Freaks

Freaks.

Names:

You/ Xylia

Your hunting trainer/ John

The leader/ Jacob

Everyone else isn’t important at this moment.

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You are sitting in your cave, practically doing nothing. You hear a chewing sound on the outside wall of your cave, “come in,” you say in a raspy voice. John walks in, stumbling back and forth.

“You’re ready, the hunters are getting ready for a hunt. You’d better take that locket off, our prey will be able to spot that shiny thing from a mile away.” John says.

“I’ll be right out.” You say.

You tuck the green locket under what’s left of your ripped up shirt, and go out to join the hunt. There never seemed to be enough time to fix up new clothes, other things were always prioritized, such as food, and sleep. Nothing else seemed to be important. Food was starting to get scarce as the population of your race grew. You were taught that once you killed your prey, you must eat as much of it as you can before your food changes in fifteen minutes. The food doesn’t taste as good once it’s changed. You don’t really like going on hunts, but if you are going to survive it is something that you must do. You secretly don’t eat any prey brought back from the hunters, you secretly hunted rabbits and such for yourself, as long as you keep track of the green heart shaped locket around your neck, you could never bring yourself to eat humans. As long as you wear the locket that your father gave you, you remember who you used to be. You still have a few memories left from when you used to be a human. You remember how your father would bump you up and down on his knees next to the fireplace, how your mother used to make you a fresh batch of cookies every Saturday, how your brother used to humiliate you in front of your sixth grade class. But that’s where your memories end. You can’t remember anything after that before you got hunted and changed. Now-a-days nobody gets much sleep. There are always humans around the corner who want to blow everybody’s heads off. Everyone always needs to be prepared for an attack. You reach a shaky hand up to your neck and clutch your locket, you close your eyes, and you hope that you can act normal enough to not get laughed at. (Although when anyone tries to laugh it come out as a raspy cough.) The leader tells everyone the plan for the hunt, and you’re off. As you stumble with everyone else you clutch the locket, and as you do you get images of what used to be. “I’m going to make John proud, if I don’t act like a very good hunter John will be highly disappointed in me. And if anyone finds out that I don’t really eat humans like the rest of them do, I am likely going to get eaten as a punishment, or I might be forced to leave the group which would be just as bad. No one survives very long on their own out here.” You think to yourself, “I guess I’m going to have to eat human flesh this time.” It’s a tradition for the newly trained hunters to make the kill on their first official hunt, and whoever makes the kill always takes the first bite. You slip your locket back under your ripped shirt and move to the back of the line. You travel far, and wonder how long it will take to get to the small group of humans camping in the woods that Elly reported seeing. It was a small group, the size of one small family. We were hoping to get a child. Their flesh is always the softest and easiest for everyone to eat with our slowly rotting teeth. There are five steps to the hunt:

1- Find the humans.

2- File in a crooked line (no one can walk in perfectly straight lines.)

3- Get as close as you can without getting shot in the head.

4- Once you get close enough, bite the neck of the nearest human.

5- Once all that is done, eat as much of them as you can, and then invite the newcomer to the group.

