A Strange Kind of Hunger | FIRST DRAFT

The Resurrection Men

Jonathan barely sleeps; the dead cavort behind his eyelids, dragging him from dreams to wakefulness and back again. Tossing and turning, he kicks off fever-soaked sheets and lies, only half awake, listening to the thumping of his heart. Boom, boom boom: the sound becomes gunshots in his ears, explosions of pressure against his skull. The pain is no longer confined to his head, but seeping into every bone until the mattress feels like it's made of knives.

By the time dawn comes and the sun begins to peek through the curtains, bathing the house in a heavy, copper glow, he's given up on even trying to sleep. Exhaustion still nudges at his senses, making everything to bright and too loud and all too intense, but he's sick of it. Tired of being tired, but most of all tired of being useless.

He can hardly bring himself to have breakfast; the porridge looks rather too much like maggots, fat and squelching. It makes his stomach turn, even more when his mind drifts back to the dead cow, body stripped, weathered skin hanging in ribbons. Strange, then, that he can't recall seeing any maggots, even when his face was shoved against its hollow, sunken cheek.

Glancing in the mirror, he notes the sickly pallor of his own skin, a dull bone-sallowness coated with a thin sheen of sweat. For a second his eyes drift to those of his reflection, searching for the awful, twisted veins he saw like knotted ropes on Jesse's face. All he finds are mottled, purple stains, betraying a lack of sleep and too much time spent poring over medical texts. He needs a shave; his usually smooth, earthy-brown hair is limp, slicked against his forehead.

As much as Jonathan wishes he could collapse back into bed and give in to sleep once more, he knows he can't. The girl still lies in the woods, cold, irrevocably dead and irrevocably alone. Forcing himself to stand, he rides out the inevitable rush of dizziness. Not for the first time he finds himself wondering, what the hell is wrong with me?

You are adjusting, comes the creature's now-familiar, meandering voice. It will be unpleasant, but you will survive.

Great. Jonathan wonders why he even trusts the creature, knowing full well it could just be a figment of his imagination, a way to cope with the stress, the death, the fact that Robert was going to die. Perhaps his mind just latched on to an image from a nightmare, twisting it into a strange hallucination.

I am quite real. The creature cuts into his thoughts, and he feels a strange stirring sensation in his chest. I am a part of you now, just as you are a part of me.

Sounds like something a hallucination would say, Jonathan retorts, but he doesn't really mean it. Even if it is just a hallucination, the creature's presence is comforting: a warm pressure just beneath his sternum, and its mumbling, murmuring voice occasionally invading his thoughts.

Jonathan drags his carcass out the door and towards Kiah's house. The bright sunlight makes his eyes burn; a heavy ache has settled in his limbs, making him wish this adjustment period would end soon. Every time he moves, it feels like someone put pins in his joints that bite into the bone. Despite how awful he feels, it's a beautiful summer's day, saturated with wildflower colour and cheerful birdsong. As if nature itself is determined to personally spite him. He glances at the shortcut through the woods, but thinks of the girl and decides to walk through town instead.

Kiah's house is attached to the sheriff's office, one of the larger buildings in town that contains Hermansville's only two jail cells. Calling it decrepit would be a kindness; the house gazes out on a dirt street with mournful, cracked windows and a gaping clown-smile of faded wooden planks. A moss-covered, poorly-patched roof sags over the whole thing like a tramp's hat, completing the forlorn, forgotten, yet strangely comical look. There is no door knocker, but that's Jonathan's fault: he and Kiah knocked it off as boys, playing at soldiers on the front stoop. For a moment, he wishes he could go back to those days, when everything was black-and-white, heroes-and-villains. Sometimes he struggles to see amongst shades of grey.