Fresh air strewn about the town, as usual, there were lots of people around as there normally are and that wouldn't change in the slightest. Everyone seemed normal, as always, not like they had any concerns with the unusual. This place always brought upon a sense of tranquility and peace, especially when there was so much noise that tranquilized their thoughts of uncertainty or negativity.
Alice, Laz and Zabulus walked about, being a group that stood out the most, and avoided the most.
One, a blonde girl with long blonde hair and a blue dress. Two, an old man in a camouflage jacket with white hair and a beard. Finally, an eyeless, two horned, 4 forearmed dark humanoid wearing a white hood, stupidly making himself stand out more.
They passed through without much thought from their minds. It wasn't going to be a busy day. Nothing was happening except for the occasional questions, statements, and conversations they had while traveling through the streets.
A short, decrepit looking elderly lady walked up to Zabulus, staring directly into his non-existing eyes.
Fear? Was this what Zabulus felt?
A memory flashed through his head.
All the way back in his construct... the first person he'd met... the dying star that he had... become.
Zabulus' legs stiffened, his jaw clenched, teeth ground as hard as they could in their bone-white prison.
This sudden encounter terrified him enough that he needed time and space. The first person who spoke to him, had him almost frozen and his heart about to burst from the fear and anxiety.
The old woman opened her mouth wide. "Are you some sort of monster? Ha-Ha-Ha..."
And without a second word, he replied, "No."
A flood of recollections passed through Zabulus, it must have taken less than a millisecond, yet it was enough for him.
It all clicked into place in Zabulus' mind, and he quickly turned around and walked the other way, before Alice dragged Laz with her behind him.
"Alice." His hood covering his upper face completely, obscuring whatever his facial features were. Alice raised a brow.
"That, do you recognize the face, I just did?"
She shook her head, shrugging, "Nope... Never seen before."
"Well, eat her."
"What?!" She raised her voice, then kept it down. "What do you mean... that's... an elderly woman...!...What about her?!..."
Zabulus looked back for a brief instant before walking off and taking a few steps forward.
She reached for him, and then, instead, her arm stretched far beyond any logical boundaries and snatched him. "Are you out of your mind...?"
"Don't forget our deal. You don't kill who I ask you to kill, his mind goes down the gutter. Got it? If there's an emergency, eat the person, got it?!"
Her tongue rubbed against the walls of her mouth, making a smack sound. "Alright..." As she looked at the short elderly woman who was now walking away slowly, blissfully ignorant of what was about to happen to her, she mumbled a breathy "I'm sorry."
Her hunger, in less than a second got the best of her, she was filled with an odd feeling and couldn't understand where she was anymore. Yet she knew deep inside she'd love to try eating this particular individual, as that person reminded her of something. She didn't think it was possible.
The sudden change in her attitude convinced Zabulus of one thing, that regardless of her acts of love towards Guillerme, she was still the one he met in the beginning. A simple entity who took everything lightly and even carried on laughing even in dire situations.
Who knew? That one could so easily revert back to being an ape in nature in the span of a single meal, while the rest of her personality continued to go on and adapt accordingly. It made him realize. Not one moment was dull. Especially since the world itself would keep on changing its layout and design without warning, at least until he dies and his body shuts down, therefore, shutting off the entire world.
Without a warning,
In her mind,
Time did not flow.
Though she thought otherwise, and remembered the sun moved in its trajectory and it rose in the east while it set in the west and that was a fact, even she couldn't refute.
So for the sun rising, she had to make it set. The moon came into existence instead, as its yellow orb was painted black, the tides crashed in their movements. Then in response to her will, the world became pitch-black, save for the area around the sun's ray. The elderly lady was turned into a mush of flesh and meat as if its bones were made of butter and she melted upon Alice's first bite, swallowing chunks as big as golf balls down her throat with every gulp.
She giggled,
She couldn't stop it, as she dug her arms into the belly and pulled out its insides as if taking apart a ragdoll of skin and organs. "Heh... haha..." Manic, twisted laughter filled the empty void that replaced the sky above, and within a snap.
Life.
Gone.
Bystanders watched horrified, while others covered their mouths. A few walked away. Only some, a handful really stayed and saw. Others fled and ran to tell of the 'gross' sight they had witnessed, while still others shut themselves indoors and locked their windows and doors in horror of what was being seen and did not want it to come to them. The ones who watched, did as they heard of the tales of the Glutton. That Glutton was now with them, who's hungry enough to eat anyone, to eat an entire town. Who'd kill even if they were given food. They didn't stay silent, not like they could anyways, for the Glutton had her ears perked up.
One of them, the bystanders, said: "You mustn't have lived in the countryside of this world, huh? Haven't heard of the monster they call the 'Glutton'. Well, you see her now! A pretty lady who is as despicable as the men next to her... they say that whoever gets in contact with her is a goner, just like this old hag that made a pass at that scary looking tall figure you've noticed." He nudged one of them with his shoulder. "Yeah, I was scared too! But god... she's too beautiful for what she's doing... maybe we should kill that guy and take her into our arms, hah..." They joked together under their breath, thinking it was inaudible to her ear.
'What a fucking cliché.' Zabulus commented. 'They act like just about any random schmuck who can't decide which pretty woman to lust after, and the world is practically your playground. Don't you have something better to do than be like these people?'
"That's really ironic coming from the one whose emotions run hot the most," she laughed.
