mir ˙⋆✮⋆˚࿔

A Dead Girls Heart - eyeless jack x zombie!reader

It was cold. Too cold. The snowflakes flurried all around you, painting your bare shoulders. You should’ve felt how the chill crept into your bones but you didn’t feel anything anymore. Your pale grey fingers dug into the corpse sprawled out in front of you. The white snow was drenched crimson and so were your knees. You could feel the squelch of the flesh under your fingernails as you ripped another piece off, shoving it into your mouth.

This had become routine at this point. Every two weeks you made your way into those dreaded woods. You’d think with all the horror stories that came out of it no one would continue to come and hike or camp but to your luck, humans were idiots. One body could feed you for two weeks but you were extra hungry this week, not having much luck last time and had to feed on animals like squirrels. So you broke your routine, having to venture out a week earlier than you normally would.

You knew that you weren’t the only one who used these woods to hunt. You sometimes felt eyes on you, watching as you haphazardly attacked your prey, almost rotted teeth tearing into necks and arms. It didn’t bother you, why would it? You were just as much of a freak as whatever else could be lurking behind the trees. Tonight felt different though.

You were licking the last bit of blood off of your fingers, trying to clean yourself up a little with the clean snow when you felt it. The feeling of being watched was back but this time even worse. You felt like you had a million eyes on you as you tried to scramble to your feet. Before you could fully get up a hand was on the back of your shirt throwing you to the ground. All the air in your body escaped as you coughed hard, grabbing onto your back. You couldn’t fully feel the pain of being thrown but it still stung a bit and left you breathless.

Your bloodshot eyes quickly met the black pools staring at you. A tall hooded figure stood over you, a blue mask fit snug against his face, black voids where his eyes should be. He had a ratty messenger bag slung over his shoulder, big boots dug into the snow around you, getting flecks of blood on them from your meal. He still just stared at you, seemingly looking over your body, trying to figure it out, how you were still alive. Your grey skin looked even more pale against the white snow, you had some cuts and gashes that obviously never fully healed but they long stopped bleeding. You had tried to stitch them up but you weren’t very good at it, making them look more jagged. You looked like you were decaying.. and you were.

He tilted his head, “What are you doing?” his voice was low, almost raspy and dry probably from the wind that was starting to pick up. You looked over at the corpse you were just feeding on and pointed, too scared to talk. When he glanced to where you were pointing, you tried to use that opportunity to get up and run for it but he quickly grabbed your wrist. His fingers almost sunk into your brittle flesh and he quickly yanked his hand back. “You should let me help you.” His words came out fast like he was scared you would try to run away again. “I’ve seen you the past few months, I know you can only hunt here, you can’t be seen by anyone.” Your eyes widened at his words, you knew you had been being watched and you weren’t crazy.

“I have more ways of getting food than just the couple of people who come in here, I know you eat the same as me.” He sounded like he actually wanted to help you and you really wanted to trust him. The last time you trusted someone you ended up like you are now, a decaying zombie who lives alone in the woods and has to eat fucking humans to survive. You pushed him away, hard, sending him scrambling to catch his footing as you turned and darted. The snow was coming down harder now and the wind was ripping against your cheeks, turning your pale nose almost blue. You pushed yourself to go even faster, hoping you could outrun him. Of course you weren’t as fast as you thought though when you could subtly hear him catching up.

Your breath caught in your throat as you flung yourself behind a bush forcing yourself to be quiet. The snow crunched under his boots as he got closer, thank god you didn’t have a strong heartbeat or that alone would’ve gave you away. “Fuck, why did she run..” You could hear him cursing under his breath as he still tried to look for you but eventually his footsteps faded away and you allowed yourself to breath finally. You were pissed that you left your food behind and couldn’t remember which direction you came so you let yourself get comfortable on the soft snow. You rarely felt the need to sleep but after the events of the night all you wanted to do was close your eyes and let the darkness take you.

The sun was brutal, reflecting off of the white that surrounded you. Your foot was starting to drag behind you, it had been a few months since you had to replace it but this one always seemed to give you trouble. You huffed in frustration as you felt more stitches come undone, your foot barely hanging on now. You were able to make it to a small clearing by a lake that had a bench so you sat down. Your bag of supplies was left with your meal from last night that you ran away from and lost. This made you even more angry as you reached down and started to rip out the last few stitches, the foot falling off from your leg with a thump. You took your beat up sneaker off of it and threw the dead body part into the lake, watching as it slowly sunk. Now what were you supposed to do? You always made sure to choose a victim that was either your age or around it and a female so in case you needed any extra parts you could easily replace them. But you had nothing now.

