Mass Hysteria
Page 22
Bending over the beast, he rested his hands flat against the shiny, sweat-slick cranium, and licked at the open wounds. The white sheen was coppery and burnt tasting, highly metallic and acidic, sulfurous almost. He ran his long tongue across the side of a fractured plane, and up to the hollow of an eye hole, allowing the cloying flavors to meld along his sophisticated palate. In return, the beast’s own tongue sought and probed, longing for a taste. He dared not get close, though. Not yet.
For these beasts, consumption was a sex act. Their reproduction was predicated entirely on cannibalism and ruinous parasitical acts with other creatures. They were a driven species, their methods of satiation distilled into the simple act of eating, of devouring, the cycle of life reduced to a system no more complex than the rending and tearing of flesh and muscle with gnashing teeth and swallowing throats, followed by an engorged birthing.
He surveyed the husk of the creature. Plenty left, yet, for a feast. A knot bloomed and twisted in his belly, wrenching his guts in a violent twist. He doubled over in pain, gasping in agony. Still, he smiled, and thought for the last time of his assembled guests and the arctic surveyors before them.
Through the simple act of consumption, he had made each of them gods.
Soon, he would join them, and the world would change in their wake.
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