A small dark drabble triggered by today’s events.
In this world we live in, we devour each other. I watched my friend getting devoured in front of me. He screamed. They came upon him like a pile of shadows. They tore him limb from limb. They ripped him open. All the while, he screamed.
My friends were kind and weak. I lost many friends with the years. Many of them were devoured. Nothing left of them, nothing at all. They ate it all. Miraculously, I survived. And I grew up.
One time they wanted me to consume a stranger. I knew nothing about her. I had no reason to swallow the life of another. I refused. After that, I became the outsider.
Sometimes I am surprised why they left me alone, why they had not devoured me too - torn me up, ripped my flesh, cracked me open. Perhaps it was because I was the outsider. I’d been the outsider for so long that I’d become invisible.
Then she walked into my life.
She smiled to me like nobody had done for years. Instantly, I fell in love.
I watched her when she devoured, and marveled at how she executed the ugly task with such grace. Never before had I thought that devouring was glorious - the clothes stained with blood, hands covered in viscera, eyes red as rubies.
Time passed. Then she met someone else. Many other people. And I realized that she was never mine to begin with. Her sporadic nature took me in, and soon I’d become a fleeting fragment of her imagination.
I was correct. Not many days later, she looked at me with a frightening familiar expression - her eyes were filled with hunger. Her sharp teeth glistened when she smiled. This time I let go.
I let myself get devoured.