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Twigs crunch beneath the soles of her shoes.
Leaves ripple off branches like blossoms off cherry trees, some paper thin, from the rain. Others crackle below her feet.
a spider tucking itself into her sock to nibble on her ankles.
Ellie is careless.
numb.
Empty.
She doesn’t feel the strain in her limbs, the burn in her knees, can’t focus on her heart, battering her chest like a drum cause sound is collapsing, all she can hear is something sharp piercing her ears. the sound of wet clicking in the far distance, reminding her to stay vigilant.
Branches break like bones beneath her converse , each step heavier than the next. The moon, peaking through the trees, watching her.
Abby’s back by the shore. Lev? Not her problem. He took the boat the second her back was turned, whimpering and clutching the wound on his side, skin already grazed in a feverish sweat.
Ellie didn’t spare him even a look as she weaved through thick gangly vines to enter the forest.
And she walked, and walked until the soles of her shoes were worn. The laces. soaked in blood, over time, gain a mud varnish. And her toes are nearly busting at the seams.
She keeps her arms full even as they roar at the agonizing weight of pathetic sized logs, they itch to drag the blade through her skin, again. Watch that color drain from her face, slowly.
It was a look she struggled to get out of her head, one abby had made her fear once, blood in the bristly gray stubble, swollen skin and shattered knees. Ellie heeded the sight of Joel's warm tan skin dim to nothing.
Seeing it on Abby made her stop at first, like there was a huge boulder in her chest that just crashed into the dark pit of her stomach. Her fingers had twitched around the blade, a hardened expression souring into panic, the little girl inside her lurched to help, even as a sick satisfaction came to tail the second the muscles in Abby's knees grew weak and she hit the gravel like a sack of sand.
It should be making her ecstatic right now.
there should be a bonfire, a celebration, beer to soothe her while she lays back, and accepts the peace. Joel didn’t die for nothing now.
But it was a fairy tale to think Jackson would open their gates to her, truthfully the townspeople are too polite to ask, so they’ll ask around.
Ask why she’s back.
Why is she even welcome after the scene she made that night, leaving Dina with a baby.
Seeing Tommy, and hoping he wouldn’t be so silent on the evenings the town is roaring. the lights bursting with color, music probably attracting a hoard from miles away but the wall makes people careless.
The last time she saw Tommy, Maria was nursing him sullenly in the corner, watching her son in envy, Benji had been bobbling around on little feet.
Joel used to be in Tommy's place and he was on the dance floor, light on his feet, and a smile too big to hide, that's how it used to be.
Then there was the fact that Dina had never truly forgiven her for Jesse. She could say it, mean it. But her words overtime grew less careful, colder, like Ellie wasn’t worth the plush care of soft hands. She was wrong, more times than she was right. The couch slowly became her bed, and she lost her plate at the table.
No point in eating if no one wants to feed you, right?
Half her shit ended up in Joel's closet. Countless nights, falling asleep in clothes he’s probably sweat and bled in, spritzed with earthy cologne; just herbs and alcohol.
Small shards of wood splintering her skin, enough to sting, barely enough to bleed. Some went too deep, deep enough she needed tweezers and a shot of liquid courage before she went on. Some underneath the bed of her nail or between her toes.
The worst one was the length of her pinky, thin as a safety pin. Embedded a knuckle deep in her scar. Her permanently rippled skin, usually thick and unscathed, was throbbing, burning around a slice of petite dirty wood, it brought tears to her eye’s, lips trembling like a frightened child.
Then she’d left it in, for the next four hours. Treating it like an IV. severely cautious not to bump it and she kept her arms straight like a mannequin. Watched it swell, grow hot and flush and finally when the pain became dizzying, she tore it out. mercilessly.
Cause she deserved it
She was poison, you breathe her air something bad happens, maybe that was her purpose. To be a warning, not to trust a clicker with a human skin suite. To trust anyone, because in the light, Ellie looks harmless.
But when the sun goes down, the lock latches and the moon is her only witness, she’ll down the aged bourbon in Joel's closet, the neck feeling warm with the remnants of him, curling up in his pile of mess, with the creaky doors pulled shut, with all the oil stained t-shirts. muddy boots, a fishing rod, rusted over. His old tools, now replaced by ones they found at bills all those years back.
His smell is like spores, sinking into her skin and the walls, infecting the townspeople in grief. Dousing her in rage. Everything she feels is fucking rage.
Everywhere you go his shadow feels tucked in every corner, he's got a little wooden figure standing tall, and proud in store windows. His picture up on the wall in the tipsy bison, and his name engraved in every bench.
