The degradation of pathways in their once human brains would soon enjoy their form of pyro techniques as neurons started firing once more. Reminding them that we were now their food source while simultaneously forgetting that once we would call each other family.
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I tried to take a deep breath but found I couldn't. I felt a pain in my stomach like I had swallowed a shard of hot iron that wouldn't stay down and suddenly started coughing up blood. My mouth tasted dry. A bit of saliva dribbled out from the corner of my lips, mixing with the sweat on my face. I felt slightly better when the familiar taste of blood hit the back of my throat.
Something was working again inside my body: my heart was beating slowly, pumping blood around my organs and helping them heal.
I opened my eyes and looked around the room as best I could through a veil of pain-induced fatigue and nausea. I tried not to focus on the corpse next to me, a sacrifice, but I couldn't take my eyes off it anymore; the thought of what happened made me feel horrendous.
I'd felt struck by a strange sensation that I wasn't really in my own body but somewhere else entirely. I couldn't remember anything from the past two weeks except for flashes of memories here and there. It felt bizarre, like a half-forgotten dream or a nightmare coming back to me in bits and pieces. It was like a thread pulled from my brain, one of those strands that run through our rememberings in different directions, some leading here, others there. Eventually, the whole thing came together in one continuous narrative. By then, it was too late to stop it.
I tried to tell myself this wasn't true, and I felt this weird sense of dread; there must be some other explanation for my strange behaviour. The smell of the food still filled my nostrils but didn't make me hungry. There was something about it that made me feel unhealthy. The scent of something, the way my nose told me it was wrong.
I remembered a moment, a flash from before. I had walked into a room full of people and smelled them. In an instant, they all went quiet as if they could sense something was in the air. As if someone had turned on a light, and every one of their eyes could see what secrets lay hidden for years. Now all was revealed in those darkened corners of the room. I also remember being in that moment; I no longer felt sick. I only felt the hunger.