A Story About You

“- And that my dear listeners is where we leave our tale tonight. Tune in next season to see what will happen to the quiet town of White Crest - and more importantly if our nightmares truly stay buried. This has been Ines and you have been listening to What Lurks in White Crest. And remember, maybe the horrors are afraid of you. Consider that the next time you scream at them. It's rather rude this late at night,” Ines recorded, her eyes focused on the lines of the recording as the slow creep of the theme song played as she leaned back. That take felt final and good. She wouldn’t need another take for this weeks gag.

It wasn’t done - not really - she had a lot of editing to do for the finale, but for a moment she closed her eyes and took a breath. The giddy excitement of having done it fading for a moment as the sinking pressures of not doing anything started to move in. For the last few weeks or so it had been non-stop recording and writing - and it showed on her body as her arm started to wobble as she clicked save almost subconsciously.

 Even now - despite the lack of needing to sleep she seemed to always need something - and slowly but surely she got up wobbling like a baby deer. She had been so worried about the podcast she hadn't been eating super well.

Walking over neatly piled technological parts she stumbled to the kitchen, the light from the neighbor’s garage sensor blasting in her face at what two am? Maybe three? Either way as she got to her fridge she pulled out some bones she had gotten hours before getting distracted by work. 

She had established a - sort of relationship with the butcher a few blocks down. It felt kind of like grocery shopping, and in a way she guessed it was as her teeth turned sharp and jagged excited to pulverize the bones into shards. The crunchings were - ominous she was sure - but no one seemed to notice in the houses around her as she stood in front of her fridge too wobbly to move without the meal in front of her.

It didn’t fill her exactly - not how she had remembered food to taste like. There wasn’t warmth in it, or solace that someone loved her while making the food. Her dad’s cooking had always felt like that, a warm hug disguised as breakfast or a gentle hand on her shoulder masquerading as dinner. No as she munched and broke the long bone it felt less like love and more like a cold equation. This many femurs meant she could walk without wobbling for three days, but it didn’t bring her closer to anyone. 

She knew not all of them were animals like he claimed they were - she could tell that pretty easily as she grabbed another bone she was fairly sure connected to an arm. She tried not to think about it as she gnashed at it. After all, she needed the bones more than they did now - and she hadn’t killed them. She didn’t know who they were, and it wasn’t as if she could have stopped their end.

 Besides those bones seemed to keep her solid for longer - a worthy sacrifice as she had more time to work on her stories. Something that would outlive them all - and that had to be worth it.

Still as she finished with a little cough she couldn’t help but ache for the days that she felt full of something closer to love. Now she was less wobbly - but she didn’t feel any closer to anyone. More steady, she didn’t find it awful to sit down and take out her tablet reading the different comments on the last episode as she ate smaller bones - more out of a habit than anything else. It felt bad to waste them.

 She’d need to go get more tomorrow as she ran errands, but for right now she could pretend she was waiting for a roommate to get home to tell them about the response. Maybe they would scold her for staying up all night and working herself to the bone - an irony that wouldn’t hit as hard as it did now as she cracked a thumb bone in two. She would laugh and tell them she was fine - that great work happened in the silence of the world and besides she needed to finish off the season strong. 

It was easy at three am to pretend that she wasn’t achingly empty - that the hum she heard sometimes was her heart beat and not the whirring of a monitor trying over and over to connect to a tower.

Maybe tomorrow she’d put a roommate's wanted ad up. She could use one as she tried to figure out why people were asking how ‘she knew’ or whatever nonsense she started to find patterned in her comments. Maybe someone else's eyes on it could help her understand what was happening.