'shhunk'. It was a distant, unidentified sound that served only to disturb me. 'shhunk'. I was content to ignore it for now. The agony that had consumed every inch of me only hours (or was it years?) before had slowly, mercifully faded away to memory, and a deeply peaceful silence had replaced it. I was so utterly grateful for that fact. It was dark. I couldn't see a damned thing, but then I was not even certain my eyes were open. I remember trying to see, but instantly my eyes felt as if they turned sand the moment I did and since it made little sense to me at the time, I was content to remain still and stop trying. It was quiet here. I liked it very much.
'shhunk'. There it was again. It seemed like an eternity ago that the sound started, but the fog in my mind refused to make sense of it and once again it flitted away from me. 'Where am I?' I wonder inwardly and yet I feel no urgency to answer the question. There was such an alluring attraction to the cool darkness that I could have laid there forever and been content to do so. But there were three little problems that were beginning to make that feel impossible.
'shhunk'. Yep, that was the first one. That noise was beginning to strain on my hard earned calm. Oddly it was beginning to annoy me that it's relentless presence was appearing to grow louder and did not appear to be stopping any time soon. 'shhunk' Yes...it was getting louder, how odd. This fact alone disturbs me enough that I feel my fingers twitch, and for the first time I since my arrival into this situation, my mind and body reconnect. 'shhunk'. Yes, it was indeed getting on my last nerve. Without that blasted noise, I might have been able to ignore my other two problems.
Without a doubt, my next problem appeared to be quickly becoming my most pressing. My stomach growled. At least, I think it did. It wasn't an actual sound, or that typical grumble feeling you get when you skip a meal. No, this was something else. It was like the annoying noise that grew louder as I lay there, except this was a feeling. It started like that little pang of hunger when you could use a quick bite to refuel, but it took very little time for that pang to morph into pain. It started in my stomach, but as the noise grew closer, 'shhunk'...and I swear I could feel the noise now, not just hear it, my belly tightened and I felt my fists clench. I could...smell something now, something....delicious. Oh how that smell enticed me.
'shhunk'. Yes, that one I definitely felt. And something new. Distant, muffled voices, and the grunt of labor rising from above me. I was confused. I wanted the noise to stop, it was infuriating me. I just wanted the quiet, but it wouldn't stop! It was making me angry, which too was odd. I rarely got angry, nothing seemed so important as to require my rage, but this incessant noise was doing the job as nothing in recent memory had been able to do in all my years in the Queen's service. I tried to logically reflect on that fact, but both the noise and my rising need for sustenance refused to allow me to concentrate.
'shhunk'. At the same moment the noise reverberated around my resting place, I felt a sharp punch of metal tear into my leg. I felt it and yet it was as if it had happened to someone else. There was a dulled, distant pain that was not nearly so urgent as the one rising in my head, the one that was consuming me. I felt it push out all other matters from my brain, one by one putting aside the silly little details that muddled my mind and left only one message echoing over and over again in its wake. FEED.
The voices that drew me finally to a sense of alertness that I had never before experienced in my entire life, were close now. "I hit sumthin" I hear clearly, and this wrings a strange, perhaps drunken giggle from another, "bout time too" followed by a snicker and then I feel two solid boots hit the ground very close by. "whatcha got?". It was the first again. I still can not see a thing, but I can smell them both now. Dirty. A disgusting mix of body odor and booze. "dunno, but lets make dis quick, don't like hangin out here at night". This wrings laughter from the other one, the one who is down close to me, "what's de matter? Ya afraid of ghosts?" he chortles, but something in his tone, the flutter of his heartbeat suggests to me, that he too is afraid to be here. It dawns on me then that I can hear his heartbeat, and the sound is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. A rhythmic, alluring crush of blood through muscle as it pumps through his veins and I find myself entranced by the music of it.
By hand, I am uncovered as the music thumps and pulses above me and I am driven to madness by its call. ~Wait~ I command myself, but the music and the need were rising together, it was difficult to do so. Finally there is a flicker of light through my eyelids "what the....she's not even in a box" he calls up, "yah, but what's she got?" is returned down the hole, "better be worth it" he adds from above, sounding as if he was losing his patience with their little adventure. I feel hands pushing dirt off of me, and then digging at my belt, and I hear a familiar jingle. "hah! Payoff!" And with that, I feel my coin pouch cut off my belt, but it was not until his next words do I respond. "hey....nice daggers" and he greedily helps himself to my blades. He looks up, showing the pair to his companion as his grin is reflected in the torch light that had been thrust in the ground at the top of the grave.
It was his partner's expression that confused him, his horrified face as he watched my hands rise out of the dirt and reach for the blades his friend was holding. "those are mine" I inform him, but I admit it might have come out more of a coughed mumble as my mouth was full of dirt at the time. The dusty words tumble out from between my teeth as he scrambles backwards, scrabbling away from me in the very close quarters. I sit up, as he retreats, his face is one of pure fear and for some reason it delights me. The music of his heart has hit a crescendo of hammering terror and it insights me to a frenzy. I leap at him, and before I know it, I have sunk my teeth into his soft flesh at the base of his neck. He screams in a panic known only to the hunted, and as he does, his blood flows over my lips and washes my tongue clean. Oh the taste, the lustful, sinful, exotic flavor of salt and iron, of life and breath all flowing down my throat.
I take my fill of him and leave him in a slump. I find my coin purse still clutched in his other hand and I leave him to it, the coins seemingly meaningless to me at the moment. I look up to the edge of the grave and of course, find myself alone. His friend has made it nearly to the edge of the graveyard, I can hear his panicked heart racing like a symphony. The man never makes it home. I kill him quickly and drain him as I nourish myself again, leaving his corpse in the tall swaying grass, letting the animals to finish off what I leave behind.
It is late, or early if you prefer as I start to see the first hint of purple at the horizon, the sign that daylight will soon be arriving. This sends a little jolt of panic through me as I realize that I am not what I was before and I had no where to go. 'What now?' I wonder to myself, and for a moment, I feel more free than I have in my entire life as I stand seemingly at a crossroads. I stare out over the darkened grasslands and listen to the life teeming within it. No one knows I am here. It is then that my third and final problem reinserts itself into my psyche. One that had been ever present in my rest, one that I could push away so long as the cool, protective darkness remained. Just as the noise had pestered me awake, there is also another persistent, inescapable splinter in my brain that, try as I might, I can not ignore.
"Return to me".
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