Hungry
Stories
2
Chapters
27
Words
135.7 K
Comments
2
Reading
11 h, 18 m
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For the first couple of years after Wonderland, after my trip down the rabbit-hole, after losing my twin, after the doctors and the hospitals and the drugs and the dislocation, I did speak to spirits. Mostly I screamed at them to go away. Twelve-foot figures of dripping neon had stalked the nighttime hallways of Cygnet Children’s Hospital. Often they’d wander into my room, ghosting through the door and crawling up the walls and watching me in bed, too terrified to sleep. I’d scream and rave and…-
95.8 K • Ongoing
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If a team of expert psychologists drew up a list of the worst people from whom to seek stable emotional support, then after the obvious abusers and narcissists and sociopaths, I would rank pretty high on that list. Evelyn did not have anybody else in that study with her. She had me. I did what I could. My first instinct – were I capable of such courage – was to throw myself at her, hug her, tell her it was okay, whatever it was; Evelyn was my friend and she was in pain, and I felt it too. But I…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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Anticlimax is often far more challenging to accept than the release of action. All the best stories build up and up, then explode from sheer pressure. We expect our lives to work that way. For years I believed in my own special susceptibility to that lure, the temptation to see one’s life as a story, with myself cast in the role of the hounded, persecuted protagonist; paranoid schizophrenics slide down that slippery slope with such ease. But we all do it, contort ourselves into narratives, each of us…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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My stamina gave out long before we caught the Demon. I’d never been very fit. Scrawny legs, no real strength. Hadn’t gotten any serious exercise since childhood. Raine had insisted we not run. Hurrying along Sharrowford’s canted, hilly streets for over an hour was more than enough to drain what little reserves I had. I gave in on the corner of Harries Road, slowed and stumbled to a stop and doubled over with my hands on my thighs, sucking air through a raw throat. The ache in my diaphragm…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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The mitten saved me. Raine helped. The Dark Hand gripped my wrist, but simple screaming terror wrapped around my heart. No need for paralysing supernatural force to immobilise me. Here was an unspoken fear from the darkest nights of my ruined childhood: Wonderland reaching out to snatch me away. Bone-freezing cold soaked through the mitten and into my flesh. The Dark Hand pulled. Raine already had me, arms hooked under my shoulders from behind. She’d reacted first, faster even than the…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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Thirty minutes. That was Raine’s estimate. Thirty minutes stuck in a room with two very angry people who hated each other for reasons I didn’t understand, waiting for Raine to return before either of them felt well enough for attempted murder. Thankfully, neither seemed inclined to get up yet. Twil had hunched tighter around her imaginary stomach wound, while Evelyn brooded, her eyes barely open and fixed on Twil with dark intensity. I did as I’d promised, positioned myself behind one of the…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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Raine didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to. She stood up, the change in attitude evident in every shift of muscle and posture, instant and electric. She flexed her right hand, the one in the modified glove, curling and uncurling a fist. From anybody else it would have seemed empty showboating. A ridiculous, playground gesture. Except I’d seen Raine beat a monster to death once before, grinning and flushed and loving the violence. My mouth went dry and my heart hammered all the faster. A tiny,…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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Ten minutes later, behind the locked door of the Medieval Metaphysics room, Evelyn provided a practical answer to ‘what is magic?’ Magic, in this quick and dirty example, started when she noticed the smear of Twil’s blood on her walking stick. She was still shaking, but her lips curled into that sharp, devious smile. “Evee?” She grunted in reply. That’s all I got. I was too busy crashing out on adrenaline. Raine would get here any minute. She’d had to skip straight out of a…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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The machine womb was dying. Elpida saw it when she turned away from the door and the row of lockers — and away from Pira, who was plunging on alone into the depths of what could only be a Silico hive out in the deep green, the kind of structure that the best alienists in Telokopolis had only guessed at. Pira had also taken the only weapon: the lockers did not contain a second stun-baton, only several more grey jumpsuits. Elpida wished Pira good luck; a Silico construct wouldn’t flinch from a cattle…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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Tracking Pira was easy; Elpida followed the trail of dried-out slime. The corridors beyond the resurrection chamber were made of uniform, seamless, silver-grey metal. Cold, windowless, and impossibly clean, without a single particle of dust. Flakes of dried slime stood out on the metal floor, scraps of crumbly translucent biomass caught in searing white illumination, from lights recessed behind thick plastic in the ceiling. Pira must have shed the flakes as the slime had dried on her skin, but the trail…
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39.9 K • Ongoing
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