. An apparent stirring in Ellsworth Memorial Cemetery saw two men of indeterminate height and weight ‘spill’ from an open grave in a tangled altercation, one of which was reported as shouting disturbingly, but exactly what was shouted has not been disclosed by authorities. The struggle was observed briefly, one man apparently straining wildly to ‘bite and chew’ the throat of the other, before two consecutive gunshots were heard, at which point the witness fled and called the police. Upon responding to the call, authorities confirmed the presence of an open grave and signs of an injurious struggle, but found the scene absent of bodies. The disturbance’s relation to the string of alleged arsons is still being investigated, but evidence is presently inconclusive. Authorities have not specified the grave disturbed, nor the body gone missing in the apparent graverobbing,” (“Districts Ravaged by Fire and Vandalism,” 1974).)