The Infernal Hunger Chapter 2 - Sylvia

By itchingmyknee

The baby farms are rudimentary at best. The beds are straw filled bags, stained with the waters and blood of many births. The young are fed on dried grasses and seeds, though the supplies are dwindling. Each year yields a leaner crop, the skies are beginning to darken with carbon dioxide as patches of green turn gradually brown. A scientist who was interested in such things would marvel that the appendix, that long-defunct organ, was once again stirring to digest the new diet.

Sylvia is 14 years old. She has borne three babies and is venerated amongst her peers for producing such healthy offspring. All of her children have grown at an accelerated rate, and already her first born has been sent to the Angels for processing. Humans fare better when the atrocities they commit come disguised by innocuous titles. The butchers in their abattoirs became the Angels in their Chapels, despatching their wards to eternal rest. A rose by any other name will smell according to that name. If Sylvia becomes head feeder on the farm, she will be awarded her own room, away from the sweat, pains and screams of her tribe. She was inconsolable when they took her first baby away, but now she has become more resigned. She only feels the slightest pang as she touches her now rounded belly, swollen with her fourth, at its imminent birth and removal. Her sister is a breeder. Sylvia has not seen her since her first period, when she was hauled out of bed and packed off to the farm. The only trace left behind is the droplet of blood on her mattress. Her body betrayed her to this fate. The Oracle has decreed that each bloodline has right to survive, and that one female of every family may be set aside for breeding. If her sister had bled first, she would be at the farm, and Sylvia could have gone to the Nursery, and kept her children. Unless, Oracle forbid, they were boys.

The threat of extinction has wreaked havoc with existing hierarchies and social norms. Now it is the females who are prized, males are viewed as a necessary evil. A minor component of the breeding process that would have been dispensed with had science proved successful. Very few are allowed to live, and they are on a careful rotation to ensure they do not breed with their own line. There had been a time years previously when people had experimented with frog DNA, to try and cut the males out completely. Certain breeds have the ability to change sex when needed. Should humans have this same capacity, a female could perform both functions, and even fertilise herself. The experiment failed, and spawned a generation of mutated beings. These creatures have been destroyed, and the earth has no more frogs, but myths still abound about this strange race, and their hatred of humans.

(To Be Continued…)

As I was on my way to work this morning...

By bitingmylip

Jessica stood at the bus stop, yawning and glancing round at the usual suspects who stood with her on this unseasonably cold August morning. There was the old lady who always carried her lunch in a designer carrier bag. There was the guy in Sainsburys uniform. There was Annoying Girl, who always leapt on the bus first as if waiting five seconds to let someone else on would mean she’d lose out, despite there almost always being seats at this time of year as the school kids had evacuated. Jessica pulled a face as Annoying Girl stuck her hand out to signal the bus and then rushed to the front of the queue. Like the driver isn’t going to stop for 14 people, she thought. Idiot.

Beeping her Oyster card and tucking her bag under her arm, Jessica made her way towards the back of the bus and found her favourite seat – facing forward, by the window on the right hand side – unoccupied. Smiling to herself she sat down and plugged in her headphones. A young guy with a big art folder sat down opposite her and she smiled at him as well. The act of smiling made her feel much more cheerful, so much so that she even smiled at Annoying Girl, who was now sat diagonally opposite her. Annoying Girl looked unnerved but Jessica sat back in her seat, still smiling, and leaned her head against the window.

As the bus meandered along, picking up people till it was fit to burst, Jessica looked dreamily out of the window, her playlist tripping along nicely in her ears. As they passed Tooting Common she looked, as she often did, for the two magpies that she had seen on several occasions nesting in one of the trees. They had yet to bring her much joy, but she still felt it was a good start to the day to see them gadding about together. The bus slowed next to the magpie tree as the lights turned red. Jessica saw one of the magpies tweeting merrily to himself. Her mother had told her that you should salute lone magpies because one, of course, was for sorrow. So, she spoke to the magpie in question, without moving her lips. Hello Mr Magpie, how’s the wife and children? Then she pretended to scratch her forehead and pulled her hand down quickly in a semi-salute.

