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See, the thing is-
Cub never expected the cannibalism to become a thing.
It starts out innocent enough, for a given value of innocent. It's about a week after Cub and Tango found the masks, after Cub and Scar became something else, and Cub is sitting on his bed, trying to resist the urge to gnaw on his hands. It's getting harder by the minute. He's just picked up his phone to text Scar something like How excited about axes are you today? when the door swings open and the man in question barges in.
"You could knock," says Cub, voice strained.
Scar's eyes are a bright feverish vex-blue, and seeing them makes Cub abruptly very aware that his own probably look much the same.
“I’ve been thinking,” Scar says, ignoring him, “this dismemberment thing we’ve been doing, cutting off bits and trading them, it’s allllll well and good. I’m very happy with it! And, you know, I think it’s good when people communicate their needs and desires, but I just want to make it clear before I get into what I’m here to propose, that if you just want to stick with that, that’s fine-”
“Scar,” Cub breaks in, impatient, a little shaky, trying his best to sound ambivalent. “What are you talking about?”
“I want to try eating you alive,” Scar says, all at once straight to the point, quick and almost conspiratorial, and Cub’s stomach makes an abrupt swoop. “If you’re okay with that! Without the chopping off, I mean- right off the bones. You can do whatever you like with me after. Or before! I just want to know what it’s like.” His eyes are practically glowing, and he keeps leaning closer.
It’s a bad idea, and they both know it. Or, at least, Cub knows it; he’s not sure Scar’s thought this through at all. What they’ve done so far has been basically, so far as Cub’s been able to figure, just basic survival accommodations to their suddenly-changed physiologies; this is several steps past that, which makes it potentially thoroughly dangerous.
They also both know that Cub is going to say yes.
“On a table,” he decides, crossing to the door and heading down a tunnel without bothering to tell Scar to follow him. “I’m not destroying my bedroom for this.”
“Very understandable! Very understandable,” Scar says cheerfully, dogging his steps so closely, and so eagerly, that Cub can feel him breathing. Like a cat following you to the food cabinet, he thinks. “Anything that makes you more comfortable.” His tone is so blase, and so clearly incongruent with the barely-suppressed hunger he’s nearly vibrating with, that Cub is reluctantly a little impressed.
Cub doesn’t really have a kitchen in his base this season, but he does have a potion brewery. It’s kind of utilitarian, but it’s got a table sturdy enough to hold his weight, so it’s good enough. He wonders, as he hoists himself up onto it, if they’ll discover any additional oddities about the two of them in the course of this little experiment. There’s the eyes, of course, and the teeth, but he’s been feeling weird in ways that go all the way down to his bones in the week or so since the two of them put the masks on. More energetic, with a strange sort of fizziness in his nerves, almost floaty. When people’s species shift suddenly for any sort of reason, it’s often not really a one-and-done thing.
He sheds his lab coat, and then, after a moment of thought, his undershirt as well. He smells iron as he pulls it off over his head, and jerks around, following the scent, almost before he’s consciously aware of it. Scar is biting down on the side of his own hand, blood trickling down his chin, looking a little like he’s about to shake out of his skin.
“You good?” Cub asks, eyebrows raised.
“M’fine,” Scar says, muffled into his own hand. “Ready?”
“Well… okay, then,” Cub says, feeling just a little too-soft and over-exposed and apprehensive, but he guesses he’s not ever going to be any more ready than he is right now. Mentally, he’s getting out a notebook and pen, and bracing for impact. “Go for it.”
Scar grins, huge and red, spits a glob of his own blood out on the floor, and then there are claws (claws?) in his shoulders, and Scar’s mouth opening wider than he’s sure it should be able to (hey, can his do that now too?), and sinking serrated, knifelike teeth directly into his stomach.
It doesn’t hurt at first, which is probably shock, so for a bit Cub is just staring, watching the muscles in Scar’s neck and jaw work as he gnaws, and then he jerks his head back all at once with a horrible tearing sound and a mouthful of flesh, and ah, there’s the pain. Scar chews and swallows, licks his lips. There’s already blood all down his front.
Takes another bite, and another, and another. The world feels too bright, almost overexposed.
“You know, you better be taking notes about what’s tastiest,” Cub manages after another minute or two. His voice is a little creaky with pain, but on the whole he’s impressed with himself about how composed he sounds, what with the gaping wound weeping down his front and all. Hearing blood dripping to the floor is making him drool. “For when it’s my turn.”
Scar rips another bit of gristle away, exposing the bone of one of his lower ribs, and swallows before he answers. “Well, of course,” he says, licking his lips. “You’re delicious, by the way. So fresh. Want a sample, actually? You’re being so generous with me, it’s only fair.”
Another one of those bad ideas. Cub is very very hungry, though, and the whole room already reeks of blood, and he has to swallow convulsively before he can speak again, sending another spike of agony through his system. “If you’re offering.”
“Of course I’m offering! Never let it be said I’m a selfish man,” Scar says, and digs a clawed hand- oh, yeah, claws, definitely, Cub’s own hands are white-knuckled around the edge of the table and he can’t bring himself to unclench them long enough to examine his fingernails- directly into the hole in Cub’s stomach, and the pain is hideous, sharp nails scraping in where they were absolutely never meant to be. Cub’s still not screaming, but mostly because he feels like he’s missed the stop where he should have. Instead he just feels nearly paralyzed; his breaths are coming out thick and painful and tasting like blood.
Cub’s not really a skinny guy. It takes Scar a second to get to his intestines.
Cub is making little wheezing noises by the time Scar fishes a handful of pink-red viscera out of him, long and ropy, dripping from his hands. That’s probably his small intestine, right? Part of it? It looks… less than he would’ve thought, for all it does for him. Scar bites through it to detatch it, which strangely doesn’t hurt (although the entirety of Cub’s lower abdomen is basically one big brick of agony, so maybe it just doesn’t stand out).
Scar takes a gulping bite, makes an appreciative noise as he chews, and then offers the next handful to Cub, eyes bright.
Cub opens his mouth to accept it, and Scar presses the organ meat onto his tongue. It’s rich. He doesn’t know if he could describe the flavor. Bloody, predominantly, but something else, too, maybe a little bitter? The texture is smooth on his tongue, slippery, not what he’d expect from raw meat-
Most importantly, though, it’s delicious.
“More,” he says, voice weak, and Scar pretends to think about it, tapping a clawed and bloodied finger against his chin. “Scar-”
Scar laughs, passes him another bite. “Fine, fine. So demanding! You’re getting your own turn after this, too, don’t forget.”
