When an ill wind blows, the crops suffer and when they suffer, we have no food to eat. I should have been forged of nothing meagre; not flesh and blood. But here I am, bound to fill my bellies with the small pounds of unsuspecting children. My eyes called my only friend, the little boy I had captured in the fields. He trembled as though he was hungry. Wait! He is.
“Eat”, I tossed him the rotten bowl now filled with exciting maggots. His eyes lingered on me, a suffered man.
“Stay away from me”, the feminine voice resounded.
“What?”, I almost collapsed on the vomit of my previous meal. “Did I….Are you a girl?”
“Are….you?”
“Yes!”, she shifted to a corner. “Yes I am.”
“Oh no”, I collapsed to my knees. Women are more nutritious but they are poisonous. How? How would I eat her? I am so hungry.
“Please let me go”, her pleas intensified.
“Shut up”, I barked. “Your kind running in the fields have made the famine worse. You trample on the last shred of plant humanity. You’re a killer just like me.”
“Please, I must get home before dark”, she cried.
“Silence! Your home is in the sky now, child”, I stretched backwards, a silly old man whose teeth spat forth the cancerous blood that would kill us all….soon.
“Loving sir”, she halted me in my steps. “Make it quick, my death. Mother would be coming for me soon and she hates me far worse.”
“Impudence”, my eyes rolled back to her. The shadow in the dark left corner harboured the skeletons of her eaten predecessors but somehow she felt safer behind their bones.
“I do not hate this child”, I spoke to no one in particular. “You’re just a meal! Like every sweet corn or rice that existed before the severe famine.”
“Ple…ase”, it led to a whimper, a last attempt to convince me.
How desperate the humans are, when they’re before a cannibal. Usually they should thank their stars. The wolves in the hills would do them no quiet death by chopping. Their unforgiving fangs instead would dig in and munch. They would tear… and tear…and tear.
“Eat”, I yelled, shutting the door behind me.
It won’t be long now. I have already incurred my punishment, her struggle in the fields when I snatched her off her feet. It was just tougher than usual, the strength of a man like me, bite marks on my shoulder. Could she be telling the truth? No adults live in these parts, I made sure of that. Which senseless being would go for children first before the succulent aged?
“Even if there was a mother as she claimed”, my conscience spoke. “I could force her to birth me more food. I eat as she go through nine months of pain.”
“Please”, the girl in the shed roared at the door. Her continuous bangings won’t scare me, not when I reached for my tools.
My shaky hands could recall why I was cast far away from the ICU unit. No doctor should tremble this bad, not with twenty one years in the field. But after swearings and bizarre stories, I reminded myself why exactly I can’t be intimidated by a twelve year old meal.
“Let’s end this low feeder”, I grabbed a machete, the first process to stopping my food from screaming. But as I approached the locked door, I heard a wail from the fields.
“Annisa!”, It growled. “Where is that bony child?”
Never had words travelled so chaotic, commanding the last of crickets to seal their mating calls. It wasn’t a woman, I was sure of this.
“Hello”, I leaned towards the door. “Hello can you hear me?”
“Yes!”, she sobbed sparingly. The poor girl has exhausted all means of asking for my mercy. What is left now was her shady croaked whispers.
“I’ll come in now”, I assured her, still firmly holding the machete.
“No”, she barked. “It’s too late now. One step closer and Mother would sniff you out. Best to wait it till daybreak.”
“Nonsense”, I twisted the rusty door knob but then I heard the voice, this time a lot closer to my field.
“Who took my bony Anissa?”
It was worse however the ravens now perched by my windows. Birds…late at night. That’s preposterous. I must be in some nightmare.
“Dead man”, they cackled at me. “Mother’s coming for you.”
“Shoo!” I ran towards them with speed but then the farther I ran, the farther the windows were from me.”
What dark magic is this? The normal human would be in a state of panic but I…but I believe in science and this is just my brain cells inputting all sense of guilt for the little child.
“Come to think of it, little child”, I bursted the door open. “Is your name Annisa?”
“No!” She crept from the shadows. “I am Isabelle.”
“Good then” I slowly reached for my machete that laid sturdy besides the creaked door. Like I said, it was nothing but pure hallucinations. This only happened few times in this butchering of proteins.
“Don’t run”, I tip toed towards her, delivering a full hit to her skull.
Ah! Breathtaking I assure you. The way her fingers tingle at the stuck metal in her cranium.
“Isabelle”, I pulled out my machete, hoping to deliver another full hit but then I saw that raven, somewhat with the eyes of a woman.
“Anissa”, it called, barging into the room where the dead girl laid. She started to grow tall feet while maintaining her raven head.
“What in the psychopath mathematics is this?” I reached for the bulb, one I haven’t turned on in years. Surprised there’s still energy in a world that lacked food.
“Anissa”, I heard it’s final call but before the light flickering could stay steady, the dead girl laid upright, her eyes blinking slowly at my sweaty forehead.
“Mother will hear you”, teeth multiplied in her mouth.
“Are…are you Anissa?”, I fell to my feet, still with the machete in my grasp.
“No!”, she sat stiff. “I’m here to birth you food, Doctor Hilgo.”
“Myth! Myth!” I stood up with another sharp hit to her cranium. The screams she let out, perfectly satisfying. Then it became quiet. The ravens. The laughter.
Odd tranquility.
“Hahahaha!”, I began to guffaw. It was loud and almost heart rending like a tired hunter’s dog. For a second there, I thought I was seeing things. Did you think so too? I know you did. What a bummer!
“For real? Dark magic? After all these years?”, I fell on my face in cold chuckles. It was no news that now her blood already leaked on my wooden floor. Too much blood actually.
Wait…Is a little girl supposed to bleed this much?
“Anissa”, I saw the raven girl dragging out my lower part, both legs and a cut of my pelvic girdle.
“Am I…”
“Dead”, she said. “No! I just love the fact that I kept you fat in these fields for my sake. All the meat I sent playing your way has led to this beautiful moment Hilgo.”
“Wait..”
“No!”, her claws rested on my hair scalp. “Rest in pieces.”
A jaguar bite at my skull left her grasp tighter, the unwillingness to let go. How would you tell the world that you were fed on by a little girl not more than twelve? How would you tell people that she suffocated you like a lion would do a buffalo in the cold clutches of the savannah?
Like a leopard she exposed my vulnerable chest, her other halves eating as my neck laid in her fangs.
“Please…”, that was all it took to make me want her more. The human insatiable desire when our prey shows more weakness.
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