Suddenly the bird seemed to look directly at her. He chirruped loudly, so loudly Jessica could hear him through the window, “I’m fine, thank you,” the magpie twittered. “The wife’s a bit poorly though. Ate some bad grass.”

Jessica started forward and her bag fell on the floor. That bird just spoke to me, she thought. Unbelievable.

Shaking her head, she picked up her stuff and shoved it in her bag, absent-mindedly grabbing the shoe of the guy who was sat opposite her. He moved his foot quickly and she glanced up.
“Oops, sorry,” she muttered, not looking at him as she gripped her disordered bag, her mind racing.

That bird did NOT just speak to me, she told herself firmly. Get a grip. I’m just tired and a bit hungover. I am not mad.

She glanced out of the window again. The bus had still not moved. Haven’t we been sat here for ages? She thought, just as something else occurred to her. Hang on, I didn’t drink anything last night, I can’t be hungover.

“Good on you,” a cracked but chirpy voice ventured as if in reply. “See a lot of them round here who should have a night off the sauce.”

Jessica stiffened in her seat. Eyebrows raised, she turned slowly towards the window again. The magpie was perched on a tree branch that seemed to have stretched across the road so it was almost touching the bus window. The bird peered in at her and cocked his head.

“Come to think of it, though, you do look a bit peaky. You sure you’re not hungover?”

Jessica opened her mouth, in amazement rather than out of any wish to reply. Just as she did so the bus began to move. Craning her head round, she saw the branch appear to shrink back into the tree, and the magpie flapping his wings as he soared up into the sky.

“Have a good day,” she heard him squawk.

To be continued...

The Infernal Hunger

By itchingmyknee

Fifty years on from when you are reading, the Earth you know now changes. Humans are the only animals left roaming this planet. And all other life has departed.

The mammals were the first to die out. It happened so slowly, that nobody really noticed. First the pandas in captivity refused to breed, then the whales shored up on beaches in their thousands. Finally the monkeys, in a spate of frenzied cannibalism, attacked one another and ate and ate, until the species depleted and were gone, and only one male silverback remained. Stained with gore and coated in buzzing carrion flies that nested in his nostrils and eyes, he looked around at what he had done and died of heartbreak. Even the rats, that most resilient race, poisoned themselves with the chemicals that man created and rendered themselves sterile. The reptiles crawled off into dark places until their cool blood chilled and there was no spark of life to reanimate them. The birds set off on a final flight higher than any creature had been. Rumour had it that they nested in new forests in the clouds, as no corpses were seen, no lone feather floating to the ground. But it truth they flew so high above the firmament that their fragile bodies were consumed by the altitude, and returned to the earth as the finest powder. The fish, mutated and few as they were, staggered on through the seas. Their scales ripped from their bodies and their flesh tugged from their bones and they desperately sought pure water. Until the seas became sludge, a rich stock of fragmented marine creatures.

Here our story begins, when mankind, that proud race, comes to the realisation that extinction is approaching fast. The flora and fauna is dying. Many forged symbiotic relationships with creatures long dead, relationships so intricate that we hardly knew they were there, until the skeletal arms of the lifeless trees alerted us to their plight.

For many years man turned on one another to survive. He ate his brother, his neighbour, the weak and the sick. But then order was restored with the decree of one. One who brought order to the shattered race, and bound the survivors under a common bond. The saviour was known as the Oracle, a great scientist whose revelations marked the end of bad times.

