I woke up in a strange place. It was my own future, but at the time I thought I was still alive.
How could I know I woke up a dead person? Body cold and pale, alone on a slab of obsidian.
I was in the jungle.
The first thing I remember was that my heart made no noise. Where once there was a roaring gush of a thing, there now was a delicate whisper limping slowly forward as if my blood was made of chewing gum.
I shook with a strange power.
I coughed, and black ichor dripped out of my mouth. My hands were so pale. I made a gurgling noise and looked around, senses popping alight.
That was when I saw her. Bloody, lying on the ground: a trail of blood from her prone body leading straight to mine.
My one love, the love of my life. Dead at my hand. I cried out. Not in pain, but in hunger at the sight of her bright blood. I was starving for it.
I went down to her, desperate for a taste of red life still oozing from her body.
That was when I first understood, who I had been was truly dead and I was reborn again.
I was a new thing, a thing without feeling but for hunger.
My only struggle was life, my own life and no one else’s.
