Torn

She couldn't hear me through her silly headphones, so long after this hell came true- you'd think they'd learn. She couldn't hear my staggering gait, the scuff of my molding shoes on the cracked pavement, nor my rasping breaths as I got closer.

I was on her. She screamed. Even while knowing that noise could only bring more trouble, even knowing that there was no one around to hear her plead for her life, even as I tore her apart. She knew what I was, but some human reflex still made her plead at me to spare her and to stop, but pleading only worked on empathetic humans.

She was pathetic really, only batting at my arms and chest, tears streaming down her face in grape-sized beads of salty water. Her eyes pleaded and her mouth ran rampant as her eyes bulged. As if she was waiting for me to realize how much I was hurting her, and that seeing her in pain would make me stop. It's not like I'm enjoying seeing her in pain, I just didn't care. I couldn't care.

I decided to save her memories of some trauma and pinned her head down. My hands gripped fist-fulls of her hair as I dropped my head, mouth wide open and my rotting teeth on full display, and used my lower teeth to scrape one of her eyes out. The slimy tisue deflating and going down my throat as smoothly as a peeled grape.

Her screams of pain and panic filled the air as I did the same to the other, rendering her blind and my hunger all the stronger. It was as if she could not get enough air in her lungs for the next scream or wail or grunt of pain as her hands planted themselves over her now empty eye sockets, her fingers twitching as her eyelids slid and hung in the bloody holes.

Next was the easiest way to get to the frantically pumping muscle in her chest. The juicy muscle- trying its best to get blood to the rest of the body so that it might survive, but I know all its tricks, and adrenaline is useless if you don't know where to run to for safety.

I dug my nails harshly into the flesh of her abdomen, scratching and tearing the flesh apart. Some of it catching on the breaks in my nails and some of the veins running under them like wet string. I started digging upwards through the connective tissue surrounding her intestines, taking a couple bites of her liver and kidneys while I do so. I use my teeth to peel back her skin higher and higher until her rib cage was on full display, the ligaments being torn away as all of her intestines are displaced and eaten.

My nails begin to claw at her diaphragm, forcing the air out of her lungs in strangled puffs and making it harder to make a hole in the writhing muscle- now slick with blood- and making my nails slip.

I let up slightly, she sucks in air, and the dome of muscle punctures itself on my thumb nail. I instantly jab it all the way through and make the hole bigger, inserting my other hand and grazing her deflating lung sacks. Her mouth gapes and makes her look like a fish out of water as she desperately tries to breathe. Her body starts to still as she loses more and more air- her own heart now working against her as it pumps more and more blood out and onto the filthy ground.

My fingers finally close around her heart, her body twitching in protest, her fingers flexing uselessly at her sides before I use my other hand to start sawing at the connected arteries- her body twitching and writhing under me as the brain isn't quite dead yet, and is still receiving alert signals.

Not much longer, I think as I finally tear the heart out, and it goes still. No longer having the body's electric pulses to keep it going and slowly leaked blood out and over my fingers. I close my lips around one of the severed arteries and suck, making a noisy slurping noise as the rest of the heart caves in with the suction and my mouth is filled with liquid sex. The blood was still hot from being pumped so fast through the body, which made it all the more savory.

I bit into the chewy organ and swallowed, having no gag reflex or being able to feel any pain. I also need to finish off the parts that I wanted before others come to try and take my kill. I finish off the heart with a final gulp, savoring the feeling of it sliding right down. I move on to the legs, specifically her thighs, one of the most used-therefore the strongest- muscles in the human body.

I cut easily through her already ripped jeans with my nails and tear into the flesh of her legs, taking chunk after chunk, each getting more and more savory as I delve further into the muscle. I feel her veins sliding between my teeth- hanging from them and outside my mouth. Tiny drops of blood spilt from them as well as some of the black gunk in my mouth from my last meal.

I start to hear moaning and shuffling from multiple different directions at once. I turn to the other leg and devour it hurriedly, knowing full well that others will come running when they see that there's still food after all that screaming.

I'll take out their tongue first next time. I thought to myself.

I finish off her thigh, seemingly having no time for the hamstrings, and grab a fistfull of her hair, raise her head and bash it into the ground with a loud crack. I repeat this rapidly, the cracking noise quickly turning to crunch, then splurch. I flipped her over, brushed away her bloodied hair and skull bits, then scooped out her brain. The gray and slightly bloody mush came out easily and loosely in my hands before being stuffed unceremoniously into my hoodie pocket.

Having not seen another DedWalker, I spring back to her legs and rip into her hamstrings, taking out a few chunks and swallowing rapidly, not knowing when my next meal was going to be.I start putting strips in my pocket next to the brain before I finally spot another Deds. They spotted me at the same time, all three of them. I take one last bite and stuff my pocket full before sprinting off, knowing full well that I took every Ded's favorite parts of a kill. My personal favorites being the strongest muscles in their body, when the brain was a shared favorite.

The brain was the only thing that temporarily filled the ever-growing hole inside each and every one of us. It filled us with want, emotions, hunger, memories, feelings that we can't remember having. While they aren't ours, it is a temporary bliss from this hell, especially in seeing what it was like before we, the Deds, started walking.

It was a good thing that I was still kind of fresh, which made me faster than a lot of the Deds, including these three, and I lost them pretty quickly. They gotta eat too anyway. No doubt more were coming, and they needed to eat before any more was taken. There was no decency; and that's exactly why I like going back to the place where I died to eat.

I had "awoken" high in a tree and impaled by a branch- which was why none of the other Deds could get to me. It left me in pretty good condition for "surviving" and left my skin mostly intact. Except for the gaping hole in my shoulder that was oddly a great thing to have.

I finally spotted my tree and started walking. It was easy for me to find because of all my blood at its base along with a lot of Deds' corpses that had spent too long reaching for me. I tread carefully over their corpses, being careful about my brittle, dry bones and decaying muscles.

I don't need anything else to break. I thought, glancing down at my broken ankle that, while it didn't hurt, it still hindered my stride and slowed me down. I started climbing, something I had learnt to do from one particular brain of a small boy just after I had chased him up a tree. I would have been stuck reaching for him too if he hadn't fallen because of a particularly brittle tree branch and fallen, breaking his neck on the way down. That hadn't stopped his throat gurgling with the scream that had tried to make its way out his throat. It was all the same to me either way.

I got to my branch and took a glance down, not caring about heights, but not wanting any Deds to get the idea of climbing after me and taking my leftovers. Deds can copy other Deds, but not people unless they eat their memories and muscles in accordance to the function needed. I've never been sure why, but I wished it was possible.

I jumped and re-impaled my shoulder, my collar and ribs scraping and catching in the splintered wood- covered in dried blood- and holding me firmly in place. I wiggle a little, shaking my legs and arms to make sure that the branch will still hold me so that I won't fall, because as long as I'm up here, my food is safe in my pocket.