Hunger in the Bones

I didn't dream.

Not that night. Not the next.

Sleep came in half-hour jolts, if at all. My body kept waking me—itching, twitching, pulling itself apart only to patch itself back up. Sometimes I swore I could hear something moving under my skin.

Something new.

I stopped looking at mirrors after the second night.

By day three, I knew I was changing.

My eyes adjusted to the dark like I'd been born in it. My hearing had picked up a frequency I'd never noticed before—a faint pulse in the air, like the city itself had started breathing differently.

And the hunger?

It didn't fade.

It focused.

I craved movement. Craved sound. Craved the twitch of something alive.

I left the gas station that morning before the rain let up. The street was slick with blood and oil. I stepped over shattered glass, torn signs, dead birds. Everything looked too sharp. Too vivid. The world had the contrast turned up—like someone had peeled back a layer I wasn't supposed to see.

Downtown Tacoma was dead quiet.

Or rather, nothing human made noise anymore.

The air buzzed with wrongness. Buildings loomed. Shadows moved. And beneath it all, I could feel my bones pulling me somewhere.

Toward food.

I followed instinct.

Past a half-collapsed bus stop. Through a bookstore I used to sit in. All gone now. The shelves were smashed. The walls were tagged in blood and ash. A corpse hung from the second floor by its hoodie, head tilted like it was still trying to read the paperbacks.

I didn't stop to mourn. I couldn't afford to.

I moved toward the subway tunnel at the end of Pacific Ave.

The station had once been clean and modern. Now it smelled like old rain, iron, and rot. Water dripped somewhere behind the turnstiles. I stepped carefully, not wanting to echo.

That's when I heard it.

Not breathing. Not footsteps.

Scratching.

Wet. Sharp. Repetitive.

Something down there was chewing through metal.

I crouched behind a bench and waited.

A shape emerged from the shadows. Crawling. Twitching. Long limbs, jointed wrong. Eyes glowing faintly in the dark like fireflies inside skulls.

It looked like a dog once.

Now it had too many legs.

Its jaw clicked in three directions.

It sniffed the air.

And turned straight toward me.

I moved before it could shriek.

The axe was already in my hand. I leapt forward, swung for the center mass. Steel bit through muscle. The creature thrashed, screamed—a sound like torn metal—and lunged.

Claws grazed my side. I stumbled, rolled. Hit the concrete hard.

It pounced.

I met it with the axe's blunt edge and cracked something in its skull.

It staggered.

I tackled it into a wall.

The thing was strong, but it bled like anything else.

And I was hungry.

The moment its body stopped twitching, I dropped the axe.

I didn't hesitate.

Teeth sank into corrupted flesh.

It burned going down—sour and electric, like spoiled meat and lightning.

I swallowed. My whole body tensed.

Then came the rush.

Vision sharpened. Bones popped. My skin pulsed with something thicker than blood.

I could feel its instincts sinking into me—crawl, track, bite, kill. But beneath the monster was… fear. Confusion. Hunger like mine, but dumber.

I wiped my mouth and leaned against the tunnel wall.

Breathing hard.

Smiling.

I limped out of the station with new strength in my legs.

I'd been running from this.

Pretending I could stay human. Pretending I wasn't changing.

But I wasn't scared anymore.

This wasn't a curse.

It was evolution.

Still, I kept moving.

You didn't rest in a place where you fed. That was how scavengers found you. Or worse—people.

The ones still alive were getting smarter.

Paranoid. Brutal.

I'd seen one man stab his own brother over a can of soup on Day Two. No mutation. Just fear. Plain, sharp fear.

I found a new place by dusk.

An old sporting goods store with barred windows and a second floor that hadn't burned through. I cleared the corpses. Nailed shut the side doors. Blocked the stairwell with metal shelving.

Safe. For now.

I peeled off my jacket. Checked my side where the creature's claw had hit.

The cut was gone.

Not just scabbed—gone.

Skin smooth. No pain.

I stared at it for a long time.

Then I started writing.

Day 3. I'm still here. I killed something that shouldn't exist. And I ate it.It gave me something. Strength. Clarity. A kind of calm that feels like sin.I'm changing. But I'm not losing myself. Not yet. I remember my name. I remember my rules.I won't eat the innocent. I won't become a monster.Not unless the world forces me to.

I closed the journal and listened.

The wind outside was heavy. But not empty.

Something moved between the buildings.

And for a moment, I thought I heard my own name.

Not called.

Whispered.

I didn't sleep again that night.

But I sharpened the axe.

And I smiled when I heard something crawl past the front door.