Cub had briefly forgotten, actually, lost in his own head between the pain and the fascination and the hunger. The sensation is so all-consuming that the prospect of ever again existing anywhere other than this room, on this table, with Scar picking through his guts and his blood puddling on the floor, feels faintly absurd. The prospect- really, the inevitability- of respawning intact seems distant and unreal.
Scar has gone back to gnawing at his chest, making his way through the thick muscle there bite by bite. Cub’s head feels swimmy and distant, and the hollow absence in his stomach hurts in a way he can’t drag his mind off of.
Something snaps in his chest where Scar’s hands are still idly rummaging around, and Scar says, “…Oops?”
Not something you want to hear someone say in this situation, Cub would say if he could still talk, but he’s pretty sure he can’t. He’s pretty sure he’s dying, all of a sudden, actually. He can’t feel most of his lower body, and it’s suddenly become very hard to breathe. Scar’s broken a rib and punctured a lung, by mistake, if he had to guess, and between that and the blood loss-
Oh, well. At least he doesn’t need to wait any longer for his turn.
So the beginning is innocent enough. It’s just practicality, really. It's what happens next that spins the whole idea out of control, because next is when Scar decides to go be a pest.
Not that it's his fault! Or, well, not that it’s entirely his fault, at least. Scar wants to be very clear about that. Obviously his overwhelming charisma and threatening demeanor played a significant role here, but Scar is in no way the only one responsible. Bdubs acted of his own free will. Nobody made him do anything.
Okay, look, it happens like this. Scar is hungry, as he tends to be these days, and he's messing with the nHo, as he's generally in the habit of doing when bored. And he’s messing with Bdubs, specifically, because Bdubs is both extremely easy and extremely funny to aggravate. And Scar needed terracotta anyways! It’s really a win-win. For him, at least.
“You take- five steps back, mister, you get your filthy shoes right off my nice mesa, I’m using that terracotta!”
Bdubs is all up in his face, eyes flashing, heart pumping loudly, all full of fury, and Scar grins. “Hey, I’ll have you know my shoes were shined just this morning, B-Double-O,” he says. “I’m a respectable gentleman! I won’t leave a trace! Just like a national park.”
He already has his pickaxe in hand, so he quickly mines out the block under Bdubs’s feet- Efficiency, his best friend- mostly to catch him off guard. Bdubs squawks, has to flail his arms to regain his balance, and Scar takes more than a little pleasure in the moment where he looks up in a huff and sees Scar looking down at him, silhouetted by the sun.
Bdubs’s already-outsized pupils are huge, pinned in place like a prey animal.
Scar-
He blinks a few times. Licks his lips. Nearly cuts his tongue on his teeth.
“Hey! What’re you looking at me like that for, huh?” Bdubs snaps. When Scar has blinked again, he’s out of the hole, shoving Scar by the shoulders and rocking him back on his heels slightly for good measure. “Buy me dinner first, jeez.”
Scar catches him under the chin with a nail, tipping Bdubs’s face up towards him, and grins when Bdubs stills, feels it tug at his cheeks. This is fun. He wonders how far he can push it. Maybe he can spook Bdubs into a really good reaction. “Oh, Bdubs. Do you want to have dinner with me? I wouldn’t say no.” He lowers his voice a little: “It’d hurt, though.”
He’s mostly just messing around, which means he’s not really expecting what Bdubs does next. He’s expecting him to yell some more, probably, smack his hand away, get even redder, maybe pull out a sword while he blusters.
Bdubs doesn’t do any of that, though.
Instead- he swallows hard, narrows his eyes up at Scar in a way that looks like a dare. “Oh yeah? I don’t think you would.”
Scar raises his eyebrows, intrigued. “Oh?”
Bdubs twitches a little, glances off to one side. “You’d wreck your shoes, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s true, it would be messy,” Scar agrees, bringing his thumb up to run it along the edge of Bdubs’s jaw. “You’d just have to clean them off for me after.”
Bdubs’s eyes flick down, then back up again. “No I wouldn’t,” he says, a second delayed.
“Oh, I think you would,” Scar says, and grins.
The thing is that Scar does know Bdubs- maybe not intimately, but he likes to think he has a sense of him, of what makes him tick. Bdubs still hasn’t shoved his hand away, and there’s something big and fascinated in his eyes.
Scar really is very hungry. Bdubs is wearing the tank top that’s been his usual this season, and he’s clearly been building today, because there’s a sheen of sweat on him, under the sun.
“Well? Are you gonna get on with it or what?” Bdubs snaps, a little tremble in his voice, and he sounds anxious, definitely, but also impatient. “Or are you just gonna keep wasting my time-“
It’s an invitation if Scar’s ever heard one, and he lets go of Bdubs’s chin to thread his hand through his hair instead. Bdubs makes a little startled noise, like a squeak, and doesn’t struggle as Scar tilts his head to one side, leans down, and buries his teeth in his shoulder.
Iron floods his mouth, and his teeth graze bone, glancing off the joint, as he comes away with a mouthful of flesh.
Bdubs is already screaming.
It catches Scar off guard, through it probably shouldn’t; this is a situation in which a person would reasonably be expected to scream, he guesses. Cub usually doesn’t, but Cub is also a freak. He can’t judge everybody else’s being-eaten tolerance off of Cub’s, unfortunately.
He lifts his head, licks at the wound absently, wipes his mouth on his sleeve (which, he suspects, succeeds in spreading the blood around more than anything else). Bdubs is, remarkably, still upright, fists clenched at his sides, eyes huge, shaking. “By the way, if you want me to stop, just- yell? Or, uh-”
Bdubs wheezes for a moment, scowling, and gives Scar maybe the most singularly venomous look Scar has ever seen from him. He’s clearly bitten through his lower lip, and the blood as it drips down his chin is hypnotic; he’s swaying slightly on his feet. “I’ll freakin’- kill you, Scar, I swear, if you don’t hurry it up, I’ll- I don’t know what I’ll do! But it’ll be bad!”
Scar clicks his tongue, though he’s grinning. The blood is sticky on his face. “Testy, testy,” he says lightly, teasingly, but- well, he really doesn’t need to be told twice, so long as the screaming doesn’t actually mean stop. He is hungry. And Bdubs is savory, perfect, fresh, a little salty on his tongue.
He chews the flesh off of Bdubs’s shoulder bite by bite, exposes the bone as Bdubs shudders and twitches, bites through tendons and drinks up blood. It’s so perfect he’s a little surprised they didn’t try this any earlier. Why didn’t he? It’s a little hard to think, through the taste of metal and flesh in his mouth.
