We

Content Warning: Gore, and mentions of domestic abuse.

The cave is wet.

The bodies we have eaten are piled high.

Not many people know the dead can die twice.

But we do.

The cave is dark.

We never knew it was dark until she came.

Master told me to let them go. To let them crawl out of the cave. I watched as the man crawled in front of the woman, a small lantern in his hand to guide the way. Master had told them they could leave, as long as the man didn’t look back to make sure she was following. Master told them that if the man looked back, the woman would be dragged once again into the land of the dead, and she would be left here for all eternity. And yes, the man looked back. Of course he looked back. How could he not? How could he not make sure that she, the most precious thing in the world, how could he not check to make sure that she was still there?

Before she came all we did was wait.

Wait for the dead to try and escape.

And then we would feed.

The dead can die twice.

And that second death is so sweet.

The flesh of the dead is juicy, filled with anxiety and the foolish hope that they can make it out of the cave and return to the land of the living.

We never wondered what was beyond the cave until she came.

We never dreamt about the sun.

How does one dream about something they have never seen?

We were born under the earth.

We had an insatiable hunger from the moment we took our first breath and were so hungry that we ate our own mother and were still unsatisfied.

We have never been satisfied.

We roamed the walls of the cave, believing this was the entire world and it never crossed our minds that there might be more.

Master never said so.

He did not think we needed to know.

We watched the man look behind him.

We watched Master grab the woman and drag her back down into the cave.

We watched the man scream in rage, yelling, “No! No! I only glanced, I only wanted to be sure, I-

Master responded, “We had a deal, old man.”

We watched as the man was swallowed up by the earth, taken to a place we could not see. Or imagine.

Master held the woman close to him.

We watched as she did not move.

As she was quiet.

As she simply stood, looking up at the space where her husband had been mere seconds ago.

Master unwrapped his arms from around her waist and smiled.

She continued to stare up, up, up.

Master sighed and said, “Welcome home.”

We watched as Master left, turning into the tunnel that led to the land of the dead.

We could always smell the fear on the dead.

We could taste it.

We wanted to consume it.

Fear is flavor.

But there was no fear with her.

Not once.

Master left and she continued to stare up at the ceiling.

“Do you think he will try and come back?” she asked.

We looked around wondering who she was speaking to.

And then she looked at us.

And those eyes.

Those dark eyes that were almost black pierced our hearts.

We shook our heads.

No.

We did not think the man would come back.

We watched as she looked up again, staring at the top of the cave.

“Let us hope not,” she whispered.

She would visit every day.

Not to try and escape.

But to explore.

It was strange, at first.

To see this woman walking around our cave.

Our space.

She was not trying to escape but it should have been enough that she was in our presence.

We should have wanted to eat her.

We should have wanted to swallow her up and taste the remnants of the life she used to have.

But we did not.

At first when she came, she just wandered around.

She touched all the walls of the cave, dug her fingers into every crevice, she sat along the muddy river and dipped her toes in, squealing with near delight by how cold it was.

She was a creature learning her world.

And we could see that she loved it.

Loved it.

She would often lie flat on the dirt, her arms spread out, her eyes closed.

She would lay like that for what seemed like hours. Days sometimes. Simply laying and relishing the dirt beneath her.

The only time she was not allowed in the cave, was when the Boat Man brought the dead. During those times, Master required her to remain in her official quarters beyond the tunnel. It was important, Master said, that the dead’s first arrival be seeing us.

It was important that the dead know that they were dead, and that if they tried to get any ideas to escape, we would be in their way.

We with our foaming mouths and wild eyes.

We with our insatiable hunger.

She is laying on the dirt as she often does with her arms spread out and her eyes closed.

She opens them and stares at the ceiling.

“One of the few things I miss, is the sun,” she says.

She looks at us.

“Have you ever seen the sun?” she asks.

We shake our heads.

There is a moment of silence and then we ask her,

“What does it look like?”

She draws the sun in the dirt.

She tells us how it is big and round and bright and yellow.

“What is yellow?” we ask her.

She looks around.

She points to a lighter part of the cave walls.

“Imagine that, but brighter,” she says, “So bright it hurts to look at and it lights up the sky.”

“Sky?” we ask her.

She draws and draws and draws.

She draws the sun and the moon and the stars.

She takes water from the river and draws an ocean.

She draws flowers and butterflies and birds.

She talks of colors.

Of purple and green and blue.

And we try to imagine.

At night we dream of flowers and butterflies and the sun.

We dream of running along an ocean beach.

We dream of colors.

But in our dreams, all the colors are brown and black and gray.

The colors of our cave.

She is lying on the dirt with her arms spread and her eyes open.

She is staring at the ceiling.

And she starts to laugh maniacally.

She turns to me and through her tears she says, “I spoke.”

She tells me that once when she was alive, she escaped into the woods.

It was her third attempt.

She remembers running through the trees, the sun peaking its way through the thick branches, making spots of light on the forest ground.

She could hear his voice behind her, yelling her name.

She ran as fast as she could, forcing herself not to look back.

Not to slow down.

But she looked back.

Of course, she looked back.

She wanted to know how far behind he was, how much further and faster she had to go.

And she tripped over a branch, falling face first into a rock.

When she came to, he was standing over her, his chest heaving, his mouth nearly foaming.

She remembered thinking that her heart might simply stop beating at the sight of him.

It is how afraid of him she really was.

As he dragged her out of the woods, they came upon a bear.

They stopped.

He told her to stay quiet, to wait until the bear had passed.

And as she stared at the bear, she wished, she prayed to all the gods that the bear would eat her husband.

Better to be alone with the bear than the man.

And it all made sense.

Why she could look us in the eyes.

Why she could stare at our three heads, our three foaming mouths filled with sharp teeth.

Why she could stare at us and smile.