It’s dark. So dark. Sight has left me as has the counting of days here in this place. I stopped counting at… I… I can’t remember. I don’t know. All I know is the sound of that fucking water. The droplets that land on the hard floor in nonstop cadence. Drip… Drip…. Drip…
I cannot find it. That’s the only thing I’ve been doing this whole time, looking for the source of it, and I can’t fucking find it. I just want it to stop. My hands brush against the cold walls on both sides and the ceiling occasionally scratches my damp scalp as I chase the noise, but it flees from me. I turned around and tried to outrun it at some point but it persisted in front of me, that fucking drip… Drip…. Drip…
I can only feel and hear in this dreadful darkness and when I try to remember where I was before this place or my family or my name It’s all just drip… Drip… Drip…
I’ve been hungry for… I don’t know… A long time? A short time? A second? A century? I- I don’t know, but I am so fucking hungry. My intrusive thoughts have been screaming in my mind for some time, but now they screech. I start to feel the cold muscle on my tricep, then my nails caress the skin on my forearm. I feel the drool fall off my dry lips. My stomach calls my name and…
I cannot resist any longer. My soiled nails impale the layers of skin that wrap my upper arm. As my fingers push deeper, the nerves and tendons move aside giving me room to grasp my bone. Red hot painful fear surges through me as I pull. I can feel the stringy organs grasp and tug, determined to hold on, but they cannot. A wet rip echoes through the darkness as my shoulder gapes in the open air, the wound dripping blood on the stone floor. My teeth sink into the flesh of my separated arm and my tongue tastes the sweet and bitter flavors. With every satisfying swallow the tendons, cells, nerves, skin, and bone fragments fill my stomach. I finish to the sound of the leftover bone hit the stone floor along with blood dripping out of my stub. Drip… Drip…. Drip… Drip…
Now my remaining arm slides against the left wall as I continue forward, yearning for an exit. The sound of the water still persists along with the blood of my gaping shoulder. It is still dark, even darker than it was before somehow. Minutes pass. Then hours. Then… I hear it again. My stomach tightens. It wails desperately, almost melodically. What a delightful sound it is. A variation of music that isn’t Drip… Drip…. Drip…
I holdout to hear the sound of my stomach as long as I can, but the hunger is chasing me. I can feel its blanket cover my mind. My hunger once again tightens the noose. This time I’m forced to use my teeth. I start with the fingers, chomping them off like baby carrots. This time I take a moment to savor the taste and texture. The bone scratches my teeth as I bite, but is much easier to chew than I assumed. The skin on my forearm peeled like the skin of an orange, and when I got to my elbow I began to struggle. I gnawed and gnashed and ended up consuming up to the shoulder. My bicep was a sweet and tender meat and my belly was now satisfied and asleep.
More minutes of walking I noticed that while I was eating I tuned out the sound of the drip… Drip… Drip… but now I hear more droplets than I wished. With two wounds that leaked blood and the water in-front of me, moving grains plagued my mind. Now the darkness was so pitch-black that it made my legs struggle to support me. I try to move faster and faster but it only feels slower. My heart punches my chest as it begs to escape, and my breath moves in and out like a hurricane. Then I halt. The shadow of terror overcasts my body and I shed a tear. It falls off my cheek and the moment it hits the ground silence floods the tunnel. Every hair on my body stands as the roar of a lion bellows within my empty cold stomach. I know that either I starve to death or I devour what I can.
The legs tasted worse than the arms. A meat so tough it took hours to fully chew. The toenails clawed and scratched through my throat as they went down and my callused feet made my gums bleed. The thighs were tricky without the lower legs keeping me balanced and I eventually had nothing to keep me sat up. I fell hard, stuck. Unable to even crawl. I could slightly worm my way forward but I stopped trying to move all together for a while now. I just listen. I attempt to decipher the sound that flows around me. It is the most beautiful and terrorizing sound. It mocks me and reminds me that it has won. Then I sweat to the sound of my growling stomach under the drip… Drip… Drip…