Bdubs’s screams taper down to little shocked noises as Scar works his way down his arm to his elbow, then claws his shirt out of the way to start peeling skin off his ribcage. When Scar does look up, briefly, his eyes are still open, his pupils still huge and dark, focused somewhere in the middle distance, a little dreamy.
Eventually, Bdubs’s knees give out. Scar keeps him up by the hair for awhile longer, but eventually his arm sort of starts to hurt, so he sighs and lets him crumple to the ground. The terracotta around them is pooled with blood. Bdubs’s whole left side is pretty well savaged, but he’s still alive, chest stuttering unevenly, which Scar is honestly impressed by, and definitely a datapoint to keep in mind for future reference.
Bdubs’s exposed ribs are gleaming as the sun starts crawling lower in the sky, and he stares at the horizon for a long moment before he blinks up at Scar, slow. “‘re you done? I gotta… sleep. Yeah.”
Scar is exhilarated, full and energized, feeling almost dizzy with it. “Aw, not yet! Did you forget you still gotta clean my shoes?” he asks brightly, half a tease, half not, all of him hypnotized by the picture Bdubs makes, bitten down to the bone and still half-conscious. “Look at what you made me do to them, honestly-”
“I’ll do that in the morning.”
“I think you’ll do it now.”
Bdubs blinks hazily. Says, “You really suck, you know that?”, without heat, words sliding together a little.
Obeys.
Bdubs would like to claim full credit for everything that happens after that, because he's both delicious and a genius, thank you very much.
Take, for example, the pent-up aggression of one Docm77.
Doc is all tense, right now, has been for days, ever since the La Resistance last showed up to mess with their jungle. And listen, Bdubs gets it! He also takes the trespassing personally! A lot more personally than Doc, actually, he’d argue, but, hey, who’s really keeping track?
The point is. Doc is irritated, and it’s setting him just a little off his game. The other day he accidentally stepped on a sapling, and that Bdubs just can’t really abide, because it’s bad for the jungle. And what’s bad for the jungle is bad for Bdubs!
The point is. Doc needs some stress relief. And Bdubs, because he’s clever and brilliant like that, is pretty sure he’s got an idea that will be, uh, amenable to all parties. Including the jungle, of course.
Because if he’s being honest with himself- and he always tries to be!- he really, really can’t stop thinking about Scar tearing him to pieces. Under slightly different circumstances, he’d probably just be bothering Scar to come over and do it again (and again, and again, and again), but- the jungle, is the thing. Bdubs can’t leave anymore, right, obviously, not for long, and not without feeling stuff start to wither and die inside him, and he also can’t really invite outsiders in without getting all, uh, weird in the brain about it. So!
So he’s not inviting Scar over. Not yet, anyways, because if he does it’ll just be a whole mess. But Doc is right here, and he’s not an outsider, he’s a friend, and- and he needs some stress relief anyways. It’ll be good for both of them!
“I’m sorry,” Doc says, slowly. “You want me to what?”
Doc, on the other hand, does seem to be having some trouble with the concept.
“Eat me,” Bdubs repeats impatiently. “Tear me apart! Rend me limb from limb!”
Doc is squinting down at him, one-eyed, clearly baffled. “Is this, like… a saying I’m unfamiliar with, or…”
“NO! I mean it completely freaking literally, Doc. Get your head out of the gutter!”
“…I still don’t understand.”
Bdubs groans loudly. “What’s not clicking? I want someone to eat me, you are big and strong and have lots of teeth, I don’t see any issue!”
“You want someone to eat you,” Doc repeats. “…Why?”
“You know, you’re really looking the gift Bdubs in the ol’ mouth, here,” Bdubs complains. “Do I have to spell everything out for you?”
“Given what you are asking me to do,” Doc says, “…yes?”
“Okay, look,” Bdubs says, impatient. “I had a little encounter with Scar a couple weeks ago, and one thing lead to another, and he ate me, and-“
“Scar did?”
“Yes, keep up, as I was saying-“
“Scar eats people?”
“That’s not the point,” Bdubs says, very aggrieved. He doesn’t actually know if Scar eats people, plural, or if he had just been a particularly tasty special case, but he also extremely does not care. “Anyways, who cares about Scar! Are you gonna eat me or not? Cause if you’re not gonna I’ll just go find somebody else who will!”
His options are, admittedly, not great, what with the jungle, and all, but. He’ll figure something out!
Doc holds up his hands. “Okay, okay, chill out. I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. You just sorta sprang this on me, man. You get why I’m a little concerned, right?”
“Not really,” Bdubs says honestly. This was so much easier with Scar.
Doc pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment. “To be clear. Yes. I am carnivorous. So I am not opposed to the idea. I just want to understand what’s going on before I agree to anything. So, again: why?”
That sounds promising. “Look, I just- had fun!” Bdubs says. He could go into more detail, but- he’s still sorting all his own thoughts out for himself. “And I want to again! So. Please?”
Doc still looks torn. “You’re sure,” he says. “What, now?”
“Got other plans, do you?” It really would be just his luck.
“Well… no,” Doc says. Then he sighs. “Okay. Fine.”
Wait, really?
“Wait, really?” Bdubs says, lighting up. “Oh, yes, yes yes yes, thank you-“
Doc snorts. “Calm down. I’m reserving the right to back out of this if it freaks me out, okay? Where do you want to, uh…?”
Bdubs really truly could not care less where it happens so long as it does happen, but that answer will not get them to the devouring any faster. “Here is fine!” he says, pulling his shirt off over his head.
Here is the underground portion of the nHo’s jungle base, which, while pretty utilitarian, is perfectly serviceable for their purposes so far as Bdubs is concerned. And probably really easy to hose down, with all the stone, even though it’s a little disappointing that the jungle plants won’t get to enjoy all his spilled blood.
He hops up onto the nearest table, and gives Doc his most expectant look. Doc stares at him for a moment longer. “And you’re definitely sure.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Bdubs says, irritated. “Does anything about this seem like I’m not sure, huh, Doc?”
Doc rolls his eye, which is really some nerve considering how much he's holding the whole order of operations up, and says, “Fine.”
Then he’s spreading one broad hand over Bdubs’ chest, and bending down. Oh, finally. Finally!
Doc is… look, Bdubs isn’t entirely sure what Doc is. Mostly creeper, he’s pretty sure, with presumably some human in there, given the intelligence and all, and probably some goat too, plus the robotics. The only thing that matters right now, though, is that Doc had said he was a carnivore, and he does have the teeth to prove it.
They’re long and curved and almost catlike, and so deliciously sharp that when Doc buries them in Bdubs’s soft lower abdomen it takes a moment before it even hurts. It’s like a fire aspect sword through butter.
