STRANGERS ♱ yellowjackets

30. the last supper

content warning: cannibalism

THE SMELL WAKES THEM ALL UP.

It is a moonless winter night, and the sky is a void, the stars obscured by clouds. The trees, skeletal and barren, cast elongated shadows, a grim audience to the scene unfolding beneath them. Bunny's breath forms small clouds in the air, each exhales a reminder of her fragile life. Bunny stares at the remains of who once was Jackie and feels the tension shift in the air. Subtle glances are exchanged between the teenagers as they stand in the yard. Bunny's stomach twists with a hunger that has become a gnawing, relentless beast. Weeks of starvation have stripped her of any semblance of humanity or morality, leaving only a primal, feral need to survive.

And as Shauna pulls out the knife, it triggers something in all of them.

"She wants us to."

With trembling hands, she reaches towards the seared flesh. The act feels sacrilegious, a violation of the deepest kind, but her hunger is a merciless tyrant. The first bite is hesitant, her teeth sinking into the blackened skin, tearing through the cooked muscle. The taste is revolting, a mix of ash and blood, but as the warm flesh slides down her throat, an overpowering sensation seizes her.

It is as if an unknown entity takes over, an ancient evil spirit inhabiting her body. She feels Jackie's memories flood into her mind, a torrent of emotions and experiences that are not her own. She sees Jackie's childhood, the laughter, the tears, the dreams she once had. She feels Jackie's joys and sorrows, her fears, and her loves. Each bite, each swallow, brings a new wave of Jackie's essence, mingling with her own until the boundaries between them blur.

For a brief, horrifying moment, Bunny is Jackie. She feels the terror of being consumed, the agony of her body being ripped apart. She can feel Jackie's heart pounding, the pain searing through her nerves as each piece is torn away. The duality of experiencing the predator and the prey is overwhelming, a sickening cycle of consumption and being consumed. Bunny's consciousness wavers, the line between self and others dissolving in the abyss of shared pain and memory. She can hear Jackie's voice in her head, a whisper of disbelief and sorrow, mingling with her frantic thoughts. It is an intimacy beyond comprehension, a bond forged in the crucible of survival and death.

As she continues to eat, tears stream down her face, freezing on her cheeks in the biting cold. The act of eating her friend's remains becomes a twisted communion, a desperate bid for life that costs her a piece of her soul. She can feel Jackie's presence within her, a haunting echo that will never fade.

The morning comes with nothing but the truth that they all feared would come to light; they had eaten Jackie. Bunny sits on the porch of the old cabin, her small frame hunched against the biting chill of winter.

The cold sleeps in her bones, but Bunny feels nothing.

Her fingers, blue and numb, do not register the sting of frostbite. Her breath, visible in the frigid air, is merely an involuntary act, a reminder that she is alive, though she feels anything but. She feels empty, completely hollow, as if some unseen force has reached inside her and scooped out all that is human.

There is no life inside her, no love, no light. Her heart, though it beats with mechanical precision, seems devoid of warmth or purpose. Bunny's soul, if she even has one, is a wasteland, as desolate as the winter landscape around her.

Bunny's eyes, the only part of her that seems to move, stare into the forest and at the shadow that only seems like a reflection of Bunny's emptiness. She tries to remember what it is like to feel as if yesterday was a thousand years ago. But the memories elude her, slipping away like smoke in the wind. She is a shell, a husk, a ghost of the girl she once was.