A workshop, full of all his projects. Finished, and unfinished, set up like a gallery to walk through, and view. Miller and more! Written in the last of Jackson's copper, skimmed in gold paint. His tips, and tricks written on a scroll, just like in the museum he took her to for her fifteenth.
She doesn’t want him on display like that.
It was stupid to think Tommy wouldn’t either. But he’s the one that set it up.
God she was so mad when she saw that sign, like a wild bull seeing red. It took every bit of her sanity, whatever bits of it she had left, to not break the windows and tear the copper letters off that wooden plank.
Remind everybody that when they walked through those gates they were nothing more than living, breathing infected. Violent, merciless beasts.
That's what she thought but somebody violent, and merciless doesn’t look the way he did, when he died.
Ellie stuttered to a stop, throat tightening around a growing lump, cool green under her shoes and the birds, too silent. There’s a wolf, white and gray. Matted fur and paws drenched in blood. His tail flicked a little, nose buried deep in the belly of another creature, feasting off it like it was his first meal.
Raw meat is being torn off the bone, head jerking rabidly side to side, what's not going into his unhinged jaw is flying, bones crunching in its teeth making Ellie’s arms tighten around the bundle of wood, breath drawing in sharp and quiet as she unconsciously steps closer.
The tail does a final flick before the wolf lowers onto his hind legs to sit. His chest falls in sharp bursts, muzzle covered in drool, vermilion. Pale blue eyes reflecting off the moon tongue hanging out and he looks proud.
Ellie's stomach growled, hollowly, startling the wolf. Its eyes dart to her, narrowing down on her exerted body like prey, it gets down low, bracing its paws as it exposes bloodied teeth. He looks ready to pounce and Ellie is ready to let him.
Her hands tremble, sticks and twigs fall to the ground and she crumbles into pieces on the forest floor, moisture clings to grass, more dirt staining her knees as they dig into the ground. Her body goes slack, chest is heaving, tears are pouring. Her hands come up in surrender, missing nubs burn as a gust of wind rattled the trees.
Her throat clicked, lips parting to gasp in sharply, tiredly. “Please — “ she’s defeated, she's done. There was to much on the line and its like she let it slip between her fingers, everything is brutally fucked.
Ellie is silent as the wolf surveys, he stays taut and trained on every tick in her bones, his nose twitches as the wind makes her scent cross him.
Death. Hunger. Defeat.
His paws break the twigs beneath them, each step slow as he slinked towards her, their eyes locked in on each other. Ellie trembles, he growls, the fur on his chest ruffled by vibration, his ears flatten, every snarl felt like an attempt to scare rather than a warning, or a threat. But it doesn’t. Never has, years ago she would have growled back, childishly starting a game with him even though he could rip off her skin.
Then finally, he just… walks away. Tail swinging idly, belly full. He takes one last look at the heap on the ground before huffing boredly and turning to enter a scruffy bush littered in thorns and dried leafs, leaving ellie with wavering arms as they went slack at her side, tearful face scrunching in confusion.
It feels like a dream, or a hallucination when Ellie finally manages to pick herself up. Her chest beating hard, unforgiving and the way her feet move, fast and uncoordinated is dizzying. “ Wait- please! Fuck!”
She scrambled to the bush, tripping over her bundle of twigs and her own damn feet. She falls to her knees, ripping at the foliage till there's a small hole barely the size of a baseball.
There’s no sight of scruffy fur or a nest, no warmth where he would’ve laid or prints where his paws should be. It makes her stop, eyes widening, she hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until she'd fallen back onto her ass, and suddenly what the wolf was feasting on came into sight.
Another wolf. Torn to shreds, intestines scattered about with its brain matter. The fur is thin, sparse. The milky swirl in its eyes pulls her in, the poor thing looks young. Petrified into old age. Its jaw eerily unhinged.
Ellie’s stomach churns in a knot, bile burns the back of her throat at the sight, yet she’s seen worse. Caused worse. Her hands claw suddenly at her throat, jaw clenching tight like a bear trap.
Her hand crawled up her throat, shielding her mouth as her body lurched, vomit spilled between her fingers, down her wrist. It's scorching, basically neon yellow. Reeking of old meat, and milk all blended up.
It's embarrassing and yet she can only remember all the times Joel wiped the vomit off her lips during flu season, the way he’d soothe her cause god, she hated throwing up. Like a baby hating a stranger, that sudden drop in your stomach and dread that just never leaves.
He probably learned all that because Sarah puked it into him, he would grimace, even gag over Ellie's shoulder but he was softer than she’d ever seen him, smiling even though his eyes threatened to tear at the thought of having to handle another puke bowl.
It's something she can’t forget, the thought makes her eyes burn, Ellie rolled onto her stomach, hand falling limp and it all came pouring into the grass. She heaved, lips trembling. “ fuck..” she croaked, breathless.
