#makkapitew

You must be so lonely, down here on your own.

Except you’re not, Beth is here with you. Just like she always is. Always was. You had to steal her sweater first, just to keep the cold off, another layer couldn’t hurt after all. But then it turned into her pants, then her socks, her shirt. Anything to keep the cold off. The pants hurt the most, sliding them over your broken and mangled leg had let out shrieks and and cries you weren’t aware you were capable of making. Sometimes you can hear voices from above, from the cliff where you fell. Shouts and yells and cries and screams and howls. You’re not sure it helps the loneliness, or makes it worse. When the calls stop coming, you’re not sure if you’re relieved or not.

When did you bury her?

Beth? You want to say not long after the first week. You’d like to think that you would have buried her sooner, but your muscles are so weak, and you’re so tired, always so, so tired now, and it took a couple of days to dig the shallow grave you needed. Your fingers are black with the cold when you grip the piece of wood you used to methodically scrape away every inch of clay that you could. Finally, you were able to bury her, almost as naked as the day she was born, into the shallow pit and you used your makeshift shovel as a grave marker. She rests there by the underground pool. She had always loved swimming.

When was the last time you ate?

You remember eating a bag of chips sometime before dinner, back when you were still at the lodge. Safe and warm and Beth still alive. You had skipped dinner that night, still full from chips, and Sam had chastised you for it. You had laughed then, promising to eat a small snack before you went to bed that night. That she was worrying too much.

Except you never got to go to bed that night, or have that snack. Instead, Mike had played with your affections and humiliated you in front of everyone else. They had all been laughing—laughing at you—and you ran to escape the jeers. Ran outside, and ran off a cliff. You wish you had had supper that night after all.

You’re so very hungry.

Drank?

You’ve been drinking some of the water in the pool nearby, dragging yourself to it a little as you can manage. The water is brackish, stagnate, and so cold it burns your blackened fingers and throat. It helps, until it doesn’t. Not long after drinking you always puke it back up it. You can feel your stomach turning itself inside out with every heave, ejecting nothing but the brackish water and bile. There is nothing inside your stomach otherwise.

You’re so very thirsty.

You really should eat something.

But there is nothing to eat.

But there is.

No there isn’t. You’ve tried. You can sometimes hear the skittering of mice on the floor of the mines, but you cannot catch them. They are too fast, too small, and you are too weak.

But there is.

You don’t understand.

Yes, you do.

No, you don’t. You don’t want to.

But you will die if you don’t. 

No. Nononononono!

She protected you by giving you her clothes.

But you’re not wearing her clothes, not anymore. The layers were once fine, but it was too much a couple of days ago. It brought relief for a little while, but you’re not even wearing yours now. All you’re dressed in now is your underwear. You would have take those off, but the shame of Josh, or worse Mike, finding you dead and naked is enough to make you endure the heat. You would rather die than have Mike see you naked.

She can still keep protecting you anyways.

You don’t want to. But you find yourself dragging your emancipated body over to where you buried Beth. With shaking fingers—from fear? from exhaustion? from anticipation?— you grab the makeshift cross, and begin to once again scrape away at the clay. Inch by inch you get deeper until you see the first traces of the pallid grey frozen skin of your twin. Even without your glasses, you can make out the dead, milky white eyes staring into nothingness.

Hurry. You need to feed. There isn’t much time left.

You remember the old knife where you had found the paper and charcoal and wood. You used it to carve BETH into the cross for the grave. But where had you put it? You can’t remember.

No time.

Murmuring apologies under your breath, you grab her arm—stiff, lifeless, cold—and sink your teeth into the skin. The skin is tough, but your teeth are sharper then you remember them being, so they pierce easily enough.With a lurch you rip a piece away, but meat is dead and dry in your mouth. There is no blood. She has been dead and frozen for so long that it has frozen with her. You don’t know it that makes it better or not. You struggle to swallow. The tears burn as they fall down your face, the first bit of heat you’ve felt in ages.

Yes. Feed. You need to gather your strength.

(You’re not sure how long you’ve been thinking in second person now. But it helps keep some of the loneliness at bay, so you don’t mind it too much.)

SPRING

Spring is life. For most of the winter you were stuck beneath the mines. You were still too weak to leave and there was nothing to hunt. Only the body of your sister, and you had to ration that so you wouldn’t starve. But it has been months since then, and now you can hunt.