That’s basically how every hunt goes, and once the hunt is over with, the leader has to find someone to train the newcomer, so they can learn how to survive as one of us. Once you turn, you instinctively know how to talk like us, but as long as you still have memories of being human, you need others to guide you. As long as you have memories of when you were a human, you won’t want to follow most of the traditions, so they’ll train you until you have no memories left. Only then, will you be able to do the ceremony to make yourself an official member of the group. You had no memories left. The ceremony was done, but when you were practicing hunting by yourself, you found the locket in the house that you used to live in. Then memories of when you used to be human engulfed your mind. When you picked up the green locket you remembered your family. You remembered how things used to be. You remembered your family’s screams as you were getting eaten. You remembered your screams. You were going to be banished, but you convinced the leader that your memories wouldn’t change anything, and he believed you. He gave you a few days to prove it to him, and you did your best to do so. After the trial though, you stopped eating humans. You still eat them at ceremonies so you won’t look suspicious, though you stopped eating them at any other time. You walk with the group in the now natural stumble, you’re walking through the woods and hear voices of humans not too far away. You hear a baby crying, and the mother trying to make her be silent. The others heard it too, and they all stumble forward. You remember once seeing someone else on their first official hunt, they didn’t catch anything, and now everyone looks down upon Ashton, who was supposed to train her. You know that if you don’t make the hunt, John will be looked down on. You feel a lot of pressure, but you also feel excited, and nervous, but most of all, you feel guilt. You don’t really want to do this, but you know that you can’t put it off anymore. Before you had said that you didn’t feel ready, and John trusted you, but if you put it off again, it would make John look bad. You get closer, and you can feel the tension grow, and grow. If you make a wrong move, or if you don’t move fast enough, you’ll get your head blown off. The group comes to a clearing, and there you spot them, humans, your prey, your food. You hear the father call to the mother, “get Lucy out of here, I’ll blow the zombies to the next century.” The mother holds the crying baby in her arms while the father grabs his gun, “Now! You have to go, please.” The group stumbles forward as fast as they can, but with two loud gunshots, two of the hunting party are down. The first thing you learned on the hunting grounds, was that if someone was shot, don’t react. That was the most important rule about hunting, every time the group goes hunting, it comes back a little smaller, and the group always brings back newcomers. It was kind of a way to replenish the group, a lot of the group gets killed, but the prey becomes part of us, so the group gets bigger and bigger. You hear another loud noise, and John falls to the ground. You start to feel angry, and you let your anger guide you to the father. You get close enough to him and… With a lunge you rip apart his neck, the rest of the group was going after the mother and daughter. You have around fifteen minutes to eat your fill before the person you just killed turns into a zombie and gets invited to the group, but you don’t eat much, instead you go to where John is lying motionless in the dirt, and start making pain filled noises. You managed to not react much when he fell, but now that there aren’t any humans watching you feel great sorrow for the loss of your friend. You lean over his dead body, and your eyes flash with anger and sadness. You hear footsteps approaching, but you don’t look away from Johns face.

“You are weak.”

You recognize Jacobs voice, and your eyes flash from a blue-gray to a blue-green color. Then just as quickly as they change, they change back. You were practically gasping for breath, you feel so full of rage, you feel like you might thrash out at the smallest things!

“Get it together,” you tell yourself, “You’re tougher than this!”

You take a deep, trembling breath, and close your eyes. Everyone’s grabbing what food they can, and a few minutes go by with you still at John’s side. John was the only one who truly believed in you from the very beginning. He had your back when the others teased you. You decide to take a walk by yourself, even though in doing that you’re risking your own life. You feel so heavy, so burdened with all these emotions. You haven’t gotten a feeling that felt this real in a couple weeks and you aren’t used to it. You start breathing heavily again and you stumble on your own foot. You hear a shriek, and although you don’t remember, you’re sure you heard that same shriek a long time ago. You look up, and see that you stumbled upon a camp of humans. This is a rather large camp and there is a young boy that you almost fell on when you tripped. There was something about this boy that made you look twice. Maybe it was his bright green eyes, or maybe it was his dark brown hair, you weren’t quite sure. As you look up, your eyes flash to a blue-green color again, and they stay like that as you look into his eyes. You hear an older lady scream, “Xavier, get away from it! Bill, get your gun!”

You reach up to your neck and clutch your locket as memories come flooding through your head. Your father’s name was Bill, your mother’s name was Danial, your little brother’s name was Xavier. You rip your locket off your neck and toss it to your brother, as you look at him with your brows furrowed, willing him to understand. He picks it up, and opens it. When he sees the picture of himself inside his eyes fill with tears. You groan to him, trying to tell him that it’s okay. Xavier runs to you, with his arms open wide and on his way to you he cries, “Xylia, I knew you’d come back! Mother, father, she’s come home!”

Your eyes flash a hazel color, and they stay like that. It’s been over two weeks since you’ve heard your brother say your name. This is the happiest you can remember being since you turned into what humans call zombies. You hear a bloodcurdling scream as your brother gets closer to you. It is your mother yelling Bill’s name. As Xavier comes a couple steps away from you, you hear a gunshot. As you finally hug your brother you feel a little light headed. You sit there, holding your brother tightly. When you fall your eyes flash to the color they used to be when you were human, pale blue.

The end.