A man in the crowd, stood terrified as he saw the cadaver of what was once his elderly aunt, whose neck had been snapped and torso ripped from its limb sockets. Her intestines were pouring onto the streets. As an effect, he was growing pale, but his eyes were getting wider as walked closer to her and Alice.
"Ah-uh-AUNTIE!" he yelped, running his hand through his messy blond hair, and tripping and landing into the dirt and snow beneath him. His breathing slowed down, as he could not comprehend why it happened or how it could possibly have occurred. The blood was running cold from his fingers while his body shivered uncontrollably, as he was processing the thought, but couldn't make a coherent statement on it. He thought to himself 'She was only old and sick, why? Why, is she dead...' and when he maybe figured out why, a strange sensation built up within his brain, a headache. It came soon, so intense, the pounding began and pain shot into the back of his skull.
Alice opened her mouth and took a bite of his neck, snapping the bone and cracking the spinal cord.
'More. You know that was less than an hour.'
She wiped her lips of the blood, "Mm..." a sound like a moan, with each munch on the corpse she couldn't help herself from sucking it dry and ripping chunks off his limbs to consume.
But what she was most annoyed by wasn't the screams, the hysteria in their voices, or the faces of terror plastered on their countenances, no. It was the ones betting on how she'd eat.
'A shame you all seem to have given up your humanity the moment you were born, to never change.'
With a forceful jerk, the remainder of the man was eaten in its entirety, though a hand slipped between her teeth as she tore open his ribs and digested it with little trouble.
A bite of an apple is akin to killing a person, is it not?
As the sweet taste of iron filled her, her body shuddered with bliss, each cell in her body thrilled by the feast laid before them. Blood dripped down her face, the bloodstains covering almost her entire body like a suit or jacket that covered everything including the stains on her clothes. She grew even hungrier. Losing parts of her mind, she lunged at another horned man. Unmistakably, this was not Zabulus, but someone else of his kind. Her feet on his shoulders and hands grabbing his horns, she chomped down on his head. And within seconds, the lower half of his body was bitten away. A feast that never seemed to satisfy her as the carnivore that she was. As if they were food or cattle, merely animals waiting for slaughter.
She looked down at the three bodies getting covered by snow, before hearing screams and watching a young woman running in her direction, the woman held a knife, a piece of her long, green dress wrapped around the blade of the dagger. She thrust her weapon and landed a hit on the victim's shoulder. Yet it wasn't enough, her right shoulder was punctured, but not so severely. Alice shrugged it off and forcefully removed the knife from its wound. As the dagger had left the gash it made, blood came flowing down from the open cut, running down her right arm.
The woman stood terrified in front of her failed attempt to kill the Glutton, the green-dressed attacker's pale cheeks flushed as red as the blood drenching Alice's arm and clothes.
Her opponent fell to the ground, kneeling, begging for a reprieve and the slightest chance to escape alive... Alice however, kneeled down and gave the woman an expression of a sympathetic understanding, reaching her hand out to caress the woman's cheeks.
'Don't comfort the enemy. She needs a good lesson, or is that compassion that's guiding your moves?'
'She reminds me of him. Of the love you have for a person, Zabulus, wouldn't you think so too? She likely lost someone very dear to her, and that is her own reason, though her decision is perhaps the worst and only one she had.' they both spoke to each other from afar. Although how they did, was unclear. But they both understood one another.
In the next moment, the skin on the woman's face was flayed off by Alice's fingernails, leaving her muscles exposed. Blood oozed from her right eye socket, a liquid red tear trickling from its corners down her face. The Glutton slowly moved the gushing, ripped open flesh off the right cheek of her victim, biting into the meat like an apple. Then, she gouged both her eyes out and chewed on them, liquid spraying everywhere like fireworks or firecrackers. Her brain was crushed into nothing as the eyes were squished, giving her the taste of sweetness.
Sucking the flesh from the severed scalp, she sank her teeth into the remains of the frontal lobe. Giving a high pitched squeal as she lapped it up. Blood and cranial fluid gushing through the woman's opened and flattened nasal cavity.
"Aaa- gguuuu...." the woman moaned, as she suffered through a painful, agonizing death.
"Unhhh.... I... I'm s- so so sorry... !" she said, tears and sweat, combined together, trickling from the corners of her remaining eyes, slipping past the fountaining fluids dripping from her head.
And thus, the 5th victim was killed off.
After seeing so many beheadings and mutilation, she simply waited patiently for the rest of them to gather a bit more. She sat on the spot and waited, sitting there, immobile and emotionless...
A few men and women surrounded her, all eager to grab a bit of her to make her theirs and own them in return for something. Some had already figured out that they should go hide in their homes, some kept their guard up as they watched fearfully and curiously from far away.
'Do as you will, Alice.'
Without delay, Alice nodded as she rushed forth, snatching the first nearest being in the group and biting into it as though it were nothing but an innocent and carefree infant. Three people at once, their tracheas and larynxes were shredded open, spraying all the salty, savory blood up and into her waiting, hungry mouth. The taste was delicious and exciting in a manner one would have expected to find from her. The count of victims was now 8.
It would have been impossible, if it weren't for the strength she gained from her hunger. Her black hole of a stomach, her emptiness of a being, she craved. There was no stopping her now... She was consumed by hunger, gluttony, and greed. So it made sense. In some ways she'd keep devouring until it reached her own limit, to die from satiation of the overabundant flesh.