— compulsions.
feat. michael kaiser || wc: 9.0k cw: gn!reader, no pronouns used, non-canon au, childhood friends, dark content/dead dove do not eat: cannibal!kaiser, blood, descriptive gore, descriptions of cannibalism, body horror a/n: prequel to urges (isagi). au will still be isagi-centered, but the dumb blonde got me again and this was ofc way longer than it was suppose to be *shakes fist*
For a child so small, it was astounding how much he was able to devour in one sitting.
Half the body is gone—the corpse laid facing up, the man’s face still and permanently scarred, eyes wide open and blank and mouth unhinged slightly from shock. The lower half of his body was completely shredded apart, a disgusting pool of blood with the chunks of skin littering the floor and organs completely in disarray, freeing themselves from the compression of the inner body. The legs were nothing but bloodied bones, only the feet’s flesh remaining; half of the man’s torso was nearly obliterated, only a few chunks of spare flesh hanging onto the visible spine and pelvis.
The boy himself was nothing but bones with the sparest of skin attached to them, covering them like a cloth, but somehow, his appetite was ravenous enough to the point where had eaten nearly half of a rather stout man.
He stares up at the man in the suit, tearing apart a piece and chewing slowly on a veiny clump of red muscle that twitches in the boy’s palm. The body’s heart.
The man smiles down at him, one that the boy only returns with a blank look as he continues eating.
“You must be hungry.”
Still staring up at him, the boy stays quiet, only opening his mouth to rip off another portion of the bloody heart, tiny baby teeth ripping the meat off, and chewing it again hurriedly, as though it were to disappear. Some blood squirts from the muscle, but the red bleeds into the man’s uniform, the red disappearing into the red pants and black button up.
The man crouches down at him, eyes softening when he notices the oddly sallow cheeks of the boy, cheeks that should’ve been filled with nourishment and plumped by this age, rosy and chubby. He reaches his hand out, only for the boy to wince and put the hand not holding the heart up. The man pauses, surprised at the behavior.
Eyes closed tightly, the boy lets out a whimper from bloodied lips, a menial hand acting as a tiny shield against something. He’s protecting himself.
The man murmurs softly, in a tone that seems to be rather foreign to the boy, “Don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you.”
The child slowly pries open his eyes, turning his gaze back to the man, who softly smiles at him. He waits, his hand still up just in case.
Then, the man carefully puts a hand on the boy’s blonde hair (oily, he notices instantly, as though it hadn’t been washed for days). The child shuts his eyes tightly again, but feels the hand go to gently stroke his head, a touch he wasn’t used to. A touch he doesn’t know the meaning of.
The man watches as the boy opens his eyes again, astounded at the odd, but painless sensation. He gives another smile at him, eyes crinkling at the corner with a twinkle in them.
“Let’s take you home, hm?” the man says to the child, who merely blinks at him.
“His name is Michael,” you hear your father say from your place upstairs, where your parents talk amongst each other in the kitchen as you hide yourself between the bars of the upstairs railings. “Michael, this is my wife.”
You can hear the shuffle of your mother’s skirt as she crouches down. “Hello there, Michael. Welcome to our house. Have you eaten yet?” she inquiries fondly.
You don’t hear a reply, something that makes your brows furrow since that’s not polite to do so.
“Are you hungry?” your mother asks.
Again, no reply.
“Do you like any specific foods?”
“Sweetheart, how about you make him a sandwich?” your father suggests to your mother. “He had eaten earlier at the facility, but I’d hate for him to go to bed starving.”
Your mother affirms his suggestion and goes to tinker with the dishes and supplies in the kitchen. You hope she’s making one of your favorite sandwiches, the one with jam stuffed between Nutella and white bread.
“I hope you like turkey, Michael,” your mother chimes; you make a face at the food, displeased with her choice.
Michael. That’s a boy's name. You have a boy named Michael in your class, and another in the class next to you. Perhaps you have a new friend of sorts? But you only meet friends from school, not in your own home, and especially not so late at night.
Curiosity takes over you, and you carefully tiptoe down the stairs, wondering who on earth this Michael was. The kitchen’s light comes brighter and brighter into view as you inch closer, and you just about make it without being seen until you hit a certain point on the wooden planks and the wood creaks out voluminously.
You freeze, alarmed at the sound, and misstep on the last stair, gravity pulling you down with it and sending you tumbling down noisily.
The impact doesn’t hurt as much as the fright that spikes in your body, scared of getting in trouble for getting caught being awake so late in the night. Your parents rush out of the kitchen from the noise, finding you on the floor in a twisted position.
They yell out your name in worry, but you’re more concerned now with the pair of foreign blue eyes that stare at you from the entrance of the kitchen. A boy with a choppy mop of blonde hair was just barely visible to you before your father hid from view with his body, his face speckled with blue and black in some areas and donning rather ripped and worn-out clothing. You stare at him back, wondering about his presence, before your mother scoops you in her arms and takes you back upstairs at your father’s command.
Michael stays in the guest room in the basement. Your father tells you not to go down there in the meantime and to stay upstairs in your room if he’s ever on the main floor. For Michael, it’s the same instance; he’s not allowed to come upstairs if you were there and must remain in the basement. They even put a tall stair gate that properly separates the two levels of the house for extra insurance.
