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Consuming human flesh was despicable. The first time Danny woke up next to a freshly buried grave, with mud and blood under his fingernails, he'd had no clue what had happened.
He'd been walking by the cemetery that night, in human form, and that was the last thing he remembered. Turning his head to look through the gates, up the hill with its rows of neat, well-maintained headstones.
And now he was on that hill, next to a pile of dirt, with a rotten, stinking taste on his tongue, cloying his nostrils, and dark...fluids smeared down his white t-shirt.
"What the hell happened?" he mumbled.
The fresh grave next to him had a large hole in its mound of dirt, about a foot and a half wide. He peered down into the hole. It went all the way down to the casket, which had been...dented, and also had a hole in it. He looked to his hands, which were bloody and covered in cuts.
"There's no way...no way, I had anything to do with this." he said, shaking his head rapidly in denial. He stumbled backwards, away from the grave. Even with his honed reflexes from ghost fighting, he still tripped and tumbled to the ground. Not even bothering to check if anyone was watching, he summoned the white rings around his body to turn him into his ghost form, and shot off into the sky.
The next morning, Tiffany Snow was reporting in, with a faux-shocked face, about the terrible vandalism at the cemetary.
"And approximately half of the corpse is said to be missing. Forensic scientists report that teeth marks were found on the body. Teeth marks that are not human, and do not match any known animal."
Danny dropped his spoon in his cereal bowl, not even noticing the milk that splashed out onto the table. He raced to the downstairs bathroom, the door slamming behind him and bouncing back open from the force. The chunky, splattering sound of vomiting could be heard drifting from the room.
"Sensitive kid." Jack Fenton said, shrugging.
"Oh, our poor baby." Maddie said. "The news really shouldn't share such...graphic...details. Kids could be watching!"
Two months passed without any further creepy corpse related incidences, and Danny was beginning to relax. It had just been a coincidence clearly. Or maybe something ghostly was at the graveyard and Danny had instinctively went to stop it...and been defeated, the ghost then disappearing. There were ghosts that could affect memories and feelings.
Just because he couldn't remember what happened, didn't mean he'd done anything wrong.
He could tell no one. If they knew he was eating on dead bodies, even his best friends would perceive him as a monster, some supernatural evil straight out of a horror movie, that had to be stopped, put down.
Danny knew that was what he would think, if he heard it about some other human or creature. Eating corpses was strictly monster territory.
Danny didn't know if Vlad had similar...dietary requirements, but there was no way he was asking. If it wasn't a need all halfas had, then he would be handing Vlad an atomic bomb of a weapon against him. He smeared Danny Phantom enough to the media. As it was, such a heinous idea, that even a malicious mind couldn't dream up when looking for an evil lie, would be all the more effective for having truth behind it.
All it could take to confirm the mayor's claims in the eyes of the public, could be something as simple as him being spotted around a cemetery too many times, or something invisible seen gnawing on flesh.
Who could it be? Danny Phantom of course. Accused cannibal and corpse defiler.
God it was sick.
"So what's up with this crazy corpse stuff in the news? You think it's a ghost?" Tucker asked, his curious eyes resting on Danny's face.
Curious, or suspicious? 'You're being paranoid.' he thought to himself.
Aloud he said "I don't know. It doesn't fit any ghost we've seen so far."
"Maybe the Lunch Lady needed a new meat supply." Sam said.
Danny made a face.
"Ugh." Tucker said. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? Corpse meat is probably just 'recycling' to you ultra-recyclo-vegetarians."
"Well, you can't deny it's efficient." Sam joked, smirking.
Tucker laughed, but Danny didn't muster up even a weak smile.
There was hunger, and there was thirst. Danny had been feeling parched for weeks, his throat always aching and dusty. Until one day, it wasn't.
There was no waking up with mud-stained fingernails in the cemetery that night. No coming to with his teeth gnawing at a car accident victim's leg, brought to awareness only because of the screams, because that person was still alive.