Bdubs is making a conscious effort not to scream, this time, mostly because he spent all that time convincing Doc this was what he wanted and he really doesn’t want to scare him off now that they’ve finally gotten to the good part. He mostly ends up whimpering, chest hitching and shuddering.
Doc’s teeth are sharp and his hands are big and within minutes Bdubs’s entire front is cratered (hah, like with creepers, get it) with gaping wounds, and the whole experience is really entirely pleasant, even as blood drips and runs and pain races down his spine to fizzle out when it hits the fresh dead air where meat is not. Especially then.
Doc cracks his two lowest ribs away from his spine, and Bdubs sags, eyes slipping half shut. Oh, lovely. Lovely.
Doc props a hand behind his back to lay him down, so incongruously careful it makes him giggle, and then goes for the next pair.
Now, maybe Cub would have been less surprised if he actually could read minds, or had the opportunity to put together some very disparate facts about population trends in the server. If he’d done any of that, he might have come to the conclusion that a startling number of hermits have the potential to be some kind of monster or carnivorous animal, by personality or essential nature, and that the only thing keeping the server from devolving into a gory bloodsoaked feast was everyone being polite enough not to ask first.
As it is, though, XB first hears about hermits eating each other a few weeks after the initial incident, at which point he turns to Wels and says, “Wait. You can just do that?”
“Seems like it,” says Wels. He shrugs. They’re hanging out after maybe definitely the worst-played Hot Swap Challenge in the history of the minigame, sitting on their respawn bed and catching each other up on their corners of server gossip.
“Man,” says XB. The scales scattered faintly beneath his beard and down his neck catch the sunset. “I’ve been wanting to eat a hermit since I got here. Guess I shoulda said something.”
XB has a lot of teeth, is the thing. He always has, as long as Wels has known him, and they’ve always made something primal and instinctive in Wels’s stomach shudder whenever XB has opened his mouth around him, startling against the normalcy of his face.
“You’re saying something now,” says Wels, equanimously.
“I guess I am,” agrees XB. “Hey, Wels. Want to get eaten?”
Wels, to his credit, thinks about it. Not very hard, admittedly, but it’s a fairly simple consideration. Has he wanted to get eaten since he heard about this whole thing? Well, no. He’s not really sure he understands the appeal at all, actually. But does he want to make his friend happy? Well, yes. A little pain and dismemberment is a small price to pay for that.
“I’d be willing to give it a try,” he says.
XB grins, and, wow, now that it’s suddenly relevant to Wels’s immediate fate, he really does have too many teeth, and crows “Aw, yeah!” which makes them both giggle.
“So, uh,” says Wels. “Is this a right now thing, or…”
XB shrugs. “I’m hungry now,” he says, which, wow, again, now that it’s suddenly relevant to Wels’s immediate fate that is a much more ominous turn of phrase. “If you don’t mind?”
“Fine by me,” says Wels. It’s not like he has anything else to do. Plus he doesn’t want to chicken out.
“Great,” says XB, leaning back and stretching. Those teeth. “Armor off, in that case. Unless you want me trying to bite through diamond?”
Wels likes his armor, actually, so he starts peeling it all off only half an hour after he’d strapped it all back on post-Hot Swap disaster. XB helps him with the buckles on the chestpiece while he deals with the various bracers and gauntlets, which would have been a nice thing to do for a friend if Wels didn’t have the sneaking suspicion that XB didn’t just want to get to the eating faster.
He also likes his shirt, so once the chestpiece is off he takes that off as well and tosses it atop the neat pile of armor, then turns back to find XB staring at him. Hungrily, if Wels were to apply an adjective. Very hungrily.
Wels shivers, a perfectly normal reaction to being shirtless in the woods at sundown. XB starts rolling up his sleeves, then changes his mind and tosses his hoodie on top of Wels’s shirt, leaving him in a white t-shirt and exposing the folded-down spines that, apparently, run from his wrists all the way to his elbows. As Wels watches, they straighten up, little points of skin and keratin to guard and ensnare.
“Well,” says XB. Wels realizes he’s frozen up, apprehension prickling at the back of his neck. “Bon appetit.”
Then he picks up Wels’s hand and bites it off at the wrist.
Wels isn’t ashamed to say he screams. It takes him a few seconds to get there, still frozen, but then XB drops his handless arm to chew and agony leaps up from Wels’s wrist into the rest of him, and that does it.
He feels… faint. It can’t be blood loss yet, it’s barely been ten seconds, so it must be shock. He catches a blurry glimpse of XB’s dreamy expression, and then there’s a hand at his back, catching him before he topples over.
“Hey,” says XB, a little too hungry to be gentle. His many, many teeth have blood on them. “You good to keep going?”
Wels tries for a smile. “Fine,” he manages, and feels pretty proud of himself for it. A little pain, a little dismemberment, whatever. He’s committed. He’s seeing this through.
XB smiles back at him. He says, “This’ll help,” and twists whichever arm isn’t holding Wels up around a little, touches that pointed ridge of spines to Wels’s stomach, jerks down and in, hard. Punctures the skin.
Again, it takes a few seconds. XB lowers Wels onto his back on the bed, Wels tries to breathe and stop screaming, Wels’s wrist throbs, the works. The puncture wounds in his stomach hurt, a sharp, bright pain. And, branching out from them like molasses, like oil, there’s a heaviness spreading through his system, infiltrating his bloodstream.
He feels his muscles go lax, fingers uncurling as the weight finally reaches them, breath slowing, scream fading into halting noises in his throat. It takes a few seconds, or a bit more. Eventually, though, Wels may as well be bound still.
“Much better,” says XB, something far-away and starved in his voice. He strokes Wels’s hair. “Beautiful. Should have done that to start with.”
The pain is bad enough, and the situation unfamiliar enough, that it takes until XB grazes the puncture wounds with a clawed finger, contemplative, mouth full of teeth and teeth and teeth and teeth, for Wels to figure out that he must have been hit by some kind of paralytic.
Wels kind of wants to say something. Complain, or something. Obviously he can’t move his mouth, though, so that won’t be happening.
And what would he complain about, anyway? He did agree to being eaten. And he didn’t say anything about methods. And XB is right, whatever this sea monster venom he’s been injected with is does technically make it easier, in the sense that Wels can’t fight back.
Not that he wants to fight back? He hadn’t wanted to. Oh, he’s drifting. That can’t be good.
Another shock of pain brings him back to himself for a moment, a long, tearing rip up his side and past his shoulder, and off into. Oh. No, that’s just phantom sensations. His entire right arm is missing. Okay.