God this is pathetic.
Then it's the walk of shame, just not how she remembered.
Picking herself up, dusting herself off. Hard as fuck, but she did it. Her face stays far, lips painted in sheer flaxen. She weakly bundles up the twigs she’d lost, and then one last look at that wolf is what pushes her forward. The shore is far, in a direction her mind has forgotten. But she does what she did before. She walks, and walks, and walks.
Abby’s washed to shore by the time Ellie's gotten back, her body a bit paler. Skin dried out and there’s sand in her hair. The wind is mean enough to make starting a fire a bitch, Ellie's hands are bleeding, scratched by the time she’s finished.
Abby's face looks so empty from afar. Ellie can’t help but stare, in envy, hatred. If that's what this was anymore. She’d felt hate in so many ways, this was no different, just another unfamiliar feeling she can’t regulate.
Even in death it feels like Abby is mocking her. Her face is a blank canvas, ready to be painted black, and blue. Her eyes seem to follow Ellie everywhere, into the forest, while she preps the fire, while she scrubs the blood off her fingers with a handful of leafs, washes the puke off her lips.
She’s probably looking down at her right now because no fucking way was abby in hell, even if she killed joel — he was no saint, his hands bled only the color red, and reeked of the healthiest flesh. He’d touch Satan's ass before Abby ever did.
She was doing god's work to most people. No more random massacres.
but even the thought of that made her body flash hot, Abby. Flourishing, hair weaved messy in that braid Ellie can’t seem to unbind herself from, like a noose. suddenly scrubbing at her skin becomes aimless and harsh, she’s got her eyes trained on Abby's corpse, in a game.
Who’s gonna look away first.
The fire roars in the night, the beach glowing dimly. Ellie’s knees hug her chest, chin rested against scabbed shins. Her eyes burn, twitching every now and again but she doesn't blink, her jaw hasn’t loosened in hours, even as it trembles like exerted muscles.
The air fills with a loud howl in the distance, then another and another —finally Ellie blinks, startling back. The fire crackles, embers sprinkling the tip of her shoes.
Ellie’s stomach growls, her brows pull together tight, hand palming her juddering stomach. The pain is sharp, never ending and it follows into the very depths of her belly. Making her throat feel tight. The sound is just a reminder that she truly is dead. She hasn’t eaten in months, there’s fly’s landing on her skin and there’s no muscle in her body that has her wanting to flick them off.
The last thing she ate was Joel's fresh beans and toast, the edges crisped to perfection, the beans a bit cold but every bite was satisfactory, leaving her warm and full like a massive meal on a rainy day.
He’s gone now, skin probably rotten away, bones laid about in a wooden box.
Lev is a smart kid, he’ll probably make it down to wherever Abby told him. Send a crew to retrieve her for a burial. Whoever’s left on her side will surely want her body treated with love and care.
Not drug by the neck in a body bag like dead cattle.
Something inside her starts to itch, that hunger suddenly grows urgent, her tongue prodding at the fleshy part of her cheek. Her eyes zero in on abby, arms thrown about, think, but there’s meat on her bones. A fattiness to her thighs, and her arms.
Ellie’s hands tremble, her teeth suddenly dig into her teeth and the second blood touches her tongue she bolts, on all fours, scrambling to the body only half way on the shore. She grabs Abby by her wrists, pushing up onto her legs and she tugs, and pulls, even as her arms burn and plead at her to stop.
Her nails tear into skin, her jaw shaking. All she can feel is the hole in her stomach growing bigger and bigger until the urge to fill it comes frantic, Abby isn’t drug nicely, she isn’t handled with care, Ellie spends thirty minutes trying to haul that big bulky statue up the shore, and to her slowly dying fire.
she runs off the rapid speed of her heart inside her chest, the stinging in her bitten off fingers that seems to come to tail the more she tightens her grip around Abby's wrist. They both have sand in their hair, in their skin, wounds that mirror one another's,
It was a sharp glide of a blade against Abby's lower belly that made hers fatal. It had been impulsive, going for somewhere so sensitive. It was that pinch to win the game, Ellie just went for it, and she was too prideful to admit her heart stopped the second she’d done it.
Even now their eyes are locked, Ellie's sole’s are torn and her feet peek through the fabric of her converse. She can hear abby’s voice in her head, desperate, purely exhausted with this game.
“ We let you live!”
Ellie shuddered, the words prickling her ears, itching at the shell and yet it kept coming, mean, fragmented, and distorted to the point Ellie couldn't understand it, she just remembers it too clearly to forget it.