When you ask him why, he merely tells you “because I said so.’”
“I can’t be friends with him?” you ask him during breakfast before school, some milk from your cereal sopping your chin.
Your father tucks out a tissue from the holder, dabbing the liquid away before it can stain your new purple butterfly t-shirt. “One day, you will. Just not now, my love.”
You say nothing, a response to your father shows him that you understand. He goes to prepare another helping of raspberry toast and cereal, and you tell him you’re full.
He chuckles fondly as he plops a spoon in the bowl of cereal. “No. This is for Michael.”
“How come he gets two raspberry toasts and I only get one?” you huff when your father takes out two pieces of bread and spreads the preserve on it.
“Because you don’t eat the second one all the way through,” your father chides, “and we don’t waste food in this house. Michael needs more food than you. He’s very skinny.”
“Like a skeleton?” you ask.
Your father shakes his head in disapproval, tutting a finger. “Don’t say that, honey. That’s not nice.”
You shrug, going to munch on your singular piece of toast, your full, cherub-like cheeks puffing from the food. “I’m just asking.”
A shattering crash, a loud boyish yell, and a shriek from your mother. The combination of the sounds make you rush out of your bedroom to see what the commotion is about rather late in the night.
You make it halfway down the stairs, using the railings again as a barrier between upstairs and downstairs, trying your best to see what was happening in the living room.
Your mother clutches her palm tightly, shaking visibly as her face twists from what seems to be pain of some kind. One of the vases has been broken, its ceramic shards all over the carpet of the living room. The pasta your mother cooked last night is splattered on the carpet as well, staining it orangey-red with sauce and noodles all over.
Your father holds down a wriggling Michael in his grasp, who thrashes against his hold angrily. This is the few times that you’ve seen him in passing, always so far away from you despite being under the same roof, and you’ve never interacted with each other even once besides the singular moment of eye contact in the two months he’s lived here.
“Let me go!” he screams, pounding and scratching at your father’s arms. “I don’t want stupid spaghetti!”
“You need to eat,” your father attempts to say to him, but his words fall deaf on the boy’s ears. “You have to eat something or you’ll starve.”
“Get the fuck off of me!” he hollers, the curse word making you flinch at his ferocity. You’ve heard the word before, but your parents have forbidden you to say it, with the one time you decided to test it out to see its truth ending you with a bar of soap in your mouth. “Let go!”
“Michael, just one bite of it,” your father pleads, his grip still firm around the boy whose skinniness doesn’t match with this strength. “Just a bite of some spaghetti and you can go to bed.”
He whines and yells, shaking his head furiously.
“No! I want meat! I want meat!” he shouts.
“You can’t have meat,” your father says, which only makes the boy angrier. “That’s not allowed.”
His face is flushed with red, eyes that you thought were blue now flickered with ruby as they stare hungry daggers at your mother. You can see clearly now that his chin is glazed over with something; saliva. He’s salivating.
The boy continues to thrash, wetness spitting out in flecks. “I don’t care! I want meat! I want her meat!”
Your mother whips her head back to the boy, horrified at his words as she continues to clutch her bleeding palm. She turns her gaze to her father for a response at Michael’s words, only for him to swallow dryly and to motion for her to get out of here to tend to her wound.
“You,” she breathes to your father in a wide-eyed gaze. “You need to take him back to the facility. He can’t stay here any longer… not with (Y/N) around.”
“He’s not an animal, sweetheart—”
“He’s acting like one!” she interjects, taking account of Michael’s heavy panting and intense salivation as he fixates his gaze on her, hungry and desiring. “What if something happens to our child?!”
“He’s one, too!” your father insists, ignoring the deep scratches that Michael digs into his skin with his tiny nails. “I refuse to let them do such experiments on a mere child without me around!”
“Then do something about all of this—!” your mother exclaims, motioning a bloodied hand at Michael’s savagery in your father’s arms, gasping as he lets out an inhumane snarl at her, his teeth that shouldn’t be so menacing considering they were still so immature, baring all too harshly. “—before he hurts (Y/N)!”
You’ve been staying awake at night more often lately. The quiet ticking of your clock tends to accompany you, along with whatever sounds the quiet of the night gives out.
A car pulls into the driveway, the muffled grating of rubber against concrete passing through your window with the headlights flashing some light temporarily in your darkened bedroom. They’re back home—your father and Michael.
Michael doesn’t go to school, from what you know. At least… in the daytime. When you’re upstairs, belly full and ready to do your homework in your room, your father takes Michael to “night school”, where he does seemingly the same business you do at school, just in the evening. They’ll leave at around 8:30 pm then come back at around midnight or so.
And all the while, you lay in bed. Waiting for their return. But you don’t go outside of your bedroom to greet them, not wanting to get in trouble for breaking two rules at once, you just merely lie there in wait. For some reason, you can’t go to slumber unless you know they’re home.
You can hear them talking amongst each other, voices muffled by the platform between the floors and the thick walls, but they’re talking calmly. It took awhile to get him to speak, but Michael does answer in short responses, only answering in bare minimums, so conversations often feel one-sided.
Your mother stays away from him now, only just cooking him dinner and preparing his clothes. But she makes herself scarce ever since he sunk his teeth into the deep layers of her palm.