“Even better than I’d imagined,” says XB, and his teeth and teeth and teeth and teeth, and Wels’s vision is blurry but he thinks there’s chunks of flesh caught between them. Wels’s flesh. And his blood, staining XB’s beard. Okay. It really would have been too convenient for the paralytic to also be an anesthetic, huh? “Thanks so much, Wels,” says XB, voice low, content. “Really. You have no idea how much I’ve been wanting this.”
Wels wants to smile back at him, say no problem or something. Between spasms of agony, beneath heaviness, he feels unexpectedly, pleasantly warm. XB’s hand is in his hair again, predatory.
He… doesn’t hate this as much as he should.
Maybe he should be worried about that, but it’s hard to be worried about anything but not dying while trying to breathe through pain and a mostly-paralyzed set of lungs, and maybe it’s fine anyway. The rest of the server sure seems to think so. He may as well just…
let XB’s teeth close around his left shoulder…
let himself drift. Let himself enjoy doing a friend a favor. Let what happens, happen.
It’s not like he has the strength for anything else.
Well, Cub might have expected the sea monster. The plant is a little more of a stretch. And honestly, nobody but Mumbo thinks Mumbo actually looks like a vampire. And yet:
“You want to drink my blood?” says Iskall. He’s looking at Stress, purely confused, bionic eye shining in the firefly dusk. Mosquitoes buzz, impotent, outside her closed windows.
She nods, gives him a cheery smile. “If you don’t mind, luv.”
“Well, I-” says Iskall, then reconsiders. “I guess I just don’t really understand the point? Or the reason?”
“It’s really okay,” says Mumbo. He’s kind of hunched in on himself, curled into the opposite end of Stress’s very cozy couch like the ceiling’s too low for him. It isn’t. Stress knows how to build a perfectly adequate ceiling. “I can leave?”
“None of that!” says Stress. She places a hand on Iskall’s shoulder, then stands up, shoots a smile at Mumbo, and pads over to the kitchen to retrieve her silliest straw. “Iskall here just needs a little time to get used to the idea.”
“I don’t think I mind,” decides Iskall, which is really very sweet of him. Stress settles back down. “It could be interesting. I just want an explanation.”
Stress touches him again, on the shoulder again and then on the neck, where the veins are. His skin is cold. He shivers.
“I was talking to Bdubs,” she says. “About the Allium Alliance, which you shouldn’t worry yourself about, but he mentioned there’s been quite a lot of eating each other going on with the nHo these past few weeks. Apparently everyone’s had quite the lovely time discovering their tastes. So I thought, well, a flower does need to be watered, and blood is full of nutrients. And then I ran into Mumbo, and what do you know! He knows all about drinking blood.”
“Really?” says Iskall, presumably to that last bit.
Mumbo has his face all sunken into his hands. He says, “I might be a vampire. I wasn’t always a vampire!” he adds, defensively. “Nothing turned me into a vampire! I just thought too hard about it one day and, well, here I am.” He makes a miserable noise.
“He’s been feeding on geezers,” announces Stress, with glee. “For seasons.”
“Villagers,” clarifies Mumbo, even though that’s exactly what Stress just said.
“Which is just so sad, when there’s perfectly good hermits around!” says Stress. “Geezer blood can’t be that nutritious, there’s no way. Plus I needed blood-drinking advice!”
“Right,” says Iskall. “Okay. Bumbo over here drinks blood, and you want to join him. Why not. Are you planning on using, uh, that straw?”
Stress looks at him. She had been, and a knife to score the hole, but the more she thinks about it the more appealing it becomes to just bite through the artery wall and let the little rootlets at the bottom of her mouth drink their fill directly. “Maybe,” she says. Iskall doesn’t look reassured. He doesn’t look like he’s planning to get up and walk right out Stress’s front door, either, though, so she calls it good enough.
Mumbo makes another miserable noise and then unfolds himself slightly, skin pallid. He does need more color to him. Blood will help. He says, “You’re sure?”
Iskall winks at him then pulls off his gloves, tosses them onto the coffee table. “I’m sure. Stress is right, you do need more nutrition. You’re like some sort of stick with a mustache on it. And I trust both of you.”
Mumbo takes Iskall’s offered hand gingerly, like it might bite him instead of the other way around. He still looks mildly like he wants to die, but he licks his lips, quick and furtive, and says, “Okay. Okay,” and, when Iskall doesn’t pull away or resist, turns over Iskall’s hand so that the faintly green veins of his wrist face up. Pulls it to his face. Bites.
Iskall gasps in a breath, and then lets it out, long and slow through his teeth.
He must be in terrible pain. Stress isn’t ashamed to say it looks gorgeous on him, the vague distance in his eyes, the shallow breaths as he tries to relax, the tenseness as he fails. He generally looks gorgeous, of course, most people do, but the desperate weakness… well, it elevates the whole matter.
Stress wants in on it. She turns and swings a leg over his for better positioning, settles, slides a hand up his neck to cup his chin, brushes hair out of his face with the other. He’s colder than normal, paler than normal. His eyes find a target on her, eyelids dipping. She tilts his head to the side and leans down to his neck.
Unlike Mumbo, Stress can’t just give herself fangs by thinking too hard. Her teeth are blunt, and she isn’t the sort of flower that grows thorns. So when she finds the right artery with her teeth and bites, it’s a lot… messier than Mumbo’d managed.
It takes a few tries, first of all, to figure out the necessary bite strength and angle. Iskall spasms beneath her with each attempt, quick, startled breaths that calm when she strokes his hair. When she finally does break skin in the right place, blood splatters onto her shirt, his shirt, the couch. Into her mouth, too, and from there it’s smooth sailing.
She leans in further, holding him in position by the shoulder and the cheek as she runs her tongue along the ragged edges of the wound, licks at the blood spilling out, frigid, slightly chemical. Gorgeous.
She lets the rootlets under her tongue, behind her molars, hanging from the roof of her mouth unfurl, fall, sink into flesh, draw sustenance into the root system that winds around her bones, sprouts through her skin and skull. Iskall’s heart beats, shallow, supplying his veins, hers.
Her next bloom is going to be gorgeous. And maybe even more red than pink.
And conversely, if Cub had thought about his own personality, he might have been less surprised that once the opportunity presented itself, some hermits would decide to give cannibalism a shot not out of any urgent need or desire but just because they were curious.
Ie, one Zedaph of the Plays variety.
“Gentlemen,” he’s saying, arms out wide, “Do you know why I’ve brought you here to these Crystal Caves tonight?”
“Is it about the cannibalism thing?” says Impulse.
“It’s probably about the cannibalism thing,” says Tango.
