Feral Hearts

Lazy

She set that bag on the couch and went into the bathroom to take a well deserved shower, and she didn't care that when she got out she'd have nothing to wear. That was a problem for another time, all she wanted right now was to get out of these shredded clothes and get the blood that had crusted to her feet off.

---

It was heavenly. There's not much better than that filling feeling of cleanliness after being disgustingly dirty. She must have spent hours in that bathroom under the constant stream of clean water, the water had turned cold long ago but she couldn't bring herself to care, the temperature didn't bother her at all.

Images of insides becoming outsides, the man with the faded baseball cap with his blank eyes and torn throat faded, the terrible reek of death faded until it was hardly present at all. It all melted away under the gentle pressure of the water.

She tilted her head up and closed her eyes, letting the water run down her face and splash to the ground below. She listened to the world outside, the trickle of a nearby stream, the drum of rain against the roof, the chirp of the birds as they hid in their nests from the impending storm.

She pushed all other thoughts away, the curiosity and fear about what she was, how her heart no longer beat in her chest, the murder of a man, the way she had sprouted wings and shrunk until she was a freaky creature of the night.

She had no desire to think about any of that right now.

She had no idea how long she'd been in the shower. After drying herself with a towel she had found she wrapped it around her body and looked out a window in the kitchen. It had been noon, the sky bright with sun and warmth. Now it was dark and the stars twinkled merrily in the night sky.

Outside she heard the coo of an owl as it flew by on wings that were nearly silent even to her. A minute later she heard a rustle in the leaf-litter, barely audible. Then a rush of wind and a squeak and then silence. A moment of silence for a life lost to the circle of life.

'I wonder if that happened when I died.'

She didn't dwell on that thought long.

Instead she walked out to the comfy couch that she had been eyeing since she had seen it during her 'tour' of the house. And she very gracefully plopped down onto and cuddled under a very fluffy blanket.

And then she got up again because she forgot to turn the TV on. And she decided that while she was up she'd pick out a movie (she had been originally planning on watching whatever the previous residents had been watching)

After a full five seconds of careful consideration she decided on Jumanji (A/N: can I do this without getting sued for plagiarism? Guess we'll find out...) she put the cd in and turned on the TV and before she sat down again she grabbed the remote so she didn't have to get up again to adjust the volume.

2 hours later she was getting up to put another movie in, the sequel of course.

'I guess walking corpses can still laugh.' It was comforting to know she wasn't a total monster.

36 hours later.

She hadn't slept a wink and didn't feel tired at all, a little hungry maybe but she had no desire to close her eyes and escape reality for the luxurious freedom of the dream realm. Well, that's the wrong way to put it, she physically could not close her eyes and escape reality for the luxurious freedom of the dream realm.

'I suppose not needing sleep anymore makes sense, my heart doesn't beat, I don't need to breath, I have to drink the life out of other people in order to exist, what else?'