The Amass of Ivy Lane

You wake with a mouth full of heartbeat. It radiates through your teeth and your eyes and your skull.

Your mouth tastes of copper, a scent you are growing all too familiar with in the past few years. The body lying across the small cabin lays cold on the hard wood. The sun shines through the gaps from the boarded-up window, painting stripes across the both of you.

Her form lays so still, compared to a few hours prior. When her hands were digging for purchase anywhere she could. You wonder how soon that will be you. A bottomless hunger never completely filled by somebody else’s beating heart held in your shaking hands. 

But your hands are still. The vibrant circle of tooth stamps on your shoulder burn like a prayer circle.  Her hair runs long and thick, and you want to run your hands through them. Any way to use them other than where your destiny will force them to.

You nudge the door slightly, and it swings open, the harsh summer wind greeting you as your eyes squint in the brightness. With two steps down, you are free. The only burden leaving you, the burden of life.

As your eyes adjust, you see green and green and green. If only your life was as vibrant before it ends. It’s mocking you, showing you what could’ve been as if it ever was. 

Your sweater hangs thick and sweat begins to build as the sun realizes it’s your next target. Yet, you feel cold and you hold your arms against your chest. The street sign hangs off a thread, the two words nearly unrecognizable as you read them. They sound familiar, a far away life you thought you once had.

The world hums beyond you and you make your way toward your final resting place.

Your sister buried her life in the river, the last remnants of your life deep below the surface, and you think of her hunger. She was a daughter first, then a sister, then a burden. You know she felt it deep inside, that her treating you as one was just a reflection of a life long gone that she still had her long fingers dug into. You laugh now at the fact that she wanted to be an astronomer. Her stars and her planets and her deep, dark sky now brighter than she ever was. Maybe that was her plan all along. A hunger to be.

But look where that got her. And now you are still here. Always dimmer against her. And so much hungrier.

You feel the heat before you smell it. Before you hear it. If you were to close your eyes right now, you can almost picture a family enjoying their last meal. You turn your head and you are almost right.

It could be a family, indeed, but this is definitely not their last meal. They will never ever have a final meal unless you kill them. Grab that knife in your pocket and make its new home in their skulls. You start walking toward them and tell yourself you are dissecting your prey before finishing them off.

Your unlaced boots crunch on glass and plastic, but you are invisible. One even glances at you, her flesh nearly melting off her face, then goes back to her feast.

You can see above their hunched bodies now. A girl lays bare, spread open, cut up by their teeth and hands and nails. She lays there waiting to be completed. Waiting for you.

When you laid your sister in the river, you imagined all the ways your life could have gone, all the lives you could’ve lived instead. You think of her now as you watch her spitting image prone.

You think she was a sister too. That in this life, she died protecting hers, telling her to run and run and run in the woods beyond and never look back. She saw the group of hungry animals, already devouring her with their eyes, and made her decision before she can blink.

There is a gap between the creatures, as if their circle isn’t whole without you. You drop to your knees just to look closer.

Awareness hides under your ribs and your palms lay flat on her open stomach.

You eat the body of Christ and you drink his blood as wine and you repent and repent and repent.

Your memories overflow as they flash in front of your eyes. No, they are not your memories. The backstory you created was far from true.

You were abandoned, running through the forest as your group left you in your sleep. You went to bed under the stars to laughter and drinking. Opening your eyes to blinding sunlight, only the earth greeted you. The dead appeared much faster than their loyalty ever would. It was too late once you tripped on a rock.

You blink your dry eyes to find her covering your hands, dripping down your chin.

Looking up at the sky, you search for your sister, but the moon isn’t out and the stars are nowhere to be seen. Little Ivy, you can almost hear. Growing so fast, but so unwanted. 

She can’t watch you now. For once, your hunger is deeper than hers.

A tide with no shore. You recall the one important lesson you were taught. Bodies drop, helpless, in its wake. If only to satiate itself.

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