The world’s women were separated into two categories: the Breeders and Feeders. The Breeders were a sad tribe. Their sole duty to propagate man. Pregnancy after pregnancy ruined their bodies and damaged the internal organs, overtaxed by the run of babies. They usually died by the time they were thirty, and the unlucky chosen who began menstruating early would find themselves raped and expecting as young as eight. But this was nothing to the Feeders lot. They too were impregnated, but to a different end. The babies they produced with similar rapidity were infected with the Oracle’s miracle gene. They grew at double the rate of normal children, and at 5 or so were ready to be harvested. Weighing in at over 10 stone. Their internal organs were small, the muscles static. Much like the battery hens laying in restrictive cages, these children were bred for one purpose: To feed the masses. Mothers would have their offspring snatched away, and might indeed eat them a few years later. This was order, this was law. This is how man crawls on through the ages. Glutted on the blood of its own kind.

(To Be Continued…)

Drink and Dial

By bitingmylip

I just found out about a genius invention that has the potential to transform my love life and help me keep my friends and, yes, even lovers.

It is a mobile phone that prevents drunk dialing (see http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2125709).

For the uninitiated, drunk dialling and its counterpart, drunk texting, are two of the never-been-without-technology generation’s greatest obstacles.

As the name suggests, drunk dialing (and texting) involves copious amounts of alcohol and that staple of modern life, the mobile phone. Simply put: you get drunk, you get out your phone, you phone or text someone totally inappropriate, et voila, you wake up in the morning and feel a sickness that is nothing to do with the amount of alcohol consumed but rather the slow realisation that, yes, you did phone your ex-boy/ girlfriend and/or current object of affection at 3 am and, yes, you did proceed to tell him or her (either directly into their sleepy ears or, even worse, to the unfriendly voice on their answerphone) that you are either:

a) madly in love with them, which blows all your cool and, in the case of your current love object particularly, means they will never talk to you ever again for fear you are some kind of deranged stalker type weirdo.

or,

b) totally over them, which is disproved by the simple fact that you are calling them at 3am to tell them this. Variations on this include telling the person whose text messages and all forms of communication you have been obsessing for weeks that, yes, you were upset that they don’t put a little ‘x’ after their messages or respond to your blatant flirtation in the way you hoped but it doesn’t matter any more because you are over it. YOU ARE OVER IT. You were just thinking about it whilst drunk, in a bar, with your friends and numerous other people you could probably snog if you wanted as they’re just as drunk as you, but still, you are over it, and you thought you would tell them that you are over it because you just happened to be thinking about them at 3 o’clock in the morning. Whilst drunk.

Everyone knows someone who is a regular drunk dialer and/or texter. Personally, I used to favour the text message. Predictive text when you’re drunk is especially dangerous, as is the accidental sending of a message to the wrong person, viz:

You: “I’m really sorry, I was a bit worse for wear, I didn’t mean to send you that message.”
Your Mum: “I should bloody well hope not, but who is this ‘Mike’ person and why on earth were you telling him what you were wearing?”
You: “I’m going to be sick…”

So now we are all up to speed on the perils of using a mobile phone when drunk, let’s recognise the genius of a phone that not only breathalyses you but also allows you to amend the settings so that on certain nights and after certain times you physically can’t call certain people from your phone book. Imagine the embarrassment saved.

Although, come to think of it, it might save on embarrassment, but imagine the action you could miss out on. No more late night booty calls. No more stupid, giggly texting with that bloke sat opposite you in the bar. No more next-morning phone calls from your ex to say, “it was lovely to hear from you… even if you were hammered.”

God, how would anyone ever get laid?

Sadly it seems that like many things in modern life, this phone is both saviour and oppressor. And, like relationships, the answer lies in getting the balance right. So maybe only block one of your exes. Or you could always just leave your phone at home…

The Kindness of Strangers

By itchingmyknee

My best friend works as a stripper. She’s been doing it for a while, but yesterday was the first time that I actually saw her dance. She was working in a club in Soho, and there was the usual mix of seedy regulars and hip glitterati that run that part of town. I had gallon of Jack Daniels in my belly, (these places only serve doubles) and I’d smoked a thousand cigarettes. My hair seemed to me tobacco strands and my saliva intoxicated my tongue as I spoke.

