Page 127 of The Cannibal

Sounds of dribbling water came somewhere from within the wood. But I was there, alone, and the air filled my lungs so fully I thought they would sprout from between my ribs like wings.

I was nude, the light obscuring the unsavory parts of me, or the parts too shameful to name. My hair dragged on the ground as I stepped forward. A large tree in the middle of a small forest plain. A small creek running through the grass.

The tree hung wide, a canopy of its own. The light dazzled as it passed through the leaves, each one made of a new color of glass. Every time the wind whistled through them, they chimed a lovely tune.

I leaned down, vines of what looked like strawberry weaved their way through the ground. I plucked one of the berries, the seeds shimmering like tiny cut diamonds.

A snapping in the distance gave me pause. I looked out over the plains, yet there was only stillness on the treeline. No animals, no birds, no bugs.

I turned back to the treat in my hand, just for it to be a stone, not a berry at all.

The disappointment was manageable, but now I was craving something fruitful.

Vines crawled out from hiding, dangling from the tree and around the trunk. The green vines sprouted leaves, then sharp young buds. Even as I followed their growth, I was never quite near enough to them to get a closer look. These sprouts must have been as large as my fist, and that was before blossoming at all. When they did, they burst open in all sorts of colors. They produced a marvelous haze of pollen, except instead of irritating the senses, it only smelled like peonies and baked sugar.

Just as fast as they bloomed, they withered.

My stomach pinched. The anticipation of just one bite of anything was making me salivate, uncontrollably so.

As soon as the petals fell, bulbs emerged. Turning from green, to pale, to bright red. There was no telling what kind of fruit it was, but it mattered very little to my aching stomach.

One grew above me. If I stood on my toes, it might touch my head.

Yet when I reached for it, it was farther. I jumped and still couldn’t reach. The fruit taunted me, ripening before my eyes, begging for me to taste with no way to reach it.

A sting on my arm.

A wasp clung to my skin, pulsing abdomen as it crawled. Then more on my other arm. I went to wave my hand at them, but they stung again. The crawling made even my own squeamish self itch. Then something in my mouth. I bit down—something hard. When I fished it out with my finger, it was another wasp, its thorax bearing a long, curved needle.

My eyes opened to hands. Hands everywhere. On me, over me, now holding tighter the minute my eyes were wide open.

“She’s awake. She’s awake!” Silas shouted.

“You need to back away,” a voice said.

“He’s right, you need to stop, you’ll frighten her,” Luka’s voice, coming from somewhere else.

All I saw were faces I didn’t recognize, touching and prodding me while the bright window light made me want to heave.

“Stop it, stop touching me,” I wept, “please stop!”

The person to my left was yanked out of the way so hard that I heard the clattering of the metal instrument he dropped. The one to my right was shoved away, Silas’s arm reaching over me to push him.

“Silas, please,” Luka begged. He was off to the side, the situation clearly stressful and quickly agitating. “Just give him room,” he tried to urge the others.

My room was full of people, from beyond the open doors were more. So many spectators in so little time. But within the room they looked like doctors, none I recognized. Just a room crowded by strangers.

“Alina, can you hear me?” Silas looked down at me, the claustrophobic element melting away the minute I saw him. As soon as I blinked he took it as a positive response, grabbing my face to kiss my head.

“My head.” I took a deep breath, it only made it worse. “Make it stop.” I grabbed him by the shirt. “Please make it stop.”

He touched my head, feeling my cheeks with the back of his hand next. But all he did was look to Luka.

Luka’s gaze lifted to him as he chewed on a nail, clearly out of ideas. “You took a fall,” he offered, a weak explanation.

“On the floor?” I breathed shakily, the crackling in my lungs was discomforting.

The men tossed another look at each other.