Hungry
Stories
2
Chapters
27
Words
135.7 K
Comments
2
Reading
11 h, 18 m
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A blossom of alchemical fire grew in quiet flesh; a spark took hold in the wet crimson darkness of muscle and marrow and memory. And Elpida choked back to life inside her own coffin. Blank grey steel, inches from her nose. Eyes aching like spent coals, lids rasping like sandpaper. A shallow layer of cold, greasy fluid clung to her back, her buttocks, the undersides of her legs. Hair slicked to her skull and stuck to her neck. A faint blue glow came from left of her head, illuminating her naked…-
39.9 K • Ongoing
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On the day I met Raine, the first thing I did was jerk awake in bed and vomit nightmares into my lap. That’s not quite accurate. If I could purge the nightmares like a bad meal then life would be a lot easier. No, I brought up bile and what little I’d managed to keep down over the last couple of days, then dry-heaved through the aftershocks, shaking and coated in cold sweat. The nightmares had lashed at me for two weeks; last night set a new record of unbroken pain. For a long moment I screwed my…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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Between her prosthetic leg and her walking stick, Evelyn put me to shame. Our route took us along Bluebell Road, a twisty humpbacked residential street on the edge of the student quarter, which led up to the university drive. The name was deceptive, not a single bluebell in sight. Defeated looking trees lined the pavement, a half-finished attempt at re-greening. The blustery day plucked at my hair and the hem of Evelyn’s skirt. This was the first time I’d seen her walk any real distance and I was…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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Two weeks and a day after the night which altered my life forever, I did a new and brave thing: I answered my front door at eleven in the morning. Might not seem like much, unless you’re used to seeing monsters around every corner. A month ago, I wouldn’t even have acknowledged the knock. That would risk opening the door to a leering skeletal face, or six hundred pounds of fur and blubber covered in mouths, or inviting a nightmare to spend days gibbering and whispering in the corner of my…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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“We—” I croaked. “We should leave before I pass out.” I was trying very hard not to look at the twitching skeletal shapes descending from the ridge, creeping toward us through the mist. “Leave?” Evelyn’s voice shook. She took a deep breath and used the stone pillar at her back to pull herself up. She was unsteady on her feet, all her weight on her right leg. “Yes, you can do that, can’t you? You—” Thunder interrupted us. A rolling crash shook the ground, so deep and so…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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I halted at the front gate to Evelyn’s house as Raine stepped onto the garden path. When she realised I wasn’t following, she turned and raised her eyebrows at me. “You have got to be joking,” I said. “Evelyn lives here? Alone?” “Her family owns the house. It’s complicated. Come on, it’ll be fine, she won’t bite, not this time.” We’d left campus about twenty minutes ago, skirted the northern side of the student quarter, and crossed over into Sharrowford’s frayed eastern…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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Slipping was never the same twice. Once, when I was twelve years old, it gripped me as I stepped into the shower. A jerk and a twist and another world bloomed around me; I crept naked for hours through a rotting jungle beneath a throbbing black sun. My parents found me curled up under my bed, drooling and insensible. When I was a little older I went missing in the middle of school. Everyone recalled I’d been in biology class, but I never arrived at maths. I’d rounded a corner behind my classmates…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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“Can’t miss it” turned out to be a typically Raine-like oversight. The Medieval Metaphysics Department was hidden away in the furthest corner of Sharrowford University’s “new” building, Willow House, a snaking four-story structure of Brutalist concrete and brown glass, built in the 1960s to dominate the campus, alongside the Gothic spires and stonework of the university’s tiny old core. I’d fallen in love with the old university buildings on my very first visit. Soaring ceilings and oak…
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95.8 K • Ongoing
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Evelyn wound up the parable of The Castle, watching me with faint hope in her eyes. “That’s … very comforting,” I said. I hadn’t yet constructed my own far less optimistic version. She nodded and smiled a sad kind of smile. “It does make some sense of things, even if it’s a bad metaphor. Map isn’t the territory and all that. The other way to think of it, which my mother was fond of, is that God was a poor workman who left a lot of holes in reality, but, eh.” All my two-week-long…
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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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