My friends and I didn’t quite belong. There was something jaded in the hard, beautiful faces of the patrons, and their eyes flashed cherry red under the ruby strip lights. The barman flirted with me as I paid for a drink. He’d flirted with all women he’d served that night, catering his winks, nods and smiles to the age, weight and drunkenness of his prey. His attentions bounced off me like rubber and struck a dissolute blonde swaying to my left. So charmed was she in my stead that her jaw began to gape and her legs to spread. She held on to the bar to stay upright.

It was still early, not yet 2am, when we decided it was time to leave. I passed Kate Moss on the stairs. Her face was tilted away from the light, her face shimmering with Rimmel Recovery foundation she had advertised months before. We walked down the street, arms linked, under the watchful eyes of minicab drivers and hostesses in dark doorways. Then suddenly Soho spat us out into Shaftsbury Avenue, where the stragglers from the theatre crowd were fumbling in silk purses with drunken fingers, looking for bus-passes and handkerchiefs.

I heard singing. Not really anything like singing, but even more unlike shouting. There were some lads coming towards us; one commanding a cloud of silver balloons that almost seemed to bear him up with the breeze. Each of us wanted a balloon, like children at the fayre. One was acquired with a gentle smile, but Stripper lost her temper at the boy’s reluctance to part with another. I wanted one too, so I asked. The boy handed me the whole bunch. Suddenly he seemed to me an angel, gone astray from his midnight choir. He handed over the knot of strings and looked at me as though I was something quite extraordinary. Then the moment had passed, and all that remained was the feeling of having been adored for an instant, a twinkling of an eye too ephemeral to be quite real. The pavement restored itself beneath my feet.

And all that was left were the balloons, and what was I to do with so many balloons… My friends and I said our goodbyes and I negotiated my way down the street, clutching my new silver brood. And at my bus stop, a couple appeared out of nowhere, holding hands with eyes that shone as they gazed at one other. He asked if he could have a balloon for his lady, and I said, ‘Of course.’ He reached for one. I said, ‘Have them all.’

Who the hell are we?

This is Little Pie, aka itchingmyknee.













Check out itchingmyknee's tales:

The Kindness Of Strangers

The Infernal Hunger

The Infernal Hunger Chapter 2 - Sylvia

We All Thrive On The Bad Times...

The Infernal Hunger Chapter 3 - The Froglodytes

More tea, Vicar?

Billy, The One-Legged Gangster

Leipzig and the man in the S&M pants

The Infernal Hunger Chapter 4 - The Solution

The Infernal Hunger Chapter 5 - Eye Openings

If it's good enough for Oprah...

All Hail All Hallows

Shame on Sharm

Two thousand and what? Seven? Rubbish.

Not so quick-witted.

Much Ado About Oranges

A faint hope

itchy poem

I think I'm paranoid

Amphetamine Child

Untitled

Hello. It's 2008. Or is that 1998?

This is Cola Cube, aka bitingmylip











Check out bitingmylip's tales:

Drink and Dial

As I was on my way to work this morning...

The Singleton's Prayer

Monday Monday

How Not To Run In A Race

How Did I Get Here?

Extra Hot Rant

Goldplated (another rant...)

Mysteria

Taxi Driver

End In Tears

Magpies...

Fashion Victim

Woe

Back To School

How To Fight

Fancy a Cuppa?

Remember remember the fifth of November

Dead Famous

Dead Famous: part two

Dead Famous: part three

The Lost Art of Pickpocketing

Check out wrackingmybrain's tales from the Library:

Librarians' Corner

Librarians' Corner II

Librarians' Corner III

Librarian's Corner IV

Librarian's Corner V

Librarian's Corner VI

Librarian's Corner VII

The Return of Librarian's Corner

Check out TheyMadeMeDoIt's tales:

TheyMadeMeDoIt

Check out our newest contributor lip_music 's tales:

Morning

Babysitting

Damocles

Small beginnings...

Come float in the portal of alter-egos and tell us a story. Be it fact or fiction, short or tall. Our beginnings may be humble, but we haven't far to fall.