(Thank God he'd been invisible). He had ached and stewed over that for weeks. It was one thing to desecrate the dead, another to hurt living, breathing people.
But last night wasn't like that. There was nothing traumatic or worrying at all. He just headed off from the Nasty Burger, waving bye to Sam and Tucker, and the next thing he knew he was in his bedroom, staring at an Algebra worksheet.
His hands were clean, nails short and blunt and a healthy, normal pink under the nail. His clothes weren't torn or dirtied, his hair wasn't even mussed, and there wasn't a drop of blood or ichor on him.
But that cracking dryness that had persistently resided in his throat and mouth was gone.
There was no reason to worry....but Danny worried, all the same.
The next morning was like too many others Danny had experienced. Forcing himself to eat soggy cereal he had no appetite for, watching the morning news with dread.
Tiffany Snow and Lance Thunder feigned shock and emotion at the desiccated corpse found outside the town square, drained entirely of fluid.
"Shocking news, Tiffany. And now, we head to the weather report—"
Danny shoved himself away from the table, and poured his bowl down the sink.
"Not hungry, sweetie?" His mother asked.
"Not at all." Danny said, and it was the truth.
As the months ticked by since the last incident, Danny once again began to feel drained. He had been keeping a log of his symptoms and behavior, to better understand the apparently regular cycle. he had noticed certain patterns.
In the weeks preceding a feeding, he would become overwhelmed by a steadily increasing lethargy. In the days right before one, it would be like he was weighted down, struggling to move through molasses. Even his thoughts were slower.
And now it was happening again. He was wearing down, and soon an...incident would happen. Some dying or dead person was about to get munched on. The thought sent an surge of nausea through him, and he clutched at his stomach.
'don't think about it, don't think about it. think of...butterflies. and puppies. Sam and Paulina in bikinis at the pool last week' the nausea faded slowly. He glanced around, but nobody in class seemed to have noticed the "I'm-about-to-hurl" look he'd had on his face.
What the hell was he supposed to do now? He couldn't just let it happen. Maybe he could physically prevent himself from being able to do...that. If he was locked up or contained in something he couldn't break free from, surely he wouldn't be able to do anything. But would the need fade away if unfulfilled, or just strengthen? He didn't want to bust out of a Fenton Thermos as a ravening, mindless zombie.
And to spend some time in the Thermos at all, he'd have to get someone to help him...maybe it wouldn't mean telling the awful truth to his sister or friends. Maybe he could make up a believable reason. What would work? Maybe some kind of ghost illness that he needed to self-isolate for for awhile? That way they might be a little prepared if he emerged from the thermos as a crazed, starving zombie...
He thought about it for awhile, tapping his pencil idly as he ignored Mr. Lancer's droning lecture.
His mind eventually wandered to the person who already looked out for someone captive in a thermos: Clockwork. He didn't know why he hadn't thought of and sought out the time ghost already. While he didn't want the ghost world knowing of his disgusting needs (he'd observed and talked to enough ghosts to know it was not normal behavior), surely Clockwork already knew. The Master of Time knew everything, after all.
Yes, he would talk to Clockwork about it, and get some answers. At the very least, he knew Clockwork could handle him if he came out of the thermos...unwell. He could pass his absence off to his sister and friends as him training in the ghost zone for a while to Clockwork. And they could cover for him with his parents. Tucker would say he was sleeping over at the Foley's house, as always. Even the oblivious Fentons wouldn't buy that the Mansons had let Danny stay over. They looked at Danny like he was some kind of disgusting bug.
'If only they knew the truth.' Danny thought, snickering under his breath. He could picture the uptight Pamela Manson's face if she found out her precious daughter was hanging out with corpse-defiling delinquent. He was pretty sure they'd take Sam and move to another country to get her away from him, if it came to that.
'But it won't come to that. I won't let it.' He had a plan. Now he just had to slip into the Ghost Zone and see Clockwork without anyone else learning of the reason behind his trip.