Chapter 1: Part 3, Growling with Hunger

He awoke with a sudden sense of movement about him. Echoes of screams and whispering voices danced on his fluttering eardrums. There was a coating of slime on his face although he couldn't tell whether it was from the floor or from the earlier confrontation with his digestive juices. He could still feel the unknown fisherman testing his lure, each time his stomach would tighten in an attempt to bite back.

He felt as if a good span of time had passed while he had been unconscious, maybe a day or two. The dim light had receded from the X shaped window and had been replaced by an equally irritating purple of an encroaching twilight. His skin was taut against muscles that flexed against each other. Capillaries couldn't get blood to the extremities to wick moisture into the epithelial cells of his flesh. How could capillaries get blood from a heart he had not yet feel beat. A faint aroma of fast food trailed from a pile of discarded trash somewhere in the room. Someone had definitely been here, hidden within the bouquet of McDonalds and Taco Bell there was a trace of cologne and a smell of something more human, sweat.

His existence had not been off to a good start when his stomach caught site of the lure. It took what felt like a giant leap and bit down hard in a twisted pang of hunger. Curling into a fetal position seemed to be the only thing he could due till the fit subsided. The position had not only seemed to quell the hunger pains but it brought a sense of familiarity with it. A common comfort of humanity we all share in utero.

Unfolding his rigid body with a feline flex allowed him the freedom to sit up and gather more of his surroundings. A growl of hunger worked its way through the smell of decay to remind him that the trials and tribulations with his stomach were not yet over. The purple twilight had darkened to a new moon blackness that held no hope visually, yet he found that he could still somewhat see. The ground he sat on and the stone of the walls behind him were a darker black then the pane of glass in the window or the wood of a door that stood opposite him. He changed his viewpoint by moving onto his hands and knees when he was thrown by the fact that he felt like a lopsided table. With arms fully extended he realized that his left arm was at least three quarters of an inch shorter than his right, or was it that his right was longer than his left? A detached growl of hunger reminded him to move slower or test the fisherman's patience.

His ungainly crawl inched the door closer to him when a storm of goose bumps broke out on his shoulders. The skin on the back of his neck tingled as thousands of tiny hairs stood to salute their commander. He turned slowly and came to the realization that he wasn't alone... and that the growls of hunger weren't coming from him...



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