When you asked her about it, despite knowing the reality of the situation, her eyes momentarily widened in fear before she turned to you with a plastic smile, eyes softened in a gaze that didn’t seem like her.
“Mommy just burnt her hand on the stove, that’s all,” she said, voice a little tight.
You meet Michael for the very first time in the dead of night.
Your throat was dry and aching for water, and your mother had forgotten to prepare you some before bedtime, so you creeped downstairs in the blue hour of the night, entered the code that your father gave you for the gate on the stairs, and pattered to the kitchen.
It’s there that you see him, spotlighted by the light of the fridge. He’s peering his head into it, the door to the basement wide open, his enclosure opened. Your breath hitches when you stare at him, almost admiringly so.
For some reason, however, the boy doesn’t move. He just keeps staring into the remnants of the fridge, disinterest on his face. There are eye bags under his eyes, heavy and tinted with an exhausted purple. The bruises from his face have long faded, with some yellow specks here and there, but otherwise, he actually looks a little more human now.
You freeze in your place when you see him in full flesh for the first time without any restrictions to guard between the two of you. A silence falls on your lips, your breath hitching as to not make any sudden noises to startle him and you decide that it’s best to go back upstairs until he goes back down into the basement, but just as you’re about to move, Michael closes the door and turns back.
Then he sees you. You see him. Your eyes widen. He blinks.
It’s hard to see, given that the house was only lit by the light above the stove, but you see him there in full visibility. You’re a little taller, but you make direct eye contact with him, your eyes meeting intentful hues of blue.
You don’t know what to do. You’ve been good so far—abiding by your parents’ words and avoiding interaction with him until you were able, but now you’re face to face with him completely by accident. Will you get in trouble?
Michael suddenly takes a step forward. You instantly take a step back in fright. He furrows his brows.
“Move,” he commands, an icy stare piercing into you.
A yelp struggles itself in your throat, only coming out as a weakened mewl, and you jump out of the way.
Michael doesn’t spare you another look as he exits the kitchen and enters back into the opening of the basement, shutting the door behind him.
The lock clicks. You’re alone in the kitchen now, left alone with your thoughts and the ghost of Michael.
Your throat feels drier than ever before.
It’s been a few weeks since you met Michael face to face for the first time, and you’ve made the habit to make sure you have a full glass of water at your bedside to avoid having to creep down again and run into the stranger in your house. But you’ve forgotten to do so tonight.
You opted for just drinking the sink water from the bathroom, but the taste was different in comparison to the water machine, too tinny and metallic for your liking, an iron-like taste remaining on your tongue that you wanted to wash out.
So… making sure that you were completely alone… you walk downstairs and to the kitchen again. You sigh in relief when you peek through the hallway and find that you were alone this time in the darkness of the kitchen, the overhead stove light still on to light your way.
You watch mindlessly as your cup fills with water, not thinking much of it and turning back to go back to bed, until you gasp so hard that some water sloshes out of the cup.
Michael stands before you, idly and eerily still. The moonlight from the window haloes him and makes him look like a phantom in the night.
Did you not hear the basement door open? Or perhaps the creak of his footsteps? It doesn’t matter now, considering you and him are now once again just feet apart from one another, a distance that seems all too close for your liking.
Neither of you say anything at first. Your large eyes just stare into his dull ones, trying to question why he’s here again. Until he speaks.
“Clean that up.”
Trance breaking from his haunting figure, you gain back a sense of reality and feel the coldness of the water on your foot, grounding you back.
“Huh?” you look down and see a puddle of water. “Oh…”
“Clean it up,” he says, pointing. “Before you slip.”
Your voice catches itself in your throat. Words drown themselves in the confusion you’re faced with at the interaction, and you do nothing except for place the cup on the counter and take some paper towels, soaking it up.
Michael watches you as you quietly clean up your mess, eyes scanning your figure and its every movement. Once the floor was dry, you go back to shyly fill up your cup again from the spilt water and try to pass him to go back to the safety of your bedroom, until you hear him speak again.
“I want to go upstairs,” he says, capturing your attention again.
You turn back to him, a worried pinch in your brow.
“Dad says you can’t.”
“I don’t care,” he states and tries again. “I want to go upstairs. Take me there.”
You frown, clearly unimpressed at his bossiness. “No. I’ll get in trouble.”
His eyes narrow and you flinch.
“Take me upstairs. Now. I want to see what’s there.”
The way he says it sounds almost growly, like he was about to bite at you. You can almost see him snarl slightly when you refute his command.
But you resist anyway, knowing what’s good for you. “I said no.”
Now he’s really irritated, given by the gnashing of teeth and balled fists.
“Take me upstairs or I’ll eat you,” he threatens, his voice now filled with contempt and impatience. “I’ll eat your skin and bones. And then your brain and heart.”
And though you should be afraid of him, afraid of what this stranger in your house might do to you, your face contorts into a mild annoyance, too tired to deal with this matter. If you were somewhat more awake, you probably would’ve been frightened at his words, but the only thing on your mind is just going back to bed—a simple task for a mere nine-year-old.
“You’re weird,” you mutter and turn your back to him, retracing your steps to go back upstairs. But you hear him follow, your footsteps being echoed by his own on the floorboards. You turn back to him, sighing. “Stop following me.”