Zedaph ignores them. “I want to eat you. For science.” He pauses. “Or you can eat me, I’m not actually picky. Eating just needs to happen! Notes need to be taken! Phenomena need to be studied! Gentlemen, are you in?”
“Sure,” says Impulse.
“Why not,” says Tango. “So what’s your plan, then, Master Cannibal?”
“As you can see,” says Zedaph, gesturing to the rudimentary table (two of his spare glass blocks) set up behind him, “I have assembled a variety of scientific instruments-”
“Is that salt and pepper?” interrupts Tango. “Are you implying we’d need seasoning?”
“Shut your mouth,” says Zedaph. “That’s a scientific instrument, that salt and pepper is.”
“I don’t think I need seasoning,” says Impulse. “Do you realize how much salt you ingest when you live in an ocean monument? Atlantis is an extremely well-seasoned base.”
Zedaph perks up. “Do I hear a volunteer to go first, then?”
Impulse laughs. “I- sure. Why not?”
“Marvelous. Take your shirt off.”
Impulse huffs a little but obliges. Tango admires the view. Zedaph also admires the view, in an entirely scientific manner. Impulse looks down at his bare stomach, then back up. “Do I look edible?”
“I guess?” says Tango. “I don’t really look at a live chicken and start drooling.”
“You look perfectly edible,” Zedaph reassures Impulse, who didn’t actually look unassured in the first place.
“How would you know?” Tango says. “You’re a sheep. You’re supposed to be an herbivore.”
“Hey, I’m only as much a sheep as the joke requires,” objects Zedaph. He pulls his sheep-horn headband off and waves it at Tango for evidence. Tango makes a face at him.
“Getting cold over here,” says Impulse. He sits down on the glass floor, then absently drops a bed next to him, touches it to set his spawn, leans back against the side of it. “I’d like to get this over with, if you don’t mind? The maiming. Zed, did you have a plan for that?”
“I had thoughts.” Zedaph gestures to the variety of scientific instruments laid out on his makeshift table. The selection includes a meat cleaver, a small blowtorch, a set of pliers and tongs, some restraints, a clipboard, a selection of cutlery, and salt and pepper. Zedaph hadn’t exactly been sure of correct procedure when he assembled it. He still isn’t, actually. “I thought my experimental subjects might want a say, though!”
Impulse peers at the table. “I’m not interested in the blowtorch,” he declares.
Tango darts over and scoops it up into his inventory. “I am. Zed, I’m keeping this as a souvenir.”
Zedaph doesn’t bother fighting him for it. He’ll just steal it back later. Or forget about it. That’s also an option. Instead of worrying about irrelevant but hypothetically very silly future shenanigans, though, he whirls around on the heel of his hoof and throws his arms out.
"Now, scientifically," he announces, "And since none of you have non-blowtorch-related contributions-” He pauses, glances around for any objections, finds Tango playing absently with a pair of pliers and Impulse rubbing goosebumps out of his arms. “-it has just occurred to me that our best course of action is actually to conduct a taste test.” He glances at Impulse. “Sorry about freezing you. You can put your shirt back on if you want.”
Impulse stretches. “Thanks,” he says dryly, reaching for it. “If I have to take it off again I reserve the right to leave instead.”
“Taste test?” prompts Tango, impatiently.
“Yes!” says Zedaph, trying not to sound like he’s making the experiment up as he goes along. “We chop off all our non-dominant hands with my lovely meat cleaver over here-” (He waves it around. “That’s just an axe,” mutters Impulse.) “-toss some porkchops in as our control, and have ourselves some data. Are we in agreement?”
“Why not,” says Tango. “More of a plan than I had.”
“Sure,” says Impulse.
“Fantastic! Who wants to go first?”
“You,” says Tango.
“Wh-” Zedaph splutters for a moment, then resigns himself. “Oh, I guess.”
They set up another little table, for hand chopping purposes. Impulse crafts bowls, because he’s the one with wood on him. Zedaph tries several different sitting positions, ruling out crouching, criss-cross applesauce, and a straddle before settling sort of awkwardly on his knees. Impulse does crouch beside the table, holding Zedaph’s forearm in place. Tango, who built the table then found himself with nothing to do, hefts the meat cleaver, fire licking at the corners of his eyes. He gets in position. Brings it down.
The pain is sudden, sharp, and overwhelming. Zedaph jerks in Impulse’s hold, probably also screams. He doesn’t remember shutting his eyes. When he wrenches them open, Tango is chopping his disembodied hand into its various component pieces (mostly fingers) and Zedaph is. Down a hand. He sure does not have one of those anymore. Impulse is fishing around for something to bandage with, it seems like?
Well, it would be funny to make him take his shirt off again. Silly, and all that. It’s sorta pleasant to be this weird and out of it though? Zedaph doesn’t mind, he doesn’t think. Is this why there’s such a craze on right now? He flaps his still attached hand at Impulse.
“It’s part of the experiment,” he declares, a little woozy. “How long we can go without dying of blood loss.”
Impulse makes a weird face at him. Says, “I think you’re dying already.” Then he shrugs. “May as well. Tango, you got this one? I don’t trust Zed with an axe right now.”
They switch off. Impulse gurgles, on his turn. Tango shrieks.
Eventually, they manage to get everyone’s various chopped hand parts and one chopped porkchop (sourced from Zedaph’s messy inventory) in individual bowls, and settle down on the floor because nobody really wants to eat on the bed or has the energy to build a third table. The floor is also rapidly getting covered in blood, but Zedaph will deal with that… later.
He blinks. His eyelids feel heavy. His wrist hurts. He leans against Impulse, who sinks a little before leaning back against him. Tango, across from them, complains about feeling left out, then grabs a finger from the… Impulse bowl, Zedaph thinks? and pops it in his mouth.
“Impulse, why’s your flesh so spongy?” Tango complains, spitting out a selection of small fingerbones.
“I live in an ocean monument,” says Impulse, vaguely. He also reaches for a finger from his own bowl, then nudges it to Zedaph, who takes one too. “Mm, salty.” Several crunches resound right next to where Zedaph’s head is resting on Impulse’s shoulder. “I think bones are the best part so far.”
“Disagree,” says Tango.
“More for me,” says Impulse.
“If you want to eat the ones I spat on the floor, sure,” says Tango. He’s gone a bit weak and woozy too, though, so it doesn’t have quite the sharp, joking edge it was probably meant to.
Impulse’s finger is a bit spongy, when Zedaph takes a bite, and a bit salty, but mostly Zedaph finds it blood-bitter, and surprisingly tasty. The bones are… fine. He isn’t sure what Impulse is seeing in those. He spits out the nail. “Is anyone coherent enough to take notes?”
