Sundew

Prologue

"Chase your shadow and it will flee; turn your back on it and it will follow you."

-Robert Greene

The man (Trashcan, my name's Trashcan) stumbled down the road. He had managed to leave the diner somehow without them bursting right out of him. They were eating him alive, and he was so hungry... So... damn... hungry... He would go to the hospital. One of the waiters came to him regarding his tip, but the man sent her away with more than a few sharp words (if drunken slurring that sounded suspiciously like the n-word and punching a hole through that waiter's stomach could be referred to as such), each step on the evening payment an effort.

The man took a look around. The man thought to himself, trying to recall his name. They had gotten inside his head, making him forget shit, editing his memory, and puppeteering him this way and that. He struggled to recall much of anything—where he'd been this morning, what he ate for breakfast, but he recalled vaguely—the only memory they hadn't taken—of his childhood peers referring to him as "Trashcan." Yes, Trashcan was his name! Trashcan stumbled up the train station steps. No one around. Good. Up to the ticket machine he went, dumping the money he'd looted that waiter's body to buy himself a Caltrain ticket. The train station, like the diner he was at an hour ago, was off the side of the road, out in the middle of nowhere. Eerie, especially at 12 in the morning. Trashcan felt the ungodly, vile churning from within his flesh.

EAT, they seemed to say, EAT EAT EAT EAT

God, his children were hungry, weren't they? His abominable children—abominations that stole his DNA. Though he vaguely recalled being raised to hate those goddamn libtards, Trashcan found himself disgusted on agreeing with them for once.

If god could see the abomination, Thought Trashcan, I think even he would abort these children for their collective crime of mere existence.