Feed The Void

In the beginning was nothing.

Nothing? No. That implied the existence of things. There were no things.

Blackness? Too light a word.

Emptiness? Too much form to the word.

Death? Even death would run from this state.

The Void; that, even if too Biblical for my tastes, dared approach the state.

So, fine. In the Beginning, there was The Void.

*

My eyes popped open. That is how I knew I existed. I smelled nothing. I tasted nothing. I felt nothing. Hearing was ghostly. Sight was a smeary blur; all I could see was blue & white above.

Oh...sky; that was the sky.

Therefore, I must by lying on my back, outside...somewhere.

My body had a spasm or fit, & I found myself twisting myself into a slumped position. Angry, I pushed with my mind, ordering my muscles to work, to push me into sitting.

My spine worked until I was upright. Yay! Power of the will.

My head flopped, & I saw a red ruin where my intestines used to be. What?!

I wanted to scream, panic, jump up & look for my guts to, I don't know, cram them back in me before going for a hospital.

Instead, I let out a low moan & my body jerked again & again, until I was standing. A delicious scent woke up my nose & eyes to sharp clarity, something in the place of my former stomach growled & I had enough of my mind to think, "So it really does smell like barbecue," before the Void swallowed me.

*

Blood, flecks of glass, flesh shreds & spangles of light form quite the intriguing kaleidoscope of red, orange, rainbows & yellow that moves & blurs each time you look around or blink. Something was dripping right in front of me, but I could not see it.

So, fighting my body again, I managed to push back.

I'd been leaning on a broken door frame, a spinal cord clutched in my one hand & the rest of the body...

The rest of the body?

Something shivered in me, & released a long, low, foul blast of air that went way beyond normal. Shouldn't I be gasping for air?

The burp-monstrosity ended & my body sighed.

No. Just no. I was not eating a whole body & digesting it; one was bad enough. Carefully stuffing a finger down my throat, I pushed to throw up. Two great heaves racked my frame, before the urge vanished.

What? Wait, no!

Since I couldn't scream, panic or throw up, I thought angrily, *Why? What happened to me? Why am I eating people...?*

Click. Words were impossible. Agitation grew rapidly to fear and anger.

Hello, Void.

*

Shuffling. I was shuffling in the middle of a great herd of people like me; red, tattered, eaten. They ranged the gamut from a legless torso dragging itself along with half-arms, to a gray person with only one little infected bite mark on her bare breast. Cover up, you dumb cow! Too bad I couldn't actually say that. As we shambled, someone lost an arm; when I tried to move over to pick it up & give it back, I found myself packed too deeply in the herd to do so.

I let out a groan of frustration. I couldn't even exercise my humanity?

The herd stopped cold. Noses working, they started looking at me with confusion. One set of eyes lit up in hunger.