“ AND YOU WASTED IT ! ”
Ellie dropped Abby's cold wrist with a shriek, hair rising on pale bruised skin. Abby’s face looks distorted too, everything is blurring into fine lines, too small for Ellie to try and stumble across, Ellie loses the game, she looks away first, hands scrubbing down her face. “ what am i doing…” comes hoarsely, her belly growls in response, making her wince.
She doesn’t wanna look, and see the mess she’s made. What her hands had done again. Why did she have to be so violent? So unhealthily prepared to kill. She’d followed her every move, tracked her, only a few feet behind.
Abby knew, and that made her feel unsafe, made her sleepless and beyond alert, starving herself just to feed her little companion.
Maybe that's why it was fun, why she did it.
“ We let you live!”
Ellie’s hands firm, her shoulders tense. She finally took a peak at Abby, just a small glance over her shoulder but it's enough. Her hands ball up tight, twitching, nails dig into her palms.
Her throat bobbed, and Ellie sniffled, tearfully. “ you really fucking shouldn’t have. “ she mustered up, head bowed, almost in shame but it washed away in seconds as the hunger pains suddenly hit full force. Like she was dying right there, her stomach has to be fucking caving.
The urge to make abby disappear was far too heavy in her mind too, the idea of her stomach acid destroying her skin, burning her like a witch at the stake. She wanted her gone, nonexistent.
She started with her hands. Then her forearms. Working slow, calculated. Ignoring the blood seeping into the sand, her clothes. Making the little makeshift camp smell like dirty pennies, crusted metal. The cuts were a bit sloppy, the knife was far too small but she was certain now.
Abby needed to be gone.
And truly It feels like hours before she can get abby fully prepared, the bones skinned and washed in the shore. Each one laid out delicately like the parts of a puzzle. The only piece that was missing was her meat on the fire, forming a caramelized shell.
Watching it cook, steam rising off it and the smell is utterly mouthwatering, it's hard to feel shame as she rolls it on a skew, she feels herself waiting for it the same way she had her first day in Jackson. With drool beneath her tongue, leg bouncing as it gets too close to ready.
Her stomach is constantly roaring.
The smell reminds her of pork, the color a dark hazel.
And when it's finally done, Ellie lets herself rest back against a small heap of logs, limbs far too sore. The weight of it is heavy, her first sigh of relief comes slow, soft. Ellie truly can’t tell what part of her this is. But she’s just a steak now. A meal.
For the first time she’s hungry, it's been grains, granola for months just to sustain, but it all was just a bitter pill she had to force herself to swallow, to keep going. To get here.
Her hands tremble, plucking thick charred meat off a parched twig. It’s tender, juicy and Ellie feels her lip curl just slightly, it's got to be close to morning, the sky is catching a hue, the smell. Fucking gourmet.
“ AND YOU WASTED IT ! ”
“ I won't waste you, M’promise..”
The first bite comes slowly, teeth trembling before they sink into burnt flesh. She’s too careful at first, the taste makes her forget who this truly is. What she’s actually doing. There’s no room for shame, or regret because within seconds, she forgets the rules of being polite, and she’s divulged.
She’s tearing the meat off the bone, her gums torn up by the grit, by her frenzied manner, she can barely swallow it all. It keeps getting jammed in her throat but after three big chunks, her stomach still isn’t silent, she can’t stop.
Fill it.
Fill it.
Fill the fucking hole.
Do. Not. Fucking. Waste. Me.
Her throat tightened, making her choke up a bit, she didn't stop. She paws wildly at every piece she can. She can practically feel it all falling into her belly, burning up.
Burn it.
Burn it.
Her face is covered in grease, fat. Her mouth was surpassingly full. “ fuck.. “ its disgusting. She’s trembling from how much fucking food is hitting her stomach at once — or maybe its the fact its a fucking person.
That its abby.
The tears come after, when Abby is gone somehow completely compacted in that little body. It's her first real meal, this, this is her victory. Even as she’s hunched over, heaving through her sobs, just trying to slow the stream of hot tears down her greasy cheeks. She keeps saying it, over. And over.
My victory.
My fucking victory.
She gathers up the bones. Every last one.
I’m not a monster, she’ll say as the butt of her knife breaks it all down, turns it into the texture of broken egg shells, she scattered it along the shore, licked the residue of her fingers. Her bare feet carry her unconsciously towards the cool foliage, bunched up and dried where she tore it up.
One last look at it all, the dying fire. The horizon, the shore slowly rising up to her tiny camp. Abby’s clothes, hung on a line. Ellie’s last sigh of relief is sharp, bored before she wordlessly disappears into the trees.
The sun is rising, slow enough to make her thankful. Somehow, she’s scared the sun will be ashamed of what it’ll see.
A monster.