The thought felt like a wave crashing over you, sure you had accepted your fate the night you were turned into this but at least you were given things you needed to survive. Now you were all alone with no supplies and no next meal in sight. You felt hot tears threatening to spill when you heard a branch snap. Your head quickly whipped around to the sound and you saw him again. His black pools were staring back at you from behind a tree. “How did you find me?” The words sounded harsher than you meant them to but he didn’t seem to mind, staring to walk towards you. “I watched you all night, I didn’t want to lose sight of you.” His way of talking was very nonchalant but there was a hint of actual concern. “I want to help you like I said, I have food for you and I can fix that.” He nodded towards your left leg which was footless.

“How?” Of course you didn’t believe him, this is the most you’ve even talked to someone in two years so why would you blindly trust him? “I know about this stuff, I’ve studied it.” He said, patting the same messenger bag that he was wearing last night. You eyed him wearily as you started to stand up, losing your balance halfway and gripping the bench to steady yourself. “Come with me, I promise I’ll help.” He held out his hand to you and you eyed it for a second before taking it in yours. He faintly smiled and put your arm around his neck, his arm going around your side to steady you as he started to lead you down a path back into the woods.

He took you to a cabin where there was an overwhelming assortment of books along with scatters of blood on the floor. He led you down to the basement where there was a little table he told you to sit on. You watched him closely as he dug around in a chest freezer that was in the corner and pulled out a foot. He walked over to you, foot in hand and showed it to you, “Will this work?” You nodded and put your leg up onto the table. He smiled triumphantly and grabbed a needle and some stitching. He quickly got to work, sewing the new foot onto your leg with careful technique making your last attempt look like a hack job.

When he was done he patted your knee and stood up giving you a thumbs up. You laughed a little and gave one back. “What’s your name?” You asked as he was cleaning up his workspace. “You can call me EJ, you’re Y/N, right?” You did a double take when he said your name and he held his hands up in defense. “Sorry.. I grabbed your bag for you that you left and your name is embroidered on the inside.” He quickly said, grabbing your bag from the corner to show you. “Oh.. thank you so much, I never want to lose that.” He smiled at you and put it back where it was, “Are you hungry?”.

He had everything you could’ve wanted, different cuts of flesh, different body parts, all different sizes. “Why.. why do you have all of this.” The question was kind of dumb you realized as you said it but you wanted to know more about him. “I work for.. someone, I go on missions for him and have to take out our targets, I get to keep the targets for food.” He shrugged as he laid out meat on the table in front of you. “No one else eats like me so when I saw you.. I wanted to help you.” The thought of someone actually caring enough about you to want to help you almost made your heart beat a little faster. “I really appreciate it, I’m sure you’ve seen I’m not the best hunter.” You laughed lightly at your own words, making fun of yourself. “It’s okay, I know how hard it can be and it’s scarce in these woods, thanks to us both, so at least I can go to other locations and find more for us.” He said it like it was nothing, like he was just taking you under his wing because he wanted to. He sat down with you and you both started to eat, you never got to eat with anyone before and it felt nice.

That was your new routine, for the past four months you have been at EJ’s cabin. You didn’t really have anywhere else to go so why would you leave? He would go out on his missions, bring home someone for you both and you would tear into it together. He always made sure that you got to eat what you wanted first before he finished off the rest. Whenever it would be a female victim he’d always ask you if you wanted an arm or a leg. He kept you from looking too far gone, pulling maggots and other insects out of your cuts that would just never heal. Replacing your left foot whenever it started to drag again. He even brought home some shampoo one day when you said you hated how you smelt. The bond between you and EJ was nothing you had before and it made your heart start to beat a little faster. This turned out to be something that shouldn’t be happening.

It was late at night, you and EJ were playing some board game he found in an abandoned campsite. He kept teasing you every time you had to give some of your game money to him, making your sides hurt from laughing so much. He kept glancing down at your lips every so often thinking you didn’t notice but you followed his slight head movement every time. Your heart was beating faster than you ever felt it since turning. It felt like a freight train was in your chest and from the way he started to look at you, he could tell something was wrong. “Are you okay?” He could barely get the words out before you collapsed.