How do you feel?

Your limbs have started to elongate, and when you ran your hand through your dark hair, strands had fallen out in chunks. It doesn’t bother you has much as you would have thought. Your broken leg has healed as well, though it doesn’t quite look the same as the other. It’s just as long, the limb just as ashy-grey, but it bends a little too sharply.

Climb. You need to hunt. The sun has set. The night is yours.

It’s awkward to walk on, so you don’t. It doesn’t hurt necessarily, it’s just uncomfortable. You prefer to leap or hop as you scramble up the loose and broken rocks at the base of the cliff side where you had fallen. Soon enough, you reach the top.

Now, hunt. You need to hunt.

You take off into the wooded area of the mountain, enjoying the freedom you haven’t felt in so very long (not since you were forced off the cliff). You leap among the branches of the trees, searching for food. Anything would work. As long as it’s alive. You are so tired of dry meat, tough and tasteless from the cold.

There, over there. Do you see it?

You do. A flash of blue amongst the sea of reds and oranges and yellows that is your world now. The first cool color you’ve seen in so long. It’s a large elk, scavenging along the forest floor. It’s hot breath causing dried pine needles to scatter. It’s body thrumming with the blue signature of a creature alive and moving. A distant part of you realizes that your eyes have never been this sharp, that you’ve never been able to sense movement like this. You ignore it for the saliva pooling in your mouth, dripping out between your jagged, razor sharp teeth and down your chin.

Go. But be careful. It’s horns will still do some damage to you. You aren’t strong enough just yet.

Keeping the advice in mind, you carefully move through the trees, keeping quiet to not spook your first, fresh meal in ages. You freeze when the creature raises it’s head to sniff at the air, it’s muscles tensing, but with a snort it goes back to eating the dried twigs on the ground.

Now! Attack now!

You leap at the elk with a screech that echoes through the trees. It shoots its head up in fear and starts to bolt, but it is too late. Your claws dig into the the neck of the beast and you drag it to the ground with your weight. It tries to fight back, smashing its antlers back into your face, but your teeth are already in the process of ripping out its throat. it’s fear is unnerving—intoxicating—and a part of you cries for more.

No! You are moving too fast! Don’t you want to savour it?

But the blood is so warm. You didn’t realize how thirsty you still were, that your thirst had never been quenched when you were trapped down inside the mine, until now. Slowly, the creature’s breath lessens, its dark, beady eyes darkening until all life is gone. You are momentarily distraught that now it is dead, the fear you fed on it over. But you ignore it for the blood that draws you in. 

It’s fine. We still have time. 

Now you can feed. You rip into the carcass with your claws, pulling out organs and meat and blood that is still so very warm. The blood slides down your throat thick and hot and you have never drank anything so good in your life. The bones crunch beneath your teeth, working to suck every drop of marrow from them. The meat is thick so very fresh, every bite sending more warm blood into your mouth, the fat delicious. You slurp down the entrails, enjoying the way they slide down your throat.

(You have never felt so alive. The other you agrees.)

SUMMER

Summer is growth. Everything grows. Your knowledge of the mountain grows. The ability to hunt grows. Your skin, while still the ashy grey of the dead and frozen, has grown tough and impenetrable. Soon, even the variety of food on the mountain grows as well.

It has been ages since our last meal.

They’re right. It has been. You took down and ate a bear, large and fat from its meal of deer that it had been eating when you killed it. You like bear. It is the largest and most fierce predator of the mountain, everything fears the bear and it fears nothing. But that just makes the fear it does feel when you send your claws into it all the more satisfying and delicious.

You still kill too quick. You don’t give us enough time to savour it.

You know that. You’ve tried. But something in you just gets too excited (too horrified) at the sensation of fear and you end it before it has really begun. It’s fine though. Soon, you will both be able to truly enjoy a meal as it’s meant to be. But now, the sun is down, and the hunt begins anew.

And this prey, you like most of all.

Do you remember where we saw them?

Of course you do. You had been stalking them for ages now, waiting for a chance to strike. But they like to sit at the large fire every night and you don’t like the fire. The fire is too hot and burns, it is not nice and warm like blood. Fire reminds you of the burning you had been feeling just before you had first fed all those months ago.