“I want to see upstairs,” he repeats again, the hardness in his eyes still there.
“...”
You remain quiet, almost feeling vexed at his resilience, but you sigh and roll your eyes. Perhaps if you just let him entertain himself just for a bit. Just for a swift moment so he can shut up and you can shoo him back into the basement. Your parents don’t have to know a thing.
You hold his stare momentarily.
“Just this once,” you state, holding a finger up to indicate your seriousness.
He doesn’t say or do anything, but seems to acknowledge your permission when you let him follow you again. The stair gate is still open, and you move aside to let him in before you close it ever so slightly, just enough that it remains open for him to go back downstairs without the code, and he trails himself up the flight of stairs behind you.
You watch him as he tinkers around with the plethora of furniture in the hallway, admiring the pictures on the wall and looking at himself in one of the mirrors. Just so he doesn’t do anything dumb.
“What’s that?” he asks, pointing to a narrow door.
“Broom closet,” you say simply.
He points to another door. “What’s that one?”
“Bathroom.”
“What about that one?”
“Dad’s office.”
He then points to the two large doors at one end of the hallway, opposite to your own. “What’s that one?”
You turn and look at where he’s pointing.
“Mommy and Dad’s room,” you mention nonchalantly, the way that Michael stares deeply at the two doors going unnoticed by you.
He turns back to you, eyes still a little vast. “Where’s your room?”
Your head nudges over your shoulder. “Down the hall.”
“Take me there,” he commands again. “Let me see it.”
You want to interject, saying that your room is your own, but you’re so sleepy that you’ll do anything if it means Michael goes back down to the basement and leaves you alone.
So you lead him there, letting him wander around your room and admire all the trinkets that you’ve collected. You shuffle yourself back into the comfort of your bed, thirst quenched and eyelids heavy.
“When you’re done, close my door and go back downstairs,” you mutter as you fluff your pillow, hearing him stroll around your room and toying with the things you don’t really want him to touch. “Make sure to close the gate.”
Again, he says nothing, just entertaining himself with your collectibles and toys. You lie yourself back down and shut your eyes, just wanting to rest once more, letting Michael’s quiet sounds of curiosity lull you to sleep, ceasing when you hear your door close. Relief flows within you, finally getting the chance to fully rest without keeping your toes on edge, until you feel your blanket pulling and the shuffle of your bedsheets.
You shoot up in bed, appalled at the sight that Michael is tucking himself into your bed without permission.
“Hey!” you whisper-shout and nudge him. “You can’t do that! Go away!”
“Your bed is better than mine,” he says monotonously, not caring about your concern. “I want to sleep in it.”
“I’m gonna get in trouble!” you whine and try pulling your blankets back to yourself, but he’s already tucked his body under one edge of it like a cocoon. “I don’t like sleeping with other people in my bed!”
“Then take mine then,” he remarks, his head resting on one of your spare pillows.
You grit your jaw. “No! Go back to your own!”
“Stop bothering me,” he mutters. “I want to sleep.”
“Sleep in your own bed!” you exclaim.
“I want to sleep here,” he murmurs, resting his eyes. “Just for tonight.”
You huff, complaining again, but your words fall on deaf ears when Michael doesn’t respond again, clearly taken by the Sandman when he was finally settled into the comfort of your bed. Your own sleepiness is beginning to take over you as you stare at his sleeping, calm face, feeling defeated and exhausted.
“Just for tonight,” you mutter with hushed contempt to him, despite him not being able to answer as you tuck yourself back into your sheets.
Your father had found you and Michael asleep together in your own bed to his surprise the morning after. Although he was more than delighted to see you and him being in the same vicinity without any harm being done, your mother was mortified when he excitedly broke the news to her.
“But they’re able to coexist in peace!” he had insisted.
“For now! What if something happens in the future?!” she worriedly remarked.
“We can’t keep them apart from each other for long,” your father said. “It’s not fair to either of them that they have to be restricted in the house because of each other.”
Your mother wasn’t convinced, still adamant on keeping you and Michael separated if he continued to live with your family. “You said it yourself that the child is… you know.... What will happen to (Y/N) if he gets the urge again?”
“He hasn’t had any impulses since that one time,” your father stated. “Yes, he may have had some urges here and there but the medicine seems to be working! He hasn’t had any incidents since he started taking it, hasn’t he?”
It was argument after argument with them for at least a week, but your mother eventually brought her guard down slowly and accepted the conditions of Michael slowly being introduced to you more and more under their supervision. It was mainly your father that did the talking to both of you, with your mother staying close to you and making sure Michael didn’t do anything impulsive that would harm you.
It was a slow start, just letting you and him eat dinner together when you came home from school (you find that he’s taken a liking to anything with bread). Then on the weekends, Michael was allowed to go upstairs to be around you, watching TV with you or just intently watching you as you played with your toys (he didn’t seem to be interested in them. He seemed more interested in you and what you’d do.)
Your parents were always nearby if he was around you, just in case that he was ready to gnash his teeth. But it never happened. He never did as much as salivate around you and was just another merely child around you. Another friend.
Your father was pleased at Michael’s improvement in behavior, writing them down in his notebook as he examined how he interacted with you.
