Afterