My Bodies

Introduction

This is for S.A. Crawford's "The Human Animal: An Unofficial Spooktober Challenge", which you can check out here:

The music is "Marrowbones" by Steeley Span, which you will come across in the story.

My Bodies

People see me as a misshapen lump, they avoid me, and certainly do not like me. They tell their children that I am the bogeyman or the childcatcher and I will come after them if they are bad.

No one knows my story or cares about it, they would be far happier if I didn;t exist, but I know if I wasn't therer they would find some other to abuse and denigrate.

My life is not easy at all, but I have to to cope if I want to stay on this mortal plane, although maybe I should jump of a cliff and improve things for the world, but I do have a fondness for life and it is that fondness for life that makes me what I am.

Why? You may ask, or not. I eat like any other human or animal, I like cake and chocolate and fish and chips, but I take more than normal nutrients.

I wander the dark alleys and backstreets of this city at night looking for those that are lost or inebriated and that is when I take my nutrition.

Tendrils stretch out for my flesh on the the other persons, and I start to bring their flesh and blood into mine. They scream as they realise that I am consuming them, but it is just the noises of the backstreets where no sane person goes after sun has gone down.

As I take in their flesh, my own body expands, people jsut see me as an abhorrent greasy fat lump, but they do not realise how vicious I can be, when i decide that I want to eat.

They see their bare, bloodstained bones befire they expire, athough someimes I eat their eyes first, leaving them nothing but excruciating pain as my body consumes theirs.

Eventually my body has added substantial weight and mass, leving only the broken bones of the victims. Sometimes as a treat I will take some of the broken bones and suck out the marrow, leaving the rest for the bugs and rats to eat the bits that I missed.

This is what I am.

Murderer? Cannibal? Bogey Man? Call me what you will, but I am what I am and anyone with any sense with keep well away from my path.

Any body is mine if I decide to claim it and consume it.

I leave no trace, so the authorities will never connect me to these attrocities.

That is why I am the gross, ugly, terrifying mass of fat that you see, you now know the story.

If you meet meet me down one of teh cities dark alleyways late at night the chances are I will come out engorged, grosser and fatter, and you will not come out at all, except maybe in a plastic bin bag.