The monsters had left me with little to no prey. The days would come just as fast as they would pass. My hunger standing on an edge between death and starvation. I had never been a healthy eater, I would always avoid the 'green stuff' whenever I ate, the fruits and vegetables proving far too odd and in my mind unsavoury, but my body had changed. Before I could convince myself every once in a while to eat a healthy salad. Now, my body could barely hold them down. Yet, to survive I had to carry on. Day after day, I would forage for anything to eat...
I would barely scrape by...
Whenever the pains in my stomach would subside long enough for me to grasp at the bliss of dreams, I would often find my other-self. Every time that I would find her, I would find her worse for wear. She had grown far quieter after the starving began. No more ominous conversations, no more ambiguity. It seemed as if she had lost her voice.
Yet, as the days became weeks, I noticed her changing. I had always been rather skinny throughout all of my life but this, this was something else. Her skin looked cracked and sunken. Each and every bone peered through the thin visage of skin.
As time continued to drag on, she got progressively worse...
For all that happened to me, for all that I was suffering through, it was nothing. Nothing compared to the suffering she was going through. In my dreams when I'd find her, if everything was silent, I could hear a sound writhing its way out of her mouth. Between each and every breath, I could hear gnarled wheezing. This noise sounded far more hoarse than I knew possible. It pained me to see her in such a broken condition. For if there was one thing I learned, she was just like me. She was in hell. She was scared. She was... alone.
The faint tear lines on her face told more than a thousand words.
We were the same.
We were one.
--=o-o=--
The monotony of my life of starvation shattered at the first sight of a creature. In the midst of my foraging, a small little blue bird flew over the valley's ledge. It instantly captured my attention. I charged towards it in a panicked frenzy. As fast as my weakened body could move I scrambled my way towards it. As I neared the bird, the height at which it flew seemed negligent. I jumped with all my force as outstretched my arms towards the small little creature.
My frenzied grip... snapping its neck...
The little creature felt lifeless in my hands. The few strings which held my humanity snapped as I devoured the bird.
I didn't forget any of it. The first few times, the hunger overpowered me, overwhelmed me. It had pushed my consciousness to the recesses of my mind. This time it was different, I wanted flesh.
No, I needed flesh...
I savoured in the feeling of the meagre, tender flesh as my teeth sank into its lifeless body. I felt a euphoric rush as the blood which once pumped through its veins drained into my mouth. I relished the feeling as I sucked each and every drop of blood from the bird.
As sobriety hit me in full force, a single verse made its way to my mind.
'And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.'
Man does not live on bread alone