Still Hungry

I don’t know what I am, but I know there are others like me. I hear their screams at night, echoing in the alleys and abandoned streets, pregnant with despair and an unholy longing. If you could hear them, you would leave this place.

We are terrors and we are waking.

I don’t remember my beginning, but I know that I am old. For thousands of years I have lain in the deep, a witness to evils on the surface above. Tribes warred, then men with muskets came; red fought blue, then blue fought gray; thieves stood in shadows as the buildings grew tall, slipping their knives into passersby. The blood ran onto the street, into this crack and that, then down into the bowels of the earth. So I have gathered, drop by drop, with my brothers in the caverns beside me.

We are the hatred of generations and we are reaching critical mass.

I feel myself turning in this humid womb, this oven of rock. I feel my muscles growing strong. My fingers flex and I claw the walls—scraping upward, climbing out—birthed onto the surface with the snap of thunder and the stink of sulfur. The ground bursts and my brothers, like me, are free.

We have gorged for ages and we are still hungry.

Mondays are always a little better with Trifecta! This story is my response to this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge prompt: Crack. Click on through to the other side for more!