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(Page 2 of 2) Consumed by Guerric Haché
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Where was his arm? He crawled forth, pulling himself along with his remaining arm, and reached the bars that kept him on this side of the window. He felt the cold again and, less concerned this time, devoured one of his feet before continuing. It would come back. Tomorrow, when he awoke; he would be whole again.
The bars; the damned bars! Why did they put bars on the windows? He grabbed them with his remaining arm, and the hunger, unbidden, drove forth and devoured the metal rods. They were destroyed, obliterated by the raging desire to consume – and they, too, were consumed. The cold was gone, now, and in its stead was a heat, an energy that drove him as he scampered madly into the safety of the basement. No – here, he would be safe. Safe for the end. His time had come, at last – far too soon, for a human.
But he had spent his life being reminded that he was, in fact, just barely human.
Barely human! He couldn't take it anymore. Couldn't take the hunger, couldn't take the pain, couldn't take the rage. It was his time to go, and nobody had ever given him anything to miss. Not his few friends, not the few who took pity, not his single lover, not even his thrice-damned mother. They were nothing to him. He was nothing.
He let it all out – the hunger, the devouring, cavernous maw of his curse. And his body was the first to go, consumed and twisted and crushed to dust. Then he was beyond himself, above and beyond the sensations. He was the hunger, and he stretched out, seeking food, seeking fuel. And he found it – in the walls of the building. And he went up and up, and he found more food – found wood, found cloth and paper and stone, found flesh. He grabbed the unfortunates, took them in his giant maw and destroyed them even as they screamed. He grew and grew, his hunger not sated, never sated. He consumed the air, the flesh, the woodwork and everything he found. The ice-cold, gnawing hunger was gone, and all that was left was blissful elation.
***
The deputy chief of the Fire Department was reading the reports again when somebody knocked on his door. He still couldn't believe it – a whole city block, burst into flames and destroyed. Hundreds of people killed within minutes, far faster than any firefighters could have hoped to arrive. It was a disaster.
"Come in."
He recognized the man who stepped inside as one of the police officers who was investigating the case for suspected arson. He gave a grim nod. "Did you find anything?"
"We found the only reasonable explanation," the officer replied, sitting down. "Witnesses claim to have seen a mutant stumbling naked through the streets just before the fire. They report, among other things, that the man was extremely hot, and that his skin occasionally burst into flame, apparently destroying his clothes in the process. Sounds like he... got old."
The deputy chief put down the reports, looked out the window for a long moment. Then he took a deep breath, and sighed. "I know they have to die that way," he muttered, "But to kill hundreds of people while doing so - what the hell was he thinking?".
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