Chapter Text
December 22.
Somewhere in small-town Indiana, a family of four prepares for the holidays. Christmas lights strewn outside, the colourful arrays lining the rooftop and bushes. Through the living room window stands a decorated pine tree, adorned with silver tinsel on every branch and a porcelain angel at the top. Presents hide beneath the tree, shining bows and wrapping paper glimmering under the lights. A happy holiday scene. But this year, there are too few presents to exchange. This year, there is little to celebrate. This year, there is a photo of a teenage girl hung over the fireplace, dressed in a pastel pink sweater with a bright smile and intelligent eyes—a senior photo from earlier that year.
In the months following the day that picture was taken, that very photo has been copied over and over again, posted wherever possible by the tired, weary hands of a mother and father. Milk cartons. Newspapers. Missing posters. All in the hopes that perhaps, the eldest daughter will return, completing their family of five. Where apologies are shared and hugs are exchanged. Where merriment is restored.
How unfortunate it is, to hope for things that will never happen.
Hundreds of miles away from Indiana—somewhere in rural, Western America—a quiet cottage nestles comfortably where the plains and forest meet, a mere wooden cube camouflaged amongst the trees. A collection of oak and Douglas fir, a frame of fragile bones per result of age. Moss and lichen cling to the rotten walls, and a stair is broken along the front steps. On the inside, mould grows in the crevices, spores spreading along every surface possible. A part of the roof has caved in the kitchen, and plant matter grows between the tiles and grout. It is dark. It is damp. It is decay.
It can only grow.
Fresh blood seeps through the floorboards, diluted by water, but the metallic scent floats through the air with ease. Their noses are trained, after all. They know death well. It glistens in their eyes and teeth. It hides under their fingernails and cuticles. But today, there would be no shared meals with rivers of ruby dripping down their chins as they feast on their prey.
The blood was how he found her. He always knew how to find her, of course he did. Their hearts beat in a shared rhythm, a careful waltz with a promise quietly whispered to each other to continue for years and years. He would be the ocean tides, reaching out for her light. She would be the moon, guiding him in their dance. That was how it was supposed to be—just the two of them, forever.
She lay in the bathtub, unmoving, the ceramic a muted pink somewhere between coral and raspberry. Her hair stuck to her skin, the chocolate-coloured strands painting minute residues of red across her features. Her eyes—blue and deerlike—were frozen open, forever glued to the ceiling. Her complexion was paler than usual, her cheeks having lost all their colour—a colour that instead, was coating every inch of her body below her neck. A colour that seeped directly from large gashes splitting her forearms in half lengthwise, the water darkening with each second that passed.
He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the scene. Try as he might, there was too much to look at. Too much he wanted to remember, too much he wanted to forget. Too much he still had to say to her, to do with her. Too much inside he still had left to give.
Why?
Why did this happen? Why did she do this? How could she have done this?
They were supposed to have too much time on their hands and spend it all, drinking tea and sitting beside each other on an old, wrap-around porch somewhere in the country.
How could she just leave him here?
His grip was tight on the unopened envelope in his hand, the paper wrinkling. She had signed his name in cursive on the front. There were no other letters that she had left. He was the only person left in her life, the only person who understood her. They only ever had each other.
And now he had been left behind with nothing more but an ache in his chest and a desperate plea on his tongue. A scream built in his lungs, a threat of an explosion on the horizon; T-minus ten seconds, and all that would be left of them would be burnt flesh and gaping wounds. It would be better to die together. Only good could come out of dying together, and if you had asked him months ago, he would have done it in a heartbeat.
He didn’t understand why he couldn’t do it now; why he couldn’t pick up the knife in the bath and press it against his throat. Why all he could do was watch her dying in front of him, the life leaking out of her and dripping onto the tiling below, staining his shoes and the hem of his pants crimson. Why after all this time of trying to show himself he was brave, he was reduced to nothing more than a coward when it was most important. O’ Holy Father above, how he wanted nothing more than to gut himself and pull out his intestines one by one if it meant that she could return to him at this very second. He did not mean to be too late, Father, he promised he did not mean to be late. Yet there would be no proper explanation for his cowardice, no excuse for his sins. He cannot pin this on the absence of his Father, the blood on his hands remains. The blood on his hands is all he knows.
Yet cursed more is how he licks it off of his fingers. Cursed more is how pathetically he desires for more , begs and prays for more . Cursed more is how all he asks will never be enough, and he thinks he understands now that the incompletion he’s known to be inside himself and blame on bad luck was truly nothing more than a birthright. That this was truly nothing more than a cold, cruel fate—their fate.
A hunger awakens in his body. A desperate cry, an anguished howl, escapes him. Lord, he is so hungry. Lord, forgive him for being insatiable. Lord, forgive him for starving.
He is nothing but hungry.