“I think the newest prototype is showing the best results,” he had muttered into his phone fondly as you showed off your newest bunny plush to him. He took it by the ears suddenly, making you exclaim and telling him that holding it like that will hurt it. Michael gave you a look, telling you that it wasn’t alive to your disdain. Your father chuckled. “His temperament has been nothing but calm lately. He’s improving rapidly.”
Your mother was still ever the worrywart, always keeping a sharp eye on Michael—an attention that went very much noticed by him. She never said anything directly to him, but with her stony gaze, it was always as though she was warning him not to make a wrong move. Michael would just return it with a flair of spite in his eyes, as though he were annoyed at her attentiveness.
But regardless, you and him slowly began to intertwine your lives with each other, beginning to build a foundation in each other’s worlds. All the while not knowing truly how permanently embedded your futures will be together.
You learned the truth about him when you were twelve.
Michael has to take a pill twice a day and drink something your father gives him every morning that mildly stains his lips purple—a juice he has to drink to gain weight properly since he was malnourished as a younger child, your father says. He eats with you in the mornings now before you head to school, but he doesn’t tag along. In fact, his “night school” has moved to the mornings, but instead of coming with you like any other child, he follows your father and they go to his “school” together.
You never questioned the pills at first, thinking they were just the vitamins you were given in the morning to nourish your body. You ask your mother about it one day after school and though her face hadn’t changed, didn’t even so much as blink, her grip on the steering wheel tightens. Hard.
“It’s to regulate his blood sugar,” she says
Your mother is quite the liar and you’ve gotten used to her lies through the years, so you could detect there was a veil covering the reality of her words. But you never prodded about them more, merely because you felt like you shouldn’t.
She asks you later that day to fetch a hair tie from the bathroom upstairs so she could properly cook dinner, but when you don’t find anything in the main bathroom, you venture into your parents’ bathroom to find it.
And that’s when you see it. A sight you never expected to see in your own house.
Your father, with a long, thin, clear tube in his arm filled with red that drains from his body into a beaker, two inches worth of blood pooling inside of it. A small test tube rack holding seven tubes sits on the framing of the sink, with a small amount of a strange and viscous blue liquid sitting at the bottom of it and a couple of orange caps sitting idly next to it.
The orange caps.
The orange caps you would see in the trash can when you were throwing leftovers out in the morning.
You make yourself small, just quietly watching through the crack of the door hinges as your father finishes draining another inch of blood into the beaker, wincing in pain as he takes out the needle from his arm that connected with the now-bloody tube. He cleans himself up, bandaging the area before tending to work with the test tubes.
Your father picks up the beaker, pouring a bit of blood into each of the test tubes with the blue liquid and you watch as blue melded into red, a plum-like color rising from the mixtures. Purple.
Purple…
The drink that Michael drank in the morning along with his pills tinted his lips purple for the slight moment he was done with it, just until he licked his lips and refreshed them.
The orange caps… the purple liquid. The dots connect suddenly and you feel more than nauseated when they do. Michael wasn’t drinking juice. He was drinking your father’s blood… and whatever that blue liquid was.
You shift your body from your hiding spot and reveal yourself to your father, your eyes watery and mind racing.
“What are you doing?” you ask with a warbly voice.
Your father looks aghast at your sudden appearance, clearly stunned at the fact that he was caught in the act. He picks up on the fact that you were clearly disturbed at such a sight and knowing that Michael was drinking your father’s blood and tries to calm you down in the best way he could, though with how harsh your chest heaved and how terrified you looked, it was difficult to do so.
Your father closes the door so Michael, who was outside kicking a soccer ball, and your mother wouldn’t intervene.
The truth spills out; about who Michael was and why he was here. About the pills and the drink. About what he did and why he did it. And though your father was revealing the truth as to not hide anything more from you, it seemed like the more you found about the strange boy living under your roof, you grew more panicked.
You’ve heard about them before—cannibals. Cannibals of the world were notorious for not only their crimes, but why they did it in the first place and what led them to doing so. Everyone was susceptible to becoming one, but only when one would pass the line of sanity and insanity would be labeled as such.
They were primarily born from a fury of negative emotions would teeter them closer to crossing that border; be it a horrible burst of anger or an intense sorrow, the more a person would feel such emotions, the closer they came to bordering insanity and losing their humanity… and they closer they came to venturing out another in order to regain it back.
A person consuming another was their version of restoring their benevolence, each chunk of a person restoring what was lost in the blur of negative emotions, and with each bite they consumed, they felt just a little more human. But it came at a cost—with the more they ate, the faster they were able to lose their humanity, almost at twice the speed from pre-consumption, their emotions unstabilizing themselves once again, making the cycle repeat itself if they weren’t able to keep them in check. In order to restabilize themselves, if ever the case they did lose control again, they would seek out new prey, more prey, to gain back their semblance of being human.
The notoriety of human meat was based on two components—the flesh and the blood. The flesh of humans was unlike any other; a rich maltness with the extra additions of intense juiciness and a powerful umami flavor. A true delicacy to those who have eaten it. The foreign blood consumed was responsible for restabilizing the emotions lost from their own humanity, giving off a euphoric relief that ensured a temporary emotional stability to the consumer. Mixed with the addicting taste of the flesh and the need to regulate themselves with the blood, the combination proved to be the powerful driving force of the repeat behavior for cannibals.
