Author's Note: So…another story of mine that's gone un-beta'd. I had someone who said they'd do it, but they never got back to me, so…what the heck, I'll just post it.
This is my first time writing for Vocaloid, and I probably never would have written for it if it weren't for a certain friend of mine. While watching the video for 'Dark Woods Circus', we made a solemn pact to each write about one of the characters featured. I got 'the blue beast who eats things cold' aka Kaito. Which is cool by me, because Kaito's one of my favorite Vocaloids. Oh, if you haven't seen the video (or at least heard the English lyrics to the song…or you speak fluent Japanese) you should go watch the video. Yes. Right. Now. Otherwise, this will make about zero sense to you.
Any and all feedback, be it positive or negative, is appreciated. Thank you!
When it hurt—when that empty, gnawing hole inside him screamed to be filled—he smiled.
He smiled, running his tongue over dry teeth, and every so often, he caught himself reminiscing.
There was a place, somewhere in a distant part of the world, where he had a sense of something else, something other, and if he scraped back the peeling wallpaper, he could (almost) see it.
The days that came before it were too far back and too foreign to recall. He was sure they must have existed, but they had vanished from him like the sunshine in winter. He wasn't sure, entirely, that this was a bad thing. After, all, the space between then and now had been the hardest. That was his fault, though. He'd been stubborn, clinging to the ideals of the old world even when it was quite clear that they were meaningless in the new.
He'd been hungry then, too.
And he'd been afraid. Not of dying, because it had sounded wonderful back then. No, he was afraid of the people, of the leering crowds, of the Ringmaster, of himself. Because sometimes he'd thought things that scared him, though he no longer knew why they'd done so.
It might not be so bad.
It might not matter.
I'm so hungry…
And always, he'd countered with the five simple words he'd adopted as his creed, chanting them silently to himself like a mantra.
I'll never eat a human.
But he was so hungry…
It wasn't as though he hadn't tried. He remembered lying in the arena, licking up the sand; chewing the ends of his matted, ocean-blue hair; crawling into corners, scratching for whatever he could find until they'd bound his arms up in the buckled jacket. Yellowish skin stretched thinly over framework, sharp ribs and edge of his spine poking through. He'd tried not to eat (if he starved to death, so much the better) but his body refused to die. He was surprised, back then, that they hadn't tried to stop him.
As it turned out, they hadn't needed to.
He hadn't tasted it. He hadn't even realized he was doing it. And when he did, he realized he no longer cared, because it was food, and for the first time in months, his stomach was full.
So he kept eating, tearing frantically at the sticky meat, blood spattered across his face, the tang of it sweet in his mouth. And to survive, he took part of himself and locked it far away, in the smallest dusty closet of his mind, where he wouldn't have to hear its voice anymore. Because he was just so hungry.
It was always black in the dark place where he lived; he no longer needed to see. He forgot colors, abandoning sight in favor of food. He forgot words (even his name) because they no longer had meaning. He forgot every feeling but hunger, because that was all that mattered. And he was still so hungry.
They were here. The people, the watchers. Their presence meant food, so he loved them.
Just as always, the plate clattered against the floor. He pulled himself over to it, panting at the idea that maybe he might finally be full. He ate, saliva and blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, not caring about the young-wide-eyed face pressed to the window.
He was so very, very hungry.
He opened his mouth (but he no longer remembered what laughter sounded like). And he wondered why in the world he was crying.