Midnight’s Fables

The Hunger

You awake, slouched over in a seat in what looks like some sort of museum foyer. The room around you is dark, though faint light trickles in through various glass portions of the ceiling far, far above. The floor is hard and dark, like matte black tiles with only the faintest of sheen to them. Marble pillars of all sorts of colours and styles rise up, each standing atop a square pedestal three feet tall and five feet wide, and being themselves so colossal that your arms couldn’t even reach halfway around it. The columns rise up to a white ceiling of stone, from which several colossal skeletons hang, carefully articulated and positioned, showing fierce long-dead creatures in all their terrible glory. You don’t recognise any of those creatures, they aren’t dinosaurs, and none of them even vaguely resemble creatures you’ve seen before. One of them seems to have a skeleton composed of reflective blue crystal, and the more you look around, the more you realise that none of those skeletons are fossils. They aren’t made of dark stone like normal fossils, they’re all... bone. Real, actual, notched and ridged bone, albeit of various colours, minerals, and crystals.

“You are awake,” a cold, cool voice says from somewhere behind you, echoing through the distant halls of the museum, the voice marching on to seeming infinity.

You turn to see a figure stood in the shadows beside what looks like an enormous doorway, except... there is no door. Just white-washed stone the same as the walls and ceiling, embedded in a shallow alcove like a doorframe.

The figure steps forth, and you realise that they are not standing in the gloom, but rather they bring a macabre and ebony atmosphere of their own, wearing darkness like a robe, their face nothing but a hole in the world. Their voice and shape are familiar, yet you do not believe you have met this person before, and it is impossible to ascertain if this person is a man, or a woman, or something else entirely.

One thing you decide is immediately certain, however. Whatever this figure is, it is not Human.

“Who are you?” you demand nervously, backing away. “Where am I? What is this place? How did I get here?”

“Who am I? I don’t think you would enjoy knowing the answer to that, so maybe you should call me Midnight. Or, if you like, The Curator. I do not mind. Where are you? What is this place? That’s the same question twice. This is my Realm. You may also call it Midnight if you want, or The Museum. There will be a time for true names later, perhaps, once you’ve got a better grasp of your new home. As for how you got here... I brought you here. The details don’t matter, that is a... story... for another time. You were simply the right person in the right place at the right time and now here you are.”

“What does that mean?” you demand, panicking as the sense of confusion and being trapped mount. Strange, to feel so claustrophobic in such an enormous place.

“You aren’t dead, if that’s what you were worried about!” the figure promises, little more than a moving silhouette, like a hole cut in the world with nothing but empty night beyond. “I am not The Angel of Death! And, you are safe. I understand that you like stories, though? Particularly stories of a certain nature. The dark. The menacing. The tragic. The sort that get your blood pumping and the hairs on the back of your neck standing to attention. Yes... and that is why you are here.”

“Because I like spooky stories?” you ask with a frown, all of this utterly failing to make sense to your terrified mind. You’re looking around the room, waiting for… something? To make sense? To click…

“Because I love spooky stories,” Midnight corrects. “And I need someone to tell them to.”

“So, what, you just kidnapped me? Brought me here against my will to... tell me stories?” you ask with disgust and horror.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not keeping you from anything. You were about to die, remember? The train? No? It will come back to you. As I said, the details aren’t important just now. I grabbed you right before the end,” Midnight promises, again their voice coming as though with a broad grin and an air of nonchalance about your death.

“I’m... dead?” you say, your breath catching in your chest.

“No. I already said you aren’t. I am not Death. I am something else entirely. You’re just here because, well, I need an audience. So, come, let us explore my museum. And if anything catches your eye, let me know, and I’ll tell you its story.”

“What for... why? For... how long?” you ask with terror.

“For entertainment. Yours, of course. And for as long as you like. Sadly, when we’re done I’ll have to put you back, so... I suppose it’s in your best interests to stay with me as long as you can. A grim little tragedy all of your own. So... shall we?”

***

“What’s that?” you ask, pointing to a skull that looks almost Human, but seems too... long. An elongated head and face, long, sharp teeth, and an antler protruding from each temple, asymmetrical and mismatched.

“Ooh, an excellent choice,” Midnight replies with an invisible smile. “That is the skull of Edgar James Elkin of New France. His tale is one I find particularly... delicious...”

