Gallows Humour

The Hollow

Blood coagulated on the shiny table lip. A tendril stretched to the floor, drawing itself longer and thinner and thinner and longer. A bulb at its end swirled and weighed it lower yet. Until the spider-silk-thin tendril snapped and landed with a plip on True's boot.

Their body burned.

Vomit—Cal's—cooled in the corner. Dark crimson slabs lay on the torn covers of hardback books, oozing red from spongy meat.

True had eaten kidney once or twice. Cow kidney. Theirs looked different. Smoother, a darker shade of red.

Big Valdivia dropped her face into her hands.

"Now," Dr. Allsaint tutted, but trailed off, the light in his eerie pale eyes glazing over. True figured their gaze was pretty glazed, too. Hollow on the inside. Hollowed out from the inside.

Valdivia began to tremble, and Cal, the only normal one in the room, rubbed her hunched back and murmured something that made her shake her head.

"She can never know about this." Her voice carried the same sound as the wind shuddering through fragile autumn leaves. True watched her, Cal watched her. Eliza watched her, pouting. At last, Valdivia straightened and cleared her throat.

Eliza's pout transformed into a soulless grin. "Bon appétit to a new alliance," she proclaimed, and popped her hunk of kidney into her mouth.

True moved slow. Didn't mean to, it was just hard to move. Or think. Kidney, wet, smooth. Like sponge, like solidified mashed potatoes. Brought it to their lips, stomach churned. Static in the head. This was wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong—

It tasted of iron and bitterness, and slid down the back of their gullet wrong.

Dark red smudged the corner of Radio's mouth. That was the first time they'd ever seen it eat. Really eat, not a licorice snack. It looked as gone as True felt. Rubbed at the smudge robotically. Its eyes lit on True, focused. With twitching lips, it lifted both hands, and mimed eating a corncob. Wrong, wrong reaction.

True snorted. That asshole. Laughter creeped out of them. High-pitched, breathless, vocal cords fried from screaming. Radio's shoulders started to shake. It hurt to laugh, scorched them from stomach to throat. They choked, hacked out a glob of mucus and blood. Threw their head back, tears ran down their cheeks. Dissolved into hysterics.

Blood warmed their side. And they laughed. And the burned raged in the hollow wrong pit in their body. And they laughed until all that was left was dark and void.