Monster Falls

Chapter 27

Stan furrowed his brows. "Geez, already?"

"Robert, you have to come out of there sometime," his father's nagging voice called, for what seemed the millionth time that day.

"You've been locked in your room for days, sweetie," his mother added.

Robbie Valentino groaned, rolling over in his bed. "I can't."

"Honey, we knew what happened has been hard for you but --"

"I SAID I CAN'T!" He repeated, yelling. Robbie put his hands on his face, breathing heavily. Well, mimicking it at least. He didn't know if he even had to breathe anymore.

Robbie remembered it clearly, the painful, inhuman hunger he had developed when he had awakened a little over a week ago. It had gotten so bad that his parents had seriously considered letting him eat someone from the graveyard. He'd tried to refuse, but the pain was so bad that doing such a bad thing didn't really even bother him. After that, he'd been eating his own flesh. Sure, it was weird, but it was the only thing he could do if he didn't want to be driven mad with hunger. He had eaten off nearly all of his flesh on his forearm and hand, leaving the bone exposed.

After hearing his parents leave, he turned his rock music up again. To the loudest setting. He was attempting to block out his thoughts.

He was trying to avoid his parents, as he was afraid if they got too close he would snap and try and eat them. He'd been in contact with his friends ever since the whole town changed, and was kind of embarrassed about how disgusting he was now.

The rest of his group wasn't even nearly as gross. Wendy a werewolf, Thompson had legs like that dude from Narnia, Nate was a panther or something, Lee was a ghost and Tambry was a tree nymph. And he, Robert Stacey Valentino was a gross, dead, flesh eating zombie.

He flung his head back and gasped as it fell off of his neck. "Shit!"

He needed to call somebody.

Robbie quickly dialed Wendy's number and placed the phone against his ear. It rang a few times before she picked up.

"Robbie?" She asked.

"Wends?"

"That's...that's me!" She stopped. "Uh, are you calling about–"

"No, no, uh, no. I-I just wanted to talk about... you know."

"Oh," Wendy realized. "Robbie, are you okay? You sound like you've been crying."

"I have no–It doesn't matter." He cleared his throat. "Can we talk?"

"Right now?"

"Can we meet up somewhere? My parents are bugging me about leaving the house."

"Uh, sure! Where are you thinking?"

"Maybe your house?"

"Yeah, I'm fine with that!

"Ok, see you there, bye."

"Bye."

Robbie hung up the phone, and grabbed his hoodie to cover up.

Robbie knocked on the door, putting his hands in his pockets as he waited for Wendy to come. He swatted away a fly that had been following him the whole drive there.

He took a deep breath as the door swung open, revealing Wendy. Except she looked different. She was covered with red fur the same colour as her hair, with a wolf-like muzzle replacing her mouth and nose. He would never forget her eyes however, and those were the ones he knew so well. "Hi."

Wendy smiled awkwardly through her muzzle. "Hey!" She looked at his face. "Nice teeth," she mentioned, pointing to the part of his face where flesh was missing, revealing part of his jaw.

Robbie covered it up with his hand, self-conscious. He had eaten that in his sleep. "Y-yeah..." he looked at Wendy's set. "You too."

She smiled. "Come in."

"What's wrong?"

Robbie huffed, sitting on Wendy's couch, which was covered in red fur. "Everything."

Wendy nodded. "Yeah, I know how you feel."

"Except you don't! Do you crave flesh every hour of the day?"

Wendy rolled her eyes. "Dude, look at my teeth," she started, grinning to show of her sharp, canine teeth. "What do you think I eat?"

The emo teen sighed. "Meat?"

"Robbie, I hunt squirrels!" Wendy explained, trying to overcome the embarrassment in that statement. "Why don't you just do that too?"

"Because I don't want to be the up-bringer of the zombie apocalypse by eating a bunch of squirrels, ok?" He sighed. "Besides, that still wouldn't be enough."

"Then what would be?"

"I-I don't know how to say this, but I want to eat a person," Robbie explained, embarrassed and disgusted with himself. "Like, a real live person." He glanced over at Wendy, cheeks metaphorically flushing.

"Robbie–"

"It's stupid, I know. I shouldn't even be thinking about that."

"It's fine. It's just your instincts."

Robbie sighed. "And you can't exactly play a guitar with one hand that falls off all the time and one that doesn't have any flesh on it."

Wendy chuckled. "Falls off? Can I see?"

The emo teen rolled his eyes, taking his right hand out of his pocket, removing it from his wrist. "My head's not very attached either." He held out the hand. "You want it?"

The werewolf smiled. "Nah, you can keep it."