I'm in something of a dark mood due to some crap at work today so here's my offering - not one to read to the children...
The Sun. Gram hated the Sun. The hot yellow orb burning in the sky, stinging his eyes and itching his skin.
It would have been much better to do this at night but Gram had only one opportunity and he had to take his chances with the Sun.
He’d been stalking this herd for several hours during the night but the herd was too big for Gram alone. Now during the harsh light of mid-morning, a young female had separated from the others and was splashing in a pond that used to be part of a farmyard.
The female appeared relaxed and unaware of Gram’s approach until he was within a few metres.
She sensed something, eyes wide and nostrils flaring, she sniffed the air but could detect nothing unusual. Gram was so dirty he smelt like the dark soil beneath his unshod feet, the dark soil where he and his companion had dug their bolthole. Gram moved up swiftly, the bag was over her head and the chord tight around her neck, causing her to choke on any call for help. Gram viciously yanked the chord, the prey stopped kicking and collapsed. Gram had panicked, worried that the accursed Sun would light his actions and the herd might see. He ceased choking his catch and checked her flanks to see if she still breathed. It wouldn’t do to kill the prey right here, food that was live until right before the feasting time was preferable.
Gram entered the crudely excavated trench carrying his prize over his shoulder, he had to crawl some distance and the weight was pushing him down but he would not give up this prize. This prize was worth several days eating. Eventually he entered the chamber underneath the blackened remains of a forestry hut. Maz was sharpening the knives, thin shards of steel ripped from the wall of some factory that had been bombed earlier in the war. Gram had been at the factory but he couldn’t remember why, Maz had also been there and been injured. Gram could not remember how or why Maz had been injured but the limp meant that Gram was the stalker and Maz was the scavenger.
Alicia Kendall awoke when the rough sack was pulled from her head. Light shone down on her through some broken structure. She stared around the filthy hole she now occupied, sodden paper, bones, shreds of cloth, animal skins, even pieces of wire had been massed together into some sort of feral nest and two deformed men appraised her lustfully. No wait, it wasn’t lust she realized, it was naked hunger. One of them had started to drool and the second closed in on her with two wickedly sharp pieces of metal. She suddenly understood her fate and in those few seconds she recognized many things she had initially missed. The two deranged humans were not deformed as such, just badly stooped, their skin wasn’t burnt, just soiled by filth and the scraps of skin that hung from them were actually the remains of uniforms that may have once been blue. A name badge on one identified the owner as Wolfgang Angram.
Kendall stood up in a panic intent on escape but the searing pain in her head removed that chance as she struck the beam above her. A small mercy. Kendall was nearly twenty, a British Army medic. She’d seen plenty of rendered flesh as she’d helped retrieve the wounded. Now she’d be spared the sight of her own flesh being torn.
Gram belched and Maz hooted in appreciation, blood stained both their mouths and their hands. As Gram slapped his stomach he left dark red splotches on the film of dirt and grease that used to be his mechanics overalls. He was content, they still had food for a few days, even if it wasn’t going to be fresh and he had the female’s multi-coloured skin to add to his nest. Torn and bloody, covered in dirt and her last fear, the jacket still smelled of Alicia Kendall.
The smell kicked at some memory deep in Gram’s shattered mind, another female, much smaller and it had crawled around his feet, somehow he knew that it was his along with a tall female that had shared his cave long ago. The cave had had many rooms and he’d been locked inside it for many days. He couldn’t remember anything more, just the burst of many suns and the sky demons screaming overhead laying their terrible eggs. Perhaps he’d eaten those two before he met Maz?
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