It was why they were dangers to society if left alone and not properly rehabilitated. If such were left unregulated, the cycle was doomed to be repeated.
Often they were looked at with contempt and disgust—so much so that even those that committed the act even just once and restored themselves to society were almost always shunned by others, mainly due to the fear that they would become their next victim. It was rare, but there were people that looked at them with pity—like your father. A gentle, soft-spoken man filled with empathy, your father had dedicated his life’s work as a scientist to try to help those who fell victim to such, with the last few years being dedicated to working on a cure that would stop such dysregulation once and for all.
The pill that Michael took in the morning and night was one of its prototypes. The drink with your father’s blood was to primarily keep him stabilized without wanting to eat flesh and bones. The blue liquid it was mixed with was to thin the blood and reduce the full effects of it so he wouldn’t become too dependent on it. But none of that mattered compared to learning the truth about Michael and why he was here.
You had been living with a cannibal this entire time. Eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner with him, watching cartoons with him, sharing a bed with him… all the while he had the complete ability to devour you whole if his mind slipped at the slightest sense. The truth was horrifying and you wish you had never learned it, because upon doing so, you spiraled into chaos and sobbed to your father why on earth would you hide this from you, knowing that you loved Michael so dearly, it was unlike any other love you harbored for anyone else. You loved your parents, you loved your friends… but Michael was special. There was a special place in your heart for him.
A heart he could’ve gnawed away at in any given moment.
Your father tried to calm you down, telling you that Michael was just as human as you were now. That such urges from him dissipated long ago and he hadn’t gotten them since he started taking the pill and drinking his blood. That he wasn’t a danger to the world any longer because of what your father had nurtured for him.
“This isn’t fair!” you cry. “I deserved to know!”
“Yes, you did,” your father says. “But I didn’t know how to tell you without you getting scared.”
A flow of tears rapidly smear your cheeks, your emotions getting hazy. “What if something happens?! What if—what if something happens to you? O-or Mom? Or me—”
“I’d never hurt you, (Y/N),” Michael’s voice says softly from nearby.
You and your father turn over your shoulder to see Michael standing in front of the bathroom, feet shuffling. Eyes still blurry with tears, you just barely manage to make out his figure. He seems uncharacteristically meek, ashamed almost.
“Micha…” you croak out.
He slowly walks towards you, but your father abruptly stands up and creates a barrier between you and him, understanding that you and him may need some space right now. You hide behind your father, terrified of him after learning his truth. Understandably so.
But he remains his guard in place, adamant.
His gaze concentrates on you, eyes of azure piercing into you. His usual flicker of malice that he gave everyone but you and your father isn’t there, but instead replaced by a true and dedicated devotion. Dare you say you call it love, even, if cannibals were even capable of such.
Your father clears his throat. “Michael, I think it’s best if you—”
“I hate the thought of it,” he states simply, ignoring him. “In fact, I’d rather kill myself than even think of hurting you.”
His tone was just as droll as ever, but the depth of his words were clear as day. Transparent, showing off a nature of him that only you got to see, softer and milder from a boy whose words were usually as sharp as knives.
His dark, harsh words made you and your father flinch, especially considering that Michael was saying them with a completely serious face, indicating that the twelve-year-old was more than capable of doing such a task if given the chance to.
But regardless, you could still see his earnesty. Whether it was you and your immature brain or the fact that you viewed him as special, you chose to believe it. The doubts still lingered in the back of your mind, yes, but you still felt a compulsion to let him still be in your life as Michael.
You stay behind your father, just peeking your watery eyes out at him.
“Do you mean it?” you ask softly.
“That I’d kill myself?” he reiterates, making you frown.
“No,” you mutter. “... that you’d never hurt me.”
Michael stares at you before he nods.
“I’d kill every person in this world before I hurt you,” he states to your father’s concern… especially when he notices the quiet mania in the boy’s gaze. “... before I let anything hurt you.”
You and Michael were fourteen when it all happened.
He was picking you up from the bus stop that your bus dropped you off at, as his “school” ended a few hours earlier than yours did, with just a mild walk back to your house filled with conversations about your day.
It was a late fall day, the sun setting earlier in the day than it did in the summer, so the sky was starting to spill with the beginning traces of blue evening ink mixed with the remnants of daylight.
You and Michael enter your house, the lights oddly flickered off except for upstairs despite both your parents’ cars being home.
The smell was immediate, the first thing that hit you that indicated something was wrong.
An acrid scent—rotting and putrid. Tinny, the faint smell of copper ghosting around the house. Michael curses aloud, face wrinkling at the smell and saying that your mother was probably cooking up a dead body to your discontent. But you can’t help but pinch your nose either, nearly retching at the scent that flamed your nostrils.
You call out for your mother in the darkened house, wondering what on earth she could be cooking in the kitchen, but when you patter over to that area of the house where your mother was usually in during this time of day, her and her pink apron were nowhere to be found.
Michael notices that there were ingredients being prepped and that she was most likely about to cook some salmon, a knife being laid out on the counter next to a cutting board. But the vegetables and the fish are warm, as though they had been left out for a while. You tell him to check the basement as you search the first floor, a worry building inside of you at the strange emptiness.
