Teeth: Chapter 1
"It's feeding time!"
The words, shouted through the ancient sound system, echoed off the lava rock walls of Crematoria. Dozens of soot-stained faces looked up all at once. There was a moment of suspended silence, and then all hell broke loose.
Men and women scurried away like rats before impending flood waters. They rushed and pushed and screamed, wide eyes searching the dark corners of the prison frantically. The ones who reached their rotted-out cells first slammed the barred doors fast behind them. A few were not as fortunate. These pleaded loudly to be let in, pounding against the bars.
The beasts came as silent and quick as lightening in the dark; black as the lava rock, sleek scales lying flat against their bodies and tails like whips flicking menacingly back and forth.
Hellhounds. They emerged from the shadows and scattered, each with a single purpose: to hunt.
One hellhound stilled, cocking her ears to take in every sound. Then she was bounding soundlessly up a narrow winding staircase fixed precariously to the living rock. She climbed several stories before alighting on a rusted metal bridge just as precariously placed as the staircase. A man, smelling of fear and sweat and soot, tore frantically at the bars of a cell at the other end of the bridge, whispering at the occupants therein urgently. The hellhound moved slowly. Hunger gnawed at her stomach but she wouldn't let that consume her control. The man caught sight of the approaching beast and turned abruptly to run - but too late. Before he had taken two rushing steps the hellhound was sinking wickedly gleaming teeth into the back of his neck. The prison air was pierced with the man's last wailing shriek. It rose higher and higher until, with a powerful shake, the hellhound snapped the prey's fragile neck.
The whole of Crematoria had gone quiet again with the plaintive note of the first kill. The hellhound let her prize fall to the floor and gazed into the dark of the adjacent cell. Her growl of warning made the huddled group in the cell sink further into the dark, trembling. Satisfied, the hellhound grabbed its prize once again and dragged it away.
There was a long and low cave in the rock the hellhound liked to use for times like this - maybe thirty feet deep and four feet high. Just tall enough to where the hellhound's lowered head just grazed the ceiling. It wasn't a long trip. She dragged the corpse deep into this hideaway and got down to the business of stripping and ripping. The hellhound's scaled face was buried in the gaping maw where the man's belly had been when she realized that she'd missed something. The creature whipped her head to the right; her scales rattled and puffed out around her head and across her back, turning a vibrant shade of orange-red tinged in black; like molten lava. The growl that ripped from her snarling jaws - caked in blood - filled the enclosed space like thunder.
There was a boy. A small boy barely out of infancy, all thin and gaunt where he should have been baby-faced and rounded. There were hollows under his eyes and bruises along his left eye and cheek, almost hidden by the dark and by the way his black hair fell around his face. He was pressed flush against the rough back wall of the cave, those hauntingly dark eyes wide, round, and staring.
The hellhound rounded full on him and approached with a stalking gait. The boy's bony chest filled and expanded rapidly under his too-large and filthy shirt. The hellhound stopped, her powerful jaws just a foot from the tiny boy's throat. She inhaled the boy's fear and exhaled the stench of coagulated blood. The beast growled again, eye to eye with the tiny intruder, jaw unclenching with the intent of a swift kill. But then the boy's face changed and he did something the hellhound did not expect. The boy gazed defiantly out of slitted eyes, leaned his head forward, and growled right back.
Inexplicably, the hellhound stopped short, confusion softening her face while red scales faded back slowly to a dusky orange. Their eyes locked, the tension of the previous moment morphed into something new. When the boy's hand reached into the space separating them, the creature's growl became a whine and her ears laid back against her head. This was beyond the hellhound's experience. She shifted uncomfortably and the boy's posture became straighter, surer. His hand touched the scaly, blood covered chin and paused there. Both waited, both were still, eyes still searching. The boy followed the curve of the giant beast's jaw slowly. His questing fingers traced the individual scales, their roughness nearly cutting his baby-soft fingers. Up he traced until he found the hellhound's sensitive ear, twitching at his touch. He made a sympathetic whimpering sound when his hand caught on a tag clipped right through the ear, labeled with a number 3, though the boy didn't know it. His whimper elicited another unexpected response from the hellhound. Her ears pricked upward and she nudged her nose against the boy's body, breaking eye contact to search the boy for injury. A switch had been flipped in the hellhound's head; from aggression to something just as primal.
Satisfied that the boy was in no immediate danger, the beast turned once again to her abandoned meal. The cave was soon filled with the wet sounds of gorging.
The boy crept forward slowly until he crouched opposite the feeding hellhound. As he watched, his stomach began to twist violently. He couldn't remember a time when it had been full, though he also had never been this particularly empty.
With his hunger came thoughts on the one he'd known as 'mommy'. His mommy had been the one to feed him before, but she wasn't here anymore. She'd fallen asleep and when she didn't wake up, some men took her away. He had hidden like his mommy always told him - always hide when the men come - but now he couldn't find her. In time he'd stopped hiding and a man had found him. He touched a hand to the left side of his face and winced at the pain.
The hellhound looked up quickly and stared at the boy again. A moment later she was tearing a hunk of flesh from what had been the dead man's thigh. The piece fell with a wet meaty thud onto the cave floor in front of the boy and the hellhound went back to the mostly flesh-stripped corpse.
The boy took hold of the grisly offering with sure hands. He did not see a man's broken body before him. He did not contemplate ethics or social taboos. He saw an end to his gnawing hunger. With childish enthusiasm, he sunk tiny, white baby teeth into lukewarm thigh muscle, blood welling up and thickly coating his already dirty face. He chewed and gulped the meat down; it settled comfortably in his stomach. Then he dug in for more.
It was feeding time, after all.