Nobody is coherent enough to take notes, so they try the porkchop next, which tastes like pork, and then the Zedaph.
“Tastes like mutton,” says Impulse. That’s fair. Zedaph agrees. Sheep and all that.
“I think your bones just gave my tongue a papercut,” says Tango. Zedaph doesn’t know where he got that one. His bones are a normal sharpness. Thank you very much.
He says that: “My bones are a normal sharpness, thank you very much,” and Tango laughs at him.
“Five out of ten,” Tango says. “For the lacerating my tongue thing.”
Zedaph sticks his tongue out at him, then reaches for a finger from the Tango bowl. It tastes… charred. Smoky. “Did you stand in a bonfire before coming over?”
“Every day of my life,” says Tango, chewing thoughtfully, or at least that’s what Zedaph thinks he sees. His vision is starting to go. “Tango jerky.”
Impulse laughs, then crunches right next to Zedaph’s ear again.
“Mmm, bones,” Impulse says.
Tango spits a fingerbone at him.
“Gentlemen,” Zedaph declares. He lifts up his wrist stump, then winces and puts it back down when it sends a spasm of pain through his entire body. “Thanks for participating in my study. I’m going to pass out from blood loss now.”
Then he drops his head into Impulse’s lap and does just that.
Here's another thing nobody expected-
The body is adaptable, and the self even moreso. And sometimes, if the body and the self are in agreement about a new experience, a dependency can form. To this day, Doc thinks the cannibalism should have come with a warning label.
"Or five warning labels," he says to Ren between bites, glowering. It's hard to stay mad when the meat's this delicious, which is the problem.
"I can't really say I see the issue," says False, from Ren's other side. “You’re getting fed, aren’t you? Rude to Ren to whine about it.”
Doc grumbles wordlessly, and, to avoid having to think of a comeback, takes another big bite out of Ren’s thigh, propped up across his own knees to slow the drain of blood.
“Eh, you know how he is, Falsie,” Ren says, waving idly with the arm that False isn’t gnawing on once he’s caught his breath again. He’s fairly drenched in blood and sweat, at this point, but has still managed thus far to maintain his usual breezy demeanor. Doc honestly has no idea how the hell he does it. Even Bdubs doesn’t stay chatty that long, usually, once they get down to it. “But hey, Doc, if you really feel that bad about it, I am still always down to set up a little tradesies, swap meet sorta thing, if you catch my drift?”
Ren’s puppy-dog eyes are, fittingly, extremely well-practiced. Doc is equally well-practiced at ignoring them. “I’ve told you before,” he says, slightly self-conscious of the amount of blood dripping down his chest. “Creeper meat is inedible for most other organisms. You will get nitrate poisoning.”
“Coward,” False says. Doc scowls at her, and she stares back, clearly unimpressed, one eyebrow raised. “Look, all I’m saying, some scientist you are if you won’t even test that theory in practice by letting your friends eat you a little bit, once.”
“You have ulterior motives, so I am not taking your opinion into account,” Doc informs her, before bending down again and taking another bite, doing his best to avoid the path of Ren’s femoral artery. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see False shrug, unbothered, and bite the second-to-last remaining finger off of Ren’s hand.
Doc, personally, has yet to understand the appeal of eating bones; the crunch puts his teeth on edge in a decidedly unpleasant way. False is more than welcome to them, especially she hasn’t eaten much of the meat otherwise. Actually-
He licks his lips, squints at her. “Do you even need to eat meat?”
She swallows the metacarpals she’s been chewing on in one go. “Why? I’m not intruding, am I?”
“Of course not, Falsie,” Ren says, valiantly cheerful. “Mi casa es your casa, you know that.”
“Well, then there’s no problem, right?”
“Nahhh, Doc’s just being a grump,” Ren says, waving it off. False bites down around another small bone in his hand and tears it out with a sharp jerk of her head, and the end of his sentence trails off into a smothered scream.
Doc rolls his eyes- yeah, seeing that, he’s perfectly happy remaining inedible, thank you very much, False- and lifts Ren's savaged leg back up to his mouth for another bite.
And have we covered Beef and Etho yet? We haven’t. It turns out, you see, that even the inedible can find joy in the act of being consumed. And even the incomprehensible can develop a taste for meat. Hermits will, after all, be hermits.
Etho’s skin is translucent in the lamplight, parchment. Beef watches his eyes; his irises don’t catch the light exactly how they should, flat black on one side and solid red on the other.
“Well, first of all, I would actually like to see your teeth before we get down to business,” Beef says.
“You’re such a romantic,” Etho says back mildly, sitting down cross-legged on the carpeting Beef had laid down over the cobble floor (red, for obvious reasons, but it does also match the base aesthetic) and pulling his mask off. It’s a little uncanny to watch, like seeing someone cleanly peel away a layer of skin. His face underneath looks absolutely normal.
Beef sits down in front of him on the carpet, giving him an expectant look, and Etho looks amused for a moment before he opens his mouth obligingly. His teeth are perfectly white, maybe slightly more angular than would be normal for a human, though he does seem to have the correct number of them. More notable than that, and the more likely actual reason for the mask, if Beef thinks about it, is the fact that the space behind his teeth where the inside of his mouth ought to be is entirely pitch-black.
“So, uh, how are we doing this again?” Etho asks, raising his eyebrows slightly.
Beef scratches his head, thoughtful. “Yeah, so, I was thinking I’d go first and probably- wait, you don’t bleed out, do you? Or, like, equivalent?”
“Nope.”
“Cool, perfect. I was thinking I’d take one of your arms off, maybe, and then I get to chew on that while you do whatever you want.”
“Works for me,” Etho says easily, pulling off his vest and undershirt. “So long as you don’t get all weird halfway through like Doc did.”
“If my sanity starts shattering I’ll just close my eyes,” Beef says, reasonably.
Etho’s skin- well, ‘skin’- is smooth and pale and not quite right. It doesn’t exactly curve and dip like it should around where muscles should be. Beef runs a finger around Etho’s bare shoulder, and finds it, after a moment- the fold, almost invisible, where his arm meets his torso.
He dugs a fingernail under it, and Etho’s breath catches in his throat. When Beef looks up, his mismatched eyes have gone wide, fixed on the spot where Beef is running his nail back and forth under the skin, slowly widening the fold.
“You good?” Beef asks.
“Oh, I’m great,” Etho says, casual. He sounds a little like something is caught in his throat.
“Cool, cool.” Beef grins, and shoves his thumb the rest of the way under Etho’s skin.
