“Can you hear me?” He asked.
“Yes. What’s your name?”
“I don’t… I don’t remember,” he admitted. “Are you dead too?”
“I can help you,” I said.
“How?”
“You want out of this cave? Open my box.” The problem was he didn’t know how. I spent what seemed like a day, but might have been a week... or a year, working at the deepest gash I’d created where the lid met the box until finally, a small hole formed. I peered out.
“I see you,” the ghost said in alarm. “You’re alive!” He exclaimed in disbelief.
“Come closer,” I whispered, not bothering to tell him he was wrong. I wasn’t alive. I’d already lost that fight but I’d be damned if it stopped me from exacting my revenge. He did as I asked, floating in.
“Closer,” I whispered. He pressed in right next to the hole I’d made. It was his last mistake.
I inhaled, his soul breaking it apart into vapor as I sucked.
He began screaming in pain and fear. The first pain he’d felt since death. To feel pain was to be alive in a way and I was also doing what I promised, freeing him from this cave. My gift to him. Utter dissolution.
The soul was a thick sludge down my throat. It tasted like salty ash on my desiccated tongue. Strength began to return to me, power, vibrance. When there was nothing left of him, I pulled back my fist and slammed it through the meager hole that had taken ages for my frail undead body to make.
The wood splintered, a loud noise in the quiet cave now that the ghost’s screams were gone. I kicked and pried at the lid, shoving it off. My fingers grasped the sides of the coffin and I lifted myself up, ascending from my coffin.
There were other ghosts here, clustered around the edges of the room. I smiled at them, half my face gone from decay, no lips to hide my teeth. They quaked in fear.
“Ghoul, ghoul, ghoul,” they quivered, chanting in whispers.
“Please,” I rasped from my broken mouth, mocking the ghost who had fallen for my ruse. “Won’t you come close and help me?” A laugh broke from my mouth, the sound manic and wild. The feeling of my tribes’ hands could still be felt on me and I shivered, growled, then laughed more. The sound went up to the ceiling and bounced off the walls, all the cackling twirling and melding into an awful sound. The ghosts pressed their hands to their ears.
My sanity had suffered, just like my body.
I stumbled from the coffin but my strength was short-lived and I fell to the ground on my belly, my face smashing into the rock. I panted and laughed at the pain, reaching towards the edge of the rock platform my coffin was on. Things weren’t going to be easy, not with terrified ghosts unwilling to come to me.
My boney fingertips reached for the edge of the rock ledge and then… I couldn't go any further. I layed still in quiet shock, my mind tripping over what was happening.
“No,” I whispered and reached out again but no matter how badly I wanted off this rock it just wouldn’t happen. I looked back at the box. Dark engravings were all over the coffin and dripping blood. I seethed. Magic was bled into the runes, locking me to stay attached to it.
“No!” I screamed, my voice a raspy wail of anger.
11
Agroan left my mouth as I slowly came to. I’d had my fair share of hangovers but I’d never woken up half-naked, covered in blood, and with a skull glued to my face. Also, my previous hangovers hadn’t been the result of cannibalism.
“Fuck,” I snapped, trying to wipe the blood off my chest. I wasreallytrying to not think about what I’d eaten last night. Mostly because when I did… I felt hungry.
That was a level of fucked up I couldn’t handle. I smeared blood around my chest, trying to get it off. I made a frustrated noise and bent down, snatching up fallen leaves and trying to use those to clean human blood off my body.
It didn’t work. I flopped on my ass and sighed. The iron scent of the blood hit my nose and I looked at my hands coated in red. I began to salivate. My tongue came out and I licked strips up my hands like an addict.
I groaned and began sucking each digit, thrusting my fingers in my mouth. My eyes closed and I thought about how satisfying it had been to sink my teeth into that body.
God, I was so fucked. Beyond help, beyond gone. I fucking ate people. Cause you know, life couldn’t just be easy for me. Not one goddamn time.
I heard footsteps and the sound of movement through the woods. I switched to my other hand and began licking the blood off those fingers while I got to my feet and looked around.
A branch cracked to my left and I jerked my head. A rock hit a tree to my right. I looked that way, peering from my skull mask, still sucking the blood from my fingers. The smell of food hit me. People.