He quickly moved towards you on the ground, putting his ear to your chest and was met with silence. Panic set in fast as he tried to think of what to do, he thought about CPR but he had never done it and would that even work on a zombie? His arms made their way under your body as he scooped you up, you were limp in his arms as he practically ran down the basement stairs, careful not to hit your head on the wall. He lays you gently on the makeshift doctors table and throws his bag up next to you, grabbing out any tools he can get his hands on. You still weren’t breathing or moving and he felt his own heart thumping like a jack rabbit. He couldn’t lose you, he wouldn’t accept it, not when he can try to fix you.

His next thought was to dig in the chest freezer, his hands searched wildly for the organ he wanted. Finally he found it, grasping it tight as he pulled it out from the bottom. It still looked good and that’s all that mattered, he’d find a way to make it beat again. He hurried back to your side, with shaky hands he lifted up your shirt and immediately sliced into your skin. Soft trickles of your barely red, almost black blood slid down your sides but he pushed deeper, slicing into you even more, pushing through layers of your skin and muscles. His fingers trembled ever so slightly when he got to your heart finally, he carefully removed it, making sure to do everything by the book. It was grotesque, a sickly grey color that was turning black at some parts. The one he had laid out for you was still covered in the blood of whoever it belonged to.

He chucked your old, dead heart behind him and grabbed the new one, putting it inside of your chest, his fingertips squelching around your insides. “Please please work.” He was pleading to no one, hands trembling even more as he tried to stitch everything correctly into place. The new heart was snug inside of you so he started to work on stitching up your outsides, smooth lines pulling your pieces of skin back together where he cut into it. He clumsily put a bandage over the new wound that might not heal and picked you up again, arms falling to your limp sides. His boots thundered against the basement stairs as he ran back up and gently put you back on the ground near and old electrical socket.

His boot hit the socket hard. The cover popped off but he still kept going, kicking it as hard as he could until all that was left was wires poking out, shooting out little sparks. His hand found your wrist and almost dragged your limp body over to it, he quickly placed your fingers against the exposed wires. An electrical sound filled the air as sparks flew where your fingertips were, sending a jolt through your body that made you twitch. He did it again and again, placing his ear against your chest every time, hoping, pleading that the heart would start beating in your chest. The room was almost pitch black now and the sparks were starting to fade from the beat up outlet. To anyone else this scene would look insane, a zombie girl sprawled out on the floor, body twitching every time he made your fingers touch the socket. With a huff he tried again and this time, finally, you let out a gasp. You were breathing again and the slow rise of your chest made his feel like it was about to burst.

It had been two weeks since that night and you were still in a comatose state. EJ kept you comfortable on the couch in the living room, checking what felt like every two seconds if your heart was still beating. He still went on missions as he had to but he tried to finish as fast he could, thoughts of you swarming his mind. He was so scared he’d come home and you wouldn’t be breathing anymore, completely gone from him. The idea that he’d be alone again made him weak in the knees. He wanted to keep caring for you, keep providing for you, keep fixing you the best he could when you needed it. He barely ate as much as he usually would, keeping the parts he knew you liked best for when you woke up. That’s what also made him scared of you being gone, you’re the only one who didn’t treat him like a freak for only being able to eat human meat. He longed for normality and he found it the best he could in you.

It was almost three weeks at this point, a storm was overhead, snowflakes coming down and hitting the cabin windows. EJ lit the fireplace across from where you were on the couch and sunk down on the floor next to you. His head was in his hands, rubbing his temples as he tried his best to relax. All he wanted was for you to wake up, to hear your raspy voice, see your bloodshot eyes looking back into his black pools. He was slowly starting to drift to sleep against the couch when there was a sudden jolt. He whipped around to look at you, your fingers were starting to move, gripping the blanket that he covered you with. “Yes, yes finally, please wake up.” He scooted closer to you on the floor, one of his hands coming up to start smoothing your hair. He could see your breathing getting heavier and the way your eyelids started to flutter.

Your eyes were even redder when you finally opened them, searching around you before settling on EJ. He didn’t have his mask on so you could see when his features went from downright concerned to full of relief. He jumped up and sat next to you on the couch being careful not to bump you too much. “W-what happened?” You choked out, your throat beyond dry from being asleep for almost a month. “Your heart stopped, I replaced it.” He placed his hand where your heart is and you looked down to your torso wrapped in bandages. “That’s pretty badass.” Your words made him laugh and he couldn’t help himself, grabbing you as gently as he could, wrapping his arms around you in a hug, you actually felt how warm he was and how fast his own heart was beating. Your arms wrapped around his neck pulling him closer to you, his grip tightened and he placed his head in the crook of your neck.