The Underground

Chapter 15.2

Days felt like years and years felt like dreams. She could never quite remember the start to her day or the end to it, only the middle and the muddied pieces of shattered time that came with it. There was never a clear face or a name or a voice attached to the people around her. But there was a feeling.

Hunger.

It was quiet at first. A little whisper in the back of her head that crept up her neck then back down her spine, tickling her thoughts with tantalizing suggestions and worming its way into her dreams. But it grew, chewing its way into every thought and action until the only thing left in her mind was the suffocating sensation of every cell in her body telling her what she already knew.

She was hungry.

It was difficult to ignore. Then it was hard. Then grueling. Then unbearable. And finally, impossible.

The first to die was her mother. She was the closest one around and the easiest to get alone. Her father was gone, they lived alone, and despite the flood of cameras and faces, the apartment was often empty of strangers and friends alike.

So, she killed her. Drained every drop of blood from her body, first by sucking, then licking, then tearing, then chewing. She dragged her teeth along the floorboards to get at the blood-soaked wood. She kept pieces of her mother's ruined dress in her mouth to suck on the bloodstains. She pried apart her skin to check for spare drops pinned between flesh and bone and muscle.

She should have felt guilty, but she didn't. She was still hungry.

The second was her neighbor. She had waited many days, unsure what to do with herself and her hunger. With the waiting came observations, and the knowledge of when people came home, when people left, and when people were alone.

The door was unlocked. His wife had forgotten to lock it on her way out. He wasn't wary of the lost little girl. He didn't move fast enough.

He was a big man with a lot of blood, but not enough. She waited for the wife, and when she returned, she joined her husband in the pile of meat in their living room.

After that, she went back to her mother and her home and waited by what was left of her body.

The first cop to show up died quickly and easily. Big muscles were no match for big eyes. He was dead before he realized his mistake. She didn't get the chance to clean him as thoroughly as she had her mother. The reinforcements showed up too soon.

A few more died, quick and violent as all the rest, before they locked her in the apartment, trapping her until they could figure out what to do. Sirens blared constantly, she could hear the whispers just beyond the walls and smell the fear that clung to them. Or, more likely, she was smelling the fear on herself.

The final to arrive was an older woman, straight black hair speckled with gray was tied back behind her head. The woman directed the officers with confidence and poise, binding the little hungry girl with cruel efficiency and burning lights.

Her skin scorched and curled then mended itself and did it all over again. The pain was excruciating, but nothing compared to what would follow as the woman commanded the officers to plunge wooden stakes, as long as she was tall, into her chest.

The first pierced her heart, splinters lodging into the organ, and shredded the tissue before being forced out by the rapid healing of her abnormal body. Again and again, the weapon was plunged into her chest then was ripped out by the force of her healing. Painful, violent, but not deadly.

The woman took a new approach after the tenth time. Beams of light were trained on her exposed chest, pointed at her heart. She screamed. They didn't listen. More stakes were brought in, carefully aimed in a circle around and over her heart, despite her best attempts to thrash them away.

Just like before, the stakes ripped into her chest. Flesh parted, bones broke, her heart pounded desperately against the weapons as they pulled apart her body and exposed her insides to the beams of light. She screamed again.

This cruelty went on for hours. Surrounded by strangers, a cold-eyed woman, and the corpse of her mother, she screamed every time her lungs healed enough to permit it.

Then, it went on for days. Officers left in shifts, faces changed, but the woman always stayed, watching carefully even as the body of her mother began to decompose.

By the fourth day, the hungry girl was dying, more obviously than she had been before. She didn't scream anymore, the strength in her body giving way to overwhelming exhaustion. As her screams turned to cries and her cries to whimpers, her bloodshot, crimson eyes finally began to close for what should have been their last time.

But a soft noise, a gentle cry against the backdrop of a numb and vanishing world, pried her eyes open for just a peek.

Across from her sat the woman, whimpering cries shaking her shoulders while damp tears trickled down her lean face.

The little girl stared at her, entranced by the humanity exposed by the woman's tears. It seemed wrong, entirely unlike this woman that she thought was a stranger. But that wasn't true.

"Melanie didn't cry," the hungry girl whispered, no longer hungry and no longer little. "She never did."

The woman who couldn't be Melanie Sun wiped her tears away. She stared at the girl. At Vivian.

"Really?" the woman who looked like Melanie Sun asked, a curious smile twisting into something more sinister. "And this is the woman you clung to as a mother for a decade? That's hilarious, isn't it? Humans are so uniquely, tragically pathetic."

With a roll of her eyes, the woman snapped her fingers, and Vivian's world faded from her sight once again.