throes and hunger .

“I- Isn’t… right —ow… need to find…an—ther…rotting…”

The radio chattered, sputtering like a writhing thing, but he knew it was a stale frequency. Ghosts lost in static. An old transmission; Weeks? Months? These were the voices of the dead: throwing their pleas to be spread like dandelion plumes with the hopes that one may hear them and be their saviour.
Perhaps he was nihilistic, but something in the throes and hunger of his disposition told him they did not make it.

Rot is gold.
It is the ichor of the gods left to mature in the winter sun; ambrosia, aureate. Rot is powerful and coveted, and is waged upon by greed. It is rot that sustains we wood-bound. There is a break to the endless trees, thus foretold by a dear friend of mine: she claimed to have seen it, a vast plane laden with dilapidation and sweet, sweet decay. A land wounded where none may die.

Rot is gold, and it revitalises us all — consuming the essence of a life once lived in order to extend our own.
I am three-hundred-and-fifty-four years old.

“…Can some— us…not long…won’t — it won’t… it — end…please.”

She sounds like the woman I loved. The same accent, the same intonation. I raise the radio above my head to try and catch the waves and hear her clearer. She is dead, I tell myself. I am listening to the dead.
This stranger begging for decay.
The older the beast, the more life their rot will provide. I have heard of people who hunt other humans. Before I became desperate, that idea disgusted me. But greed can wilt men’s hearts and shrivel their souls like the autumntide. I thought I was immune to this defect, but it turned out my heart is just as fleshy as the rest of them.

The trees bleed.
I see a dead bird on my journey, and with the static of the radio crying still, I approach and harvest the gobbets of rot the corpse has generously provided. It is pittance, the dear one having succumbed only recently, but it is enough to impose that cold pleasure. I drip the fortifying substance into those ever-hungry mouths in the corners of my eyes; gnashing their teeth, consuming the essence. My stomach drops as if I have been thrown from a great height, and my skin trembles upon the bone.
Life, untethered, is a delicious thing.

“I need to find… now — he can’t be far… before I —”

I am getting closer to the source.
It has been three weeks since I had done it and the guilt remains engraved on my flesh. Perhaps that is why I am so enamoured, so drawn to this frequency. She sounds like her; the panic in her voice reminds me of that night. It had been days since our last harvest and the mouths in our eyes were beginning to sing.
Perhaps I lost my mind.
Perhaps the singing turned me insane.

Had I not done it, would she have instead? Would the voice on the radio sound like me? Would the guilt guide her to that bird, to the path I now tread? Would it be better if we both had simply allowed our mouths to run dry?
We either keep on living, or we are killed by mortal hands. Perhaps paradise awaits for those who reject decay. Alas, I am not as strong as that; I am nothing if not hunger.

“You shouldn’t have come… easily— void… I am…— I am…— I— hunger.”

Silence, suddenly.
I have dropped the radio, now dead. Has it always been dead? Have the voices been screaming in my head?
Blackberry eyes shining with the cosmos. Antlers arborescent; he huffs at me and I realise what a fool I have been.

Rot is gold and beasts adapt to avarice. A great, shining star trembles betwixt those blood-stained horns and I am wretched. My knees buckle and the world gapes its maw. Illusions, like creatures of the deep, enamour the pitiful mortal mind. Was this evolution? Or did stags always have this ability? Transcendent, they were touched by the gods.

She was never here, I tell myself.
The radio was always dead.
All living things claw at life; I am prey, skewered, to rot.

Thank you for traversing this sinister chalice with me <3

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