#grumpsnax

Your settlement has had to resort to eating corpses. You know now, that those creatures are insidious, but there’s no way off the island. Every person who eats them and continues to eat them, eventually the skittering little creatures run to them. When your body and mind are unrecognizable, they sense it. The creatures clamber, crawl, and cram themselves down the throats of those who are too far gone, until they’re swarming around a person shaped pile, still looking for a mouth. As the settlement has resorted to the unthinkable, the population has dwindled further and further. Those who can’t stomach the awful things they must to to survive fall to the sands and are either claimed by the shifting dunes, or the hungry mouths still desperate to silence the constant hollow shriek of hunger that gnaws relentlessly at their insides. There is a body laying in the sand. Starvation has made you delirious. That guilty, morbid curiosity no longer compels you to check the face of the fallen while you take what you need. You’re so hungry... You must be numb to it by now, because when you bite in, the force of your disgust no longer sours your mouth. You would be disturbed, but there’s no room to think. The relief of sated hunger is too great. It’s something you never thought you’d feel again, something you had forgotten was possible, and you feel with certainty that the moment your mouth isn’t full, the hunger will creep in again. You’ve already eaten a third of it by the time you notice the face. The eyes are open. They’re staring at you. It’s smiling. You gag with your whole body as you stumble back away from it. You turn and you can’t look back. It makes a horrible noise in the borrowed voice of a friend you lost a long time ago, cheerful gibberish that cuts through the roar of the wind as you run as fast as your burning, exhausted legs can go. You don’t tell anyone what happened. You’re afraid of being exiled. If they knew the monsters were a part of you now, surely the few that remained would send you off to be consumed by your own weakness and vice. Despite the shame and fear, you’re haunted by the feeling of it. The burn of hunger is a constant reminder of the feeling of being blissfully satisfied. It’s an itch inside of you now. Eventually, you return to the desert. There’s another one standing in the sand, as if it had been waiting for you. For a moment, your hunger is forgotten in the wake of your hatred. Your tears are blinding you as you run towards it, fear and anger forcing their way through your lungs as you fall on it. It’s gruesome, caricature smile greets you, and you’re weeping as your fists fall against it, hitting it’s disgusting, soft body, doing nothing, doing nothing, and then you bite it just to hurt it, tearing it, eating it, and the monster just smiles at you with your friend’s borrowed face.

Nothing matters after you’ve given in. You keep telling yourself you’re trying to kill them all, that if you destroy them, no one else will be tricked like you were. You keep telling yourself this. You tell yourself the relief from hunger is your reward for the sacrifice you’re making to protect the others. You know you will keep lying to yourself, because the guilt is better than starvation. In fact, the guilt is starting to wane now, turning into an unpleasant memory, just like everything else. Nothing has happened to you yet, and you feel much better. You’re keeping the other’s safe. This was the right choice. If you eat the monsters, you’ll live forever, and you deserve to live forever. You spot another in the distance and you start running to it. Just like the others as of late, this one turns to run before you reach it, but the chase means nothing. You’re strong now, strong because of them, and just like all the others, this one crumples when you catch it. Eating them makes you stronger, so you can protect the others. As of late, they’ve been red on the inside.

(Shout out to @dear-maggotboy for these tags (and great art) that inspired part of this. Also, sorry for the double @, I ended up reposting so I could use a read more!)