Yes. Good. Remember that feeling. Fire will kill us both.

You spend the first couple of hours, roaming the mountain, hopping from tree to tree, keeping an eye out for your next meal. You do not go towards the northern end of the mountain. The north feels of death, not the death that you bring, but the death that comes to you.

It has brought death to both of us before.

You find your prey quickly enough in the end, and it is your lucky night. They still have that cursed fire going, two of the one’s that look like you. But their skin is not ashy enough, their limbs too short, their hair too long. But the third is missing. 

Quickly. We must find the third before they return.

You leave the site behind, leaping through the trees. You sense one of them turn towards the sound, but you ignore it, no matter how tempting the flash of blue is. Too close to the fire. Too dangerous. Not worth it. You do find the third one though. Further on from the others, facing the large red shape of a bush. Still too close to the others though. You need to lure them away. Further away.

It’s easy. We know what to do already.

(You do?) Of course you do. You move yourself so you’re even further from the other two prey, and you call down.

“Hey.”

Making the sound is odd. You haven’t used your voice other then to scream in so long. So the word sounds odd to your ears. Too gravely, too masculine, too fake.

“Huh? Dad?”

“Hey.”

“Why aren’t you back with Mom? Did something happen?”

“Hey.”

Not yet. Just a little longer. Then we will feed.

FInally, the figure moves, more then just the strange thin stream of blue, towards you. The aura is perfect and bright, and getting so, so close. And becoming more and more terrified.

“D-dad?”

“Hey.”

Finally—finally—you strike. And the figure screams. The scream fills you with ecstasy (horror) and power. The last thing they will ever see is claws and your bloody, sharp teeth as you reach towards them. You go to wrap your claws around them and drag them away, down to the mines, where I can peel away their skin and crack their bones and hold their slimy, grey entrails in my claws as I feast upon their meat and blood and fear as they scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and (MAKE IT STOP!) 

Your claw strikes out and with a single swipe, their head falls from their neck. Eyes still wide in fright, mouth open in a wordless, voiceless scream. You make your own scream in frustration (satisfaction) and loss (victory).

“Rylee?!”

We need to go. Hurry!

“Rylee?! Are you okay?! Answer me!”

You grab the body by the ankle and drag it away towards your home in the lower reaches of the mine. The blood still pouring from the now empty neck leaving a trail behind you. You don’t care. You leave the head behind. You don’t care about that either. You have a meal again, that’s what’s important.

“Rylee?! Rylee?! Oh god, please. Please, please, please be okay. Not my baby, not my baby.”

You continue through the trees until you find the cliff and descend into its depths once again. You can hear two heartbreaking screams behind you.

But we don’t have a heart, do we?

(You do have a heart, don’t you?)

AUTUMN

Fall is change. The hunter, the one who wields fire, who has captured the others like me, knows I am here again. Has been hunting for me ever since.last season. But it’s okay. I was reborn in the mines, he doesn’t know the mines like I do. Like we do. Does he?

No he doesn’t. The mines are our home. (You don’t want them to be)

The better prey have been coming around less and less now. Some from the weather, some from the botched hunts. I haven’t been able to kill or take or maim as I should. Do you know why that is?

No, we don’t. (You do.)

I am meant to savour the fear, it is the most exquisite of flavours. It sweetens the meat so well, makes the marrow of the bones more fatty, the blood thicker and darker, and the entrails. Oh, the entrails. You would understand. If only you would let me!

We want to. We want to so bad. (Never. Never never never)

It’s fine, I suppose. We have all the time to make things better. Soon you will know the true taste of fear. Still though, you are more stubborn then most. Most fade off after a short time, and though you grow weaker, we will win in the end. I will win in the end.

We’re so tired. We want to sleep. (But you can’t.)

Someone is visiting my mountain though. Entering my hunting ground. I can feel them, see them occasionally. But the hunter is always too close, so I can’t get to them. It’s fine. It’s always fine. The one who lives in the center always brings more food with them. I mean, you were one of them. Did you know that?

More food? We’re so hungry. Always so hungry.

I know. I know. Just a little longer, and soon we will feast. I will grow fat off their fear and you will know what it truly means to be full. Or well, as close as we can get.

Just a little longer.

WINTER

Winter is death. I am death.