Etho freezes, going absolutely still. The space under his skin is colder than the humid jungle air in the room, and when Beef peels it a little further apart to get a look inside, all he can see is darkness, a wide black gash between the top of Etho’s arm and the rest of his body. Etho’s fingers are scratching a little against the carpeted floor, erratic.
Beef leans in, takes the exposed edge of the not-quite-skin between his teeth, and pulls his head back. It tears easily, which makes sense- he really is just paper, when you get down to it. Beef had known, of course, but it’s one thing to know it, and another thing to feel it crumpling under your fingernails.
He chews.
Thus far, he hasn’t really participated in the recent cannibalism craze- doesn’t really have the teeth or the appetite for it. Whatever Etho is made of is a lot friendlier to his molars than raw meat would be, though, and it does have a certain flavor, something like leather and ink, distinct from regular paper. It floods the back of his mouth as he swallows his mouthful, not really alive but still savory and rich.
“Not bad,” he informs Etho, who gives him a thumbs-up with the hand that he still seems to have control over. “Does it hurt?”
“Not really,” Etho says, drawing one leg up to his chest. “It mostly feels… uh, if you have a funny bone, it feels weird ‘cause it’s not supposed to get any sensation, right? I… imagine that’s kinda the same.”
“Huh,” Beef says thoughtfully, and then digs his fingers back into the now-ragged gash, steadily prying the arm away from the body as he works his way around the seam.
He hits resistance after a moment, tries his best without a good view to hook a finger around it and pull. Etho tenses up and grabs a fistful of carpet, and all of a sudden the arm is swinging loose from his body, some vital connection point severed. The fingers that were spasming go still.
More interestingly, the sudden separation lets Beef see something, all at once exposed, stretching between arm and shoulder where bone ought to go, pitch-dark and not quite substantial, blinking spasmodically.
Etho stares at it for a second, then grins, not-quite-right teeth on display again. “Oh man, is that what I look like?”
“I guess so?” Beef says, running a finger through the dark plasma, which elicits a sudden full-body shudder from Etho. It’s icy cold, and quickly starts to make his skin sting, and then ache- he yelps as soon as the pain registers, scrubbing his hand off quickly on the carpet.
Etho snickers. “You asked for that. Here, hang on. You know, I better get this back when I respawn, or I’m gonna be really annoyed.”
The plasma dissipates between blinks, and just like that the arm hangs empty, suddenly hollow.
“Perfect, thank you,” Beef says, and pulls the arm the rest of the way off with a sharp yank. The tearing noise is a little horrifying. It’s light in his hands, and when he looks down the length of it, it’s hollow. He tears another chunk of not-quite-skin off with his teeth, and savors it.
“Is it my turn yet?” Etho complains without heat, readjusting his balance against the sudden loss. “I’m hungry too, you know.”
“Thought you didn’t get hungry,” Beef says, through a mouthful.
“Well, I’m hungry now.”
“Fine, fine. Impatient,” Beef says goodnaturedly, setting the half-eaten arm aside to peel his shirt off. He hadn’t even bothered with the apron today; wearing clothes that could get ruined was really just the wiser move in this sort of scenario.
He finishes with the buttons and tosses the shirt aside. Etho’s teeth are very white against the darkness inside his mouth.
“Well?” Beef says, and gestures expansively. “What are you waiting for?”
But, of course, Cub didn’t think of any of that. Neither did Scar, sweet blood on his tongue. Even Bdubs didn’t, awash in glorious agony, or Doc, begrudging but ultimately malleable. Who, they might ask, possibly could have known?
Meanwhile, in Joe's castle-
"Did you hear?" says Cleo. She's carving flesh off Joe's severed arm with the serrated knife he'd provided; Xisuma finishes bandaging the stump and forks one of the fingers Cleo left piled for him. "The ConVex think they've invented cannibalism. Everyone's doing it now."
"Oh, no," says Joe, utterly monotone. He downs a few ibuprofen. "What an outrage."
Jevin, not to be outdone, dips into his thigh with a melon scoop and arranges the pale blue slime in a series of martini glasses, then flails around until he finds a sprig of thyme in his hoodie pocket, presumably for garnish. He rolls his eyes. "It's about time, if you ask me. I could definitely go for some more variety in my diet.”
“Oh, are you saying you don’t like it when I eat you?” says Cleo, sliding a bethymed martini glass towards herself and pausing significantly as she lifts it to her mouth. “I can stop. Now that, as you say, there’s more variety to be had.”
“Cleo, don’t be mean,” says Joe. He shoves the platter of Joe arm meat towards Jevin and slides a martini glass towards Xisuma, which is totally unnecessary considering he’s missing an arm and there’s no way the painkillers have kicked in, but of course he’s chosen to be overcommitted to hostess duties while being cannibalized. It’s Joe.
Xisuma downs half a martini glass’s worth of Jevin slime and Cleo follows suit. It is, as always, bewilderingly sweet. And mildly blue raspberry flavored.
“You’re sure you don’t want anything?” says Xisuma to Joe, like he does every time, and like he’s been doing since Season Two, Joe shakes his head mournfully.
“Something about the taste and texture of raw flesh just doesn’t agree with me,” he explains, like he does every time, all apologetic. “I might go get myself another water, though.”
Jevin sticks the leftover thyme into the slime behind where his ear would be if he weren’t a slime monster. “I really don’t taste anything like flesh,” he insists, like he does every time, stabbing a bit of Joe gristle with his fork.
Cleo shrugs. “More for the rest of us. Joe, you can have my water.”
“Thanks, Cleo!” he says. “Your kindness more than makes up for the smell of rotting meat that trails in your wake.”
She kicks him. Well, it is good to be inedible. Joe, Jev, and X rotate who provides the food, and Joe and X alternate which of them gets the privilege of Cleo pulling their brain out of their skull for sustenance. (Being honest, Cleo prefers when it’s Joe’s turn, because X’s organs taste unpleasantly acrid and his blood gets black stains everywhere, but beggars can’t be choosers.)
Turns out nobody wants to eat a decomposing corpse after the first bite, though, so Cleo just gets to sit back and feast.
“Roasted,” says Jevin.
She kicks him too, although it just bounces off. Maybe it will be good to change up her diet a little. She’s heard Bdubs tastes like lima beans. And melts to a firm hand.
“Um,” says Xisuma. “Maybe now’s not the best time to mention it,” he continues, glancing around at the half-empty martini glasses, and the bones, and Joe. “But if everyone agrees, we might be getting a new hermit next season.”
Blood drips from Cleo’s fork. “Oh, that’s going to be hilarious.”