The living room, the dining room, and the laundry room are all completely empty, except with the remnants of human life like the remote sitting in between couch cushions and the washing machine still running. You check the front door again to truly see if your parents’ cars were there, and they were; hell, even their slippers were gone indicating they were somewhere in the house that you now feel has a sinister feel to it. Something is wrong.
Michael comes back upstairs. He shakes his head when you ask him if they were there, coming up as empty-handed as you were. Your own hands grow clammy, a slight rush of heat running across your forehead. Michael takes your hand in yours, warming them up with his in a quiet attempt to soothe you.
He says that they’re probably upstairs, that there’s still that ground you have to cover. But there’s this gnawing feeling that eats at you when you gaze upon the stairs, telling you that going up there is a bad decision. You try to voice it to Michael, but he just juts a brow at your confusion, shaking it off and with his hand still in yours, you and him slowly climb up.
It’s not a rushed pace to go up the stairs you’ve travelled up and down many times. In fact, you want to go slower the more of them you climb, this resistance in your legs attempting to pull you down as a plea to not go further, for your sake. You pause on the stairs suddenly, a terror in your eyes.
Michael furrows his brows and tightens his hold. He asks you what’s wrong.
Nausea seeds itself within you. You’re left wordless, only swallowing thickly and shaking your head.
Michael turns his head towards upstairs, thinking you’ve seen something, but he sees nothing but the closed doors of the bedrooms. He pulls you stubbornly, managing to make you climb one more step.
You’re frozen in this state of fear, lip warbling at the haunting anticipation. Michael continues to pull you up, telling you to get your act together frustratingly as he heaves you up step-by-step until you and him reach the top floor.
The nausea grows worse when you make eye contact with your parents door, making Michael hiss out in pain slightly when you tighten your grip in his hand. He wants to tell you off, but you cower towards him, a glaze over your eyes. He thins his lips, letting you clutch onto his arm as you approach your parents’ closed door.
Michael suddenly stops in his tracks, just a few feet shy from the door. You turn to him.
The smell he had gotten used to during the few minutes of the search, using his shirt and the laundry detergent leftover on it to replenish his senses every once in a while, but his stomach twists as he realizes that the smell is much more strong now. The strongest it’s ever been, actually—so strong, it makes him want to hurl right then and there.
A rancid rot of something. The familiar metallic smell overwhelms him… but more in the sense of familiarity and less of disgust. He’s encountered this scent. Because Michael has smelled this before, all those years ago.
Dread pits itself in his stomach when he guesses what’s behind these closed doors. He can hear it if he listens closely.
Not wanting to wait any longer to keep himself in the dark, Michael grips the door handle of one of the doors and swings it open.
Immediately, you want to throw up and vomit. The smell from earlier is the strongest it’s ever been—a disgusting, pungent thing that even makes Michael retch once or twice in his throat.
You gather yourself up from trying not to vomit, and you regain your balance back to Michael’s side… only to see the very thing that would plague your mind for the rest of your living years.
There, in the middle of your parents’ darkened room, was the corpse of your mother, her torso nearly gone with her blood and leftover organs spilling all over the carpet. Her small intestine lays limply on the ground, unraveled, while one of her lungs half-reveals itself to you from inside her ribcage. Her face is turned towards you, a face forever ingrained in your memory as the very definition of fear itself—eyes wide open, mouth unhinged into what looked like a scream.
And hovering over her, feasting on the flesh of her body, was your father, mangled and bloody and ravenous. His face was smeared with blood, glasses speckle with ruby as his teeth sank deep into her limp arm, ripping off a tender piece of skin off so large, it revealed bone. He chews it with a heaving chest, saliva dripping from his mouth like a waterfall as he searches for more skin to feast on. An inhumane growl erupts from him as he swallows, going to bite on her arm again.
But before he can tear off another piece, you scream out loud at the ghastly sight, making your father suddenly look up and see you and Michael standing there, shock written on both of your faces. It paints his own suddenly, the animalistic-like look on his face dissipating with the exception of his reddened irises that pierce into you and Michael.
You shake violently, your vision getting hazy the more you try to analyze the scene before you. Michael himself is trying his best to understand what on earth happened—why such a mild-mannered, quiet man was able to do such a beastly thing.
Your father suddenly stands up, blood still dripping from his chin, a desperate look in his eyes.
Michael guards you behind him suddenly, reaching behind his pocket as he grits his jaw when he stares at the bloody man that reaches out for you.
“(Y/N)...” your father gasps out, throat hoarse. “I-I can explain—”
“Stay the fuck back!” Michael shouts, revealing the kitchen knife from earlier in his grasp that he points directly at the man that had been taking care of him for the past several years—though calling him a man didn’t seem all that fitting now, not with the corpse in front of him and the blood that stains his body. “Get away!”
Your father desperately turns to him, tears pricking at his eyes at the two children before him looking absolutely terrified of him. “Michael… please… I just—I don’t know what—”
A sobbed whimper rips from you, your voice lost, but Michael speaks for you. “What the fuck did you do?!”
“I don’t know…” your father gasps, blood spitting, “I’m so s-sorry… I just… we were in a fight and—” he takes another step, one that Michael and you take back.