***

Edgar was lost. The rest of his crew had gone on without him while he had trailed behind to answer nature’s call. He got back to the trail, and already the footprints were fading as the snow fell down heavily around him. He swore as he tried to remember which way they’d come from and which way they’d gone, but with the snow coming down everywhere and the tracks almost gone, he got himself all turned around and before he knew it, he was alone in the New French woods.

Cursing his comrades for marching on without him, he resolved to follow their march, making his best guess as to which way they’d been heading, he turned and followed after his crewmates.

This was the furthest inland they’d gone yet on their expeditions into this strange new world, and they’d seen great seas to the west when the blizzard had come. Now, for the last week, their slow march back to the eastern coast and the Atlantic had been one of constant struggle as the snow refused to relent, refused to ease up. They’d run out of food two days ago, and that was after strict rationing. The cartographers had said they still had a week-long hike left before they got close to the ship.

On his own, Edgar knew he didn’t stand a chance in the wolf-infested wasteland. He had to catch up to the crew. He had no other choice. He had to catch up to them, or die.

He stumbled on, through the bitter cold. Soon his toes began to ache and throb with the cold, and his fingers became pale and blue. Then the pains stopped, and his fingers began to turn black, and the numbness in his toes was replaced by a sharp and twisted agony. His eyes stung in the bitter air, and his nose dripped and ran. His groin began soon to throb and ache too, and in time he was stumbling in pain, fighting for each and every step he took.

Still he saw no sign of his crewmates. By now the tracks they had left had faded completely, buried under the snow. Was this even the right way? Was he marching himself ever further from safety?

He couldn’t think about that now. He needed to keep on moving, needed to keep marching onwards, needed to... to...

To...

He was so cold, and so, so tired. He stumbled, tripping over his own numb feet, and fell face first into the snow.

So cold...

So tired...

So hungry...

Maybe if he just lay down for a moment, gathered his strength... yes... maybe even just... took a quick... nap... then he could...

No...

No?

No!

He needed to wake up. He was going to die if he stayed out here.

Twenty years old, just a skinny kid from Calais. He’d ventured out to the New World to see new and wonderful things, new lands, a new continent and...

And now he was going to...

No!

He was not going to die! He would not let it happen!

With great difficulty but greater determination, he forced himself up and onto his cold, burning feet. Left... then right... then left... right... left...

Just... keep... moving... just... keep... on...

Smoke...?

Was that... up ahead, through the snow... that was... smoke!

The crew! They’d made camp, they were...

They... were...

Edgar reached the campsite, just a loose ring of fallen logs arranged as seating around an open firepit. A cold firepit. Smoke rose from smouldering embers, but this was no roaring campfire.

This was last night’s camp. But... they’d left this hours ago! Had he been marching back alone through the snow for hours?

Edgar slumped down heavily next to the embers, which burned beneath logs capped with snow. He could try to rekindle the fire, he supposed, but...

He was so tired. He wanted to cry, but... his tears froze in his eyes, and his body was too cold, too tired, too broken to weep or sob. He fell back and lay there in the snow, and cried silently and tearlessly.

His eyes wandered as he lay there, staring at the unkindled embers and ashes. He could still see the bones, blackened and scorched, from last night’s meal.

Even with the strict rationing, food had run out two days ago. Last night they’d had to improvise.

The crew knew the way back, Captain Belgoix had rationalised. That meant they would be able to get back to the ship by following the same trail they had used on the outbound journey, and that meant they didn’t need the local guide to get them back. Edgar had felt bad about the whole thing of course, but... desperate times and all that. He felt bad that he couldn’t remembered the man’s name. The people were the Missiquoi, or the Missisquoi or something like that, but... the fellow’s name was lost to him.

He’d tasted like pork, Edgar thought. Lean pork, or maybe veal on the verge of maturing into true beef. Edgar himself hadn’t gotten much, with thirty men to feed and only one man to cook, nobody had gotten more than a few mouthfuls each, but it was enough to keep them going one more day.

Now he would have killed for even one more mouthful. The crew already had, he supposed, killed for one more mouthful. He was complicit in that, he knew. He would have to deal with that when he got back to the ship. They would all have to reconcile themselves with the fact that they had killed and eaten another man. A kind native who had offered to guide them through this frozen wilderness. But not now. Not yet. There were more pressing matters to attend to.

