Monsters

Your body kind of sways to the sound of music heard in the distance as you clutch your gun closer hoping the twitters in the shadows heard down the alleys to each side of you aren’t monsters stalking you for dinner. I know what it is to fear those sounds that are echoes of memories from when you were little and hiding under the covers in mommy and daddy’s room because there were always skittering, twittering, scratching noises all around your room. Sounds that ignited into life the second the night light ran out of juice after your parents turned off the big lights for bedtime.

Age old fear slips its way up your spine, spreading numbness into your arms and legs as you keep walking, keeping the gun clutched like a lifeline in your hand pressed against your trench coat. And for the first time in years you pray desperately that God will forgive you of the sins you’ve committed, sins that made Him send these demons, the scum of Hell, to chasing you down the streets of a place you originally thought was safe.

But I can tell you, you were never safe. The second you took in air to scream your first breath outside momma’s womb, you became just another meal. You’re nothing more than fodder, an expendable source that people like me, the monsters, use to feast on. Something that makes the game more fun. Because when we catch you, which we will, jumping from the shadows of the next alley or the one after that perhaps, you’ll fire your gun to no avail and we’ll grab you and tear you and gnaw you. We'll laugh as you scream soundlessly.

It only takes a few seconds before the pleasure of our bites kicks into your nervous system and you go limp, your screams turning to moans as we devour your flesh and muscles, your ligaments and tendons. You’ll smile as we suck the very marrow from your bones before biting them into pieces small enough to swallow whole. We’ll leave your brain and heart for last, all the while you’re whimpering and moaning like some wanton whore getting the best fuck they've ever had, watching every single piece of your body disappear beneath our teeth and hands. You’ll smile foolishly as we swallow your entire being bit by bit.

And you’ll wonder, yes you will, about why you were so afraid of us. I understand why you would be. Who wouldn’t? But you give out one last sigh as we ask you to take the gun and shoot your head, making a break in your skull so we can dig our greedy fingers in and tear it apart. You nod, remembering you had a gun and bring it to your head and prepare to fire as you moan long and loud one last time as you watch me or one of my fellows begin to eat your delicious heart, still pumping feebly to keep you alive. And with that you pull the trigger making your head explode into bits of charred flesh, hair, skull fragments and brain matter that paints the alley wall.

After that gunshot you don’t know anything else but the slow, agonizing walk down to Hell, where you’ll be given a new body, one like ours and sent up to join us. Those that skitter and skulk in the darkness of kiddies’ bedrooms, in the alleyways in downtown. You don’t know that we fall upon each other in a mad frenzy to get all of your brain to ourselves. It’s not even minutes later that we scatter like dry leaves in a gust of wind, leaving only your half-intact skull and pieces of hair behind. Even your eyes and lips and ears and the skin of your face are gone. We sucked out the flesh of your gums, slurped them up in giant gulps, shuddering at their sweetness. We take your teeth and add them to our necklaces and bracelets and earrings. Proof of our kill.

All that even hints that the rest of your body once lay with your skull in that dark alley come morning is the outline of it in the blood on the dirty ground. We leave the gun, we leave the bullet behind. No one will catch us. Because no one wants to admit who we are, why we live. Sure your family will cry over you, there’ll be a closed casket, and you’ll get to watch from a distance as they bury you, moaning in pleasure as our hands pass over your new body, introducing you to all the pleasures you previously lacked before we ate you.

As the last shovel of dirt is thrown in the hole over your casket, you’ll turn to me and stutter as one of our brothers’ lips passes over your exposed throat, “How did I die?”

No answer will come to you, why would it? You don’t remember and we won’t tell you. All we’ll do is laugh and turn away from your resting place as the sun sinks beneath the horizon, our bodies swaying to music heard in the distance. We’ll turn away and find some new sinner to devour, to shred to pieces.

Because we’re monsters and everyone who isn’t is doomed from their first breath to become our next meal.