When you're approaching Nirmal, something's moving, but it's not its head or hand. It's his stomach. You're not sure if you want to speed up or run in the opposite direction.
The bandage around Nirmal's waist has been chewed open and he's bleeding out. It's stomach isn't full of stomach anymore, it's full of rats. Wriggling around, eating everything they can find inside him. You don't even want to look up to see Nirmal's face, but you do. You pull back and shut your eyes.
It's got a soft expression on his face. His eyes are open, but nobody's looking out of them. Nirmal always loved and cared for rats. And poor and starving people. These creatures are both of those things. It probably noticed the rats eating him. The rats look hungry. Maybe this is what Nirmal would have wanted. Maybe he gave it to them as a gift. Would it do that? Nirmal was not Normal. You had the perfect friends, and now you have no one.
The ambulance arrives and you realise they might recognise you from bounty posters so you run. You grab your bunny mask and some clothes from the treehouse and then you keep moving. You have to go somewhere, but it can't be anywhere connected to your dead friends.
You keep walking. What else can you do?
A group of people beat you up on the street for no reason and they break your bunny mask even more than it was before. As you're walking away, aching inside and out, you see a familiar face.
YOU ARE READING
Child
Science FictionChild is a steampunk sci-fi thriller. In second person, present tense, you, a mostly introverted, non-binary ten year old, are found at a train station with no belongings and no memory, by a nice woman in a WWI style gas mask. When nobody can find a...