One more mouthful.

The bones were still there...

The bones!

Moving as fast as he could – which in his current state was a sluggish crawl – Edgar surged forth and pulled a burnt and blackened femur from the embers. The bone was brittle, and it thankfully took very little effort to snap it in two.

There, buried within the bone’s thick off-white shell, the lifeblood Edgar sought. The marrow of the guide’s bones.

Starving, abandoned, and desperate, Edgar began to suckle upon that rich bloody nectar.

And bit by bit, moment by moment, his hunger subsided. His cold black fingers still burned with ice, and his frozen toes still ached and throbbed, but at last his ravenous, starving hunger began to abate.

He lay back, content, and stared up at the falling snow and the black clouds above as at last rest took a hold of his broken body and he slipped from this world into one of dreams and fancy.

***

Edgar awoke with a start. His fingers and toes still burned, his nose ached and had blackened, and his broken body still throbbed with agonies. But he was not tired. And he was not sluggish and slow. But he was still hungry.

Ravenous.

His starvation had grown, amplified without bounds, and now his roaring stomach was a new and greater agony all of its own.

He leapt to his feet, and smelled on the air the smoke of a cooking fire, and the roasting meat of another man.

He turned and ran in the direction of the smell, his body moving with graceful ease, his limbs seeming longer than before, his ravenous starvation unabating.

Within moments he had crossed the distance that it had taken his crewmates all day to march, and he could see them gathered around a new camp and a new fire, with the body of a new person mounted on a spit, cooking over the roaring flames.

The people now seemed smaller than they had been before, each man less than half of Edgar’s height. Strange... no time to question now though. Edgar was hungry, and a meal had been prepared for him. He charged through the camp and lunged at the half-cooked man, tearing the corpse to pieces and stuffing his face with the rare meat. Around him, men shouted. Cutlasses and spears were levelled, flintlocks loaded and were fired, and stabbing pains shot through Edgar’s body, but his agonies were secondary to his paramount need to eat.

When the man on the fire was finished – Edgar thought it might have been the cartographer – he turned on his former crewmates, who were shrinking by the second, growing ever smaller, or... was he growing larger? That would explain why his meal could not sate his hunger, he was growing as he ate, leaving him always hungry, always starving.

He lunged for the nearest man, who screamed as Edgar seized him and began to chew on the flesh of his throat, tearing away great ragged pieces of bleeding meat as blood spurted from the wound and painted the growing Edgar with crimson. Guns fired again, and blades tore through Edgar’s body, cutting his clothes and skin to ribbons, but he did not care, he was so... so... HUNGRY!

He ate a third man in moments, then a fourth, each meal failing to satisfy his starvation as he grew and grew.

A cutlass severed his naked, skeletal leg, and Edgar began to tear what little meat there was from his own amputated limb. A man tried to come for his head, but he turned and the man was flung asunder as antlers sprouted from deep within Edgar’s skull.

Eight men... nine... ten... Edgar kept eating and eating and eating, growing with each meal, his now naked and one-legged form covered in blood and gore as he devoured everything he could; flesh, skin, gristle, hair, and clothes. He even snapped bones in his teeth and swallowed boots and buckles as his starving hunger demanded that he eat and eat and eat and eat and eat.

And then... something happened.

Edgar found himself laying on his back, paralysed, staring up at a strange, twisted creature.

It was naked save for the blood and gore of Edgar’s crewmates, but as far as he could tell its skin was pale and colourless, like the flesh of an old corpse. Its skin clung to its bones as tight as the corset of a lady, and its whole form was sort of stretched and elongated, like a man that had been pulled from each end by a team of horses, but instead of breaking, his body had just... stretched. Its torso alone was easily twice the length of a man’s height, and each limb was double that again. It was missing a leg, which lay some way away, and its head had been severed, though the wound was bloodless and clean.

The dead creature slumped over and Edgar realised with horror that it was his own twisted body which he was staring at. And if it was headless then...

He lay not on his back, but on the back of his head, for that was all that he now was.

A head.

The world began to fade, the endless snow becoming grey and then, finally black.

Edgar slipped away into nothingness, his pains and fatigue and frost disappearing.

And all that remained was his hunger.

That never faded.