“I said stay back!” he hollers and juts the knife at the man.
“I’m sorry,” your father wheezes, but takes a couple of more to try and reach you, his precious child, with hands that once grazed you so affectionately but are now stained with the blood of the mother you came from. He circles in on you, despairingly, calling out your name in the tenderest manner he can muster despite the red tint on his lips and teeth. “(Y/N), please f-forgive me. Forgive Papa—I didn’t mean to—”
You choke out a sob, gasping for breath, the violent tears running down your face muffling you but you shake your head desperately to not let him get any closer to you. Michael lets you hide yourself behind him, his knife still drawn and hand intertwined with yours.
Your father is now crying himself, disgusted at what he’s done to make you cry so harshly. His hands shake viciously, with their only want being to hold you in his arms like he did this morning before you left for school. If the universe could allow him one wish… just let it be that. Just let him hold his child in his arms one last time before—
Michael suddenly turns on his heel, dropping the knife and pulling you with him, abandoning your father in the bedroom upstairs. He drags you down the stairs you came from, a sense of flight overtaking his senses and letting his body float through the air to wherever he takes himself.
You and him suddenly burst out the door of the house, your father’s forlorn screams of your name echoing from behind you, his broken voice being the last sound you’d ever hear from that house that you leave behind as you and Michael sprint into the night—running and running and running. Running so far, away from the house, away from your father, away from your mother’s body, away from your old life… until your legs are so sore that they can’t function anymore.
All the while, the images play in your head, haunting you. Your mother’s ghastly face staring up at you with chunks of her body missing, your father and his bloody face, the wretched smell of the house, all of it makes you cry as Michael pulls you along. Everything hurts, from the inside out, and you’re nothing but confused and scared.
Amidst the night, you and him stop at a park that you think is miles away from your old house, only lit by a few spare lampposts. Your chest hurts, his feet ache, both of your heads spinning from exhaustion and adrenaline, and you collapse into him, your world suddenly fading black.
A sharp pain stabs you in your chest suddenly, making you gasp aloud and sit up in bed. It disappears the moment you’re conscious, but there’s this aftereffect of a sting that blooms within your chest. A clammy, shaky hand draws to your forehead that you can feel is misted with sweat and you draw a stuttering breath, trying to regain semblance of where you are in this darkened room.
There’s a dim lamp in the corner of the room, and that’s all it takes for you to understand where you are.
“Look at me.”
A voice says it from beside you and you whip your head to see blue hues looking at you with concern. Your own gaping eyes meet Michael’s tired ones, and your shoulders droop upon seeing him.
“Micha…” you rasp out, throat irritatingly dry.
Michael doesn’t say anything, just examining your shaking figure for a bit as you recompose yourself with deep breaths. This was routine to him at this point the more the date of the incident draws closer. There were moments that the one singular moment that pivoted your life entirely would haunt your dreams, making you shake and wrestle with the sheets so violently, it woke him up. He had tried to wake you up mid-nightmare before, but his words fell on deaf ears and you only responded in terrified whimpers. It wouldn’t be long before you jolted awake anyways, once the whimpering started.
A towel at the ready, he grabs it from the nightstand and presses it up to your forehead, soaking the nightsweats up and dabbing it on your open neck and chest that’s stained with tears and saliva. Your chest still heaves harshly, but your eyes don’t flicker around as much as they did mid-sleep, focusing on the blanket’s design as the towel soaks your skin.
You fist the blanket. “I had that—”
“—nightmare, I know,” he mutters, placing the towel back onto the nightstand and grabbing the glass of water to help quench your thirst. “Drink.”
Obeying his command, you recklessly lap up the water, with a bit of it trickling down your chest to his displeasure considering he just cleaned that area up.
You hold your head in your hands as he puts the cup back down on the nightstand, head spinning. Michael suddenly shuffles to you, letting you rest your head on his chest like you did at the park all those years ago, listening to his heartbeat to help calm you down.
“I still see him,” you murmur, feeling his hands run up and down your back. “My dad. I mean.”
“I know,” he says quietly. “It’s the same thing every time.”
“I’m sorry,” your eyelids heave and flutter lightly, exhausted. “You must be tired of having to deal with this.
You smile slightly at his blunt statement, eyes closing as you listen to the steady beat of a heartbeat you often were lulled to sleep by through the years.
He shrugs, clearly unbothered despite how many times he’s had to face this from you.
“Doesn’t matter,” he sighs. Michael’s gaze focuses on the shade of yellow the lamp is, feeling the warmth of your body against his, the silent tears that flow from you soaking his shirt. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”
a/n: this was sooo self indulgent but WTV i just wanted to get it done and spit this out here.. i had more lore to him too but i didn't want him to get greedy so i stopped it here. need to fix that ending tho... lowk weak
also their relationship isnt supposed to be hinted as incestual despite the dark themes—their relationship is more akin to like eremika, where one of them was abandoned and got “adopted” by the other, but kaiser still has his last name. also bc reader’s mom didn’t rly treat him like a son and their dad treated him more like a science experiment. hope i implied that properly
oh he dies in this au btw. just so u know
Truly haunting. Beautifully written. ❤️❤️❤️
