Page 5

Everett’s skin itched.

It was the itch of an ingrown hair, something burrowed under the surface that needed a layer scratched off to let it out.

Like something stuck between his molars.

The itch got stronger until he could feel it in the pit of his stomach, the urge to scratch like a craving, a hunger.

Like the mindless, half-asleep need to get off while still wrapped in some sticky dream.

Under the bandage, he could scratch all the way down to the bone.

It would feel good.

Satisfying.

Slowly, Everett sat up and peeled back the sodden cloth.

He didn’t want to look, but he had to know.

He had to see for himself his chance of recovery, whether he’d ever be able to use his hand again or move his fingers.

The last layer fell limp across his lap.

He stared.

That wasn’t his arm.

That wasn’t anything belonging to a living body.

Flesh and bone.

He’d unwrapped the bandages and they’d unwrapped his arm with them, meat coming away in slabs, shining with blood, exposed tendons, ribbons of raw nerves.

He tried to move his fingers and something in the meat twitched weakly, some muscle that wasn’t connected to anything anymore, still trying to follow orders.

From in between the strings of muscle, a coarse black hair sprang out.

He stared at it, repulsed, before catching it between his thumb and forefinger.

It was thick and wiry, and it didn’t lift away when he pulled.

Instead, it stretched taut like a guitar string, and something tugged from deep inside.

He felt the tension in his guts, but like a compulsion, he pulled harder.

It came away by the root.

He held it up to the firelight.

An oily glob of fat, waxy and thick, clung to the follicle.

Disgusted, he flicked the hair onto the floor, but he couldn’t ignore it.

There must be more of them.

Those hairs were probably causing the itching.

Hesitantly at first, he pushed his fingertips into the open wound that ran from his elbow to the heel of his hand.

His forearm was flayed open, the thumb hanging off at a wrong angle, the pink gleam of bone exposed.

The firelight turned the room ghastly and unreal, flickering in time with the scattered, uneven pulse of his fever.

Trapped in a nightmare, hellfire licked at him from a few short feet away.

Moonlight poured in through the window, but instead of offering soothing relief, it only made the lighting weirder, silver-blue clashing with orange-red until Everett didn’t know which shadows were real and which were conjured.

His body was unrecognizable to him.

He pushed his fingers in until he touched the bones, sliding in between them like he was trying to push the meat out from a chicken wing, hands shiny with grease and gristle as he ate.

It wasn’t the same thing.

But he was so hungry.

There was something chewing at him from the inside, trying to get out.

His head wasn’t right.

But he was so hungry—

He craved red meat.

He wanted to know what Marshall tasted like.

They were twin urges, confusingly conjoined.

He had touched Marshall that night, but never put his mouth on him.

Marshall had spilled thick and hot into Everett’s palm and over his knuckles, his heartbeat thrumming against Everett’s fingers.

Everett hadn’t tasted him then, not even to put his lips to his own skin in the aftermath.

He might have, if he had known how his curiosity would warp and keen later.

Lifting his mangled arm with his left hand, he put his nose to the slab that had been sliced away to hang loose, and breathed in.

Nothing of Marshall’s scent lingered in the blood or meat.

He whimpered, hurting and scared of himself, scared of dying, but something turned it into a guttural growl.

Opening his mouth, he tasted flesh.

Salt and iron.

As he tore a chunk away and swallowed, his eyes rolled back in awful pleasure, and the guilt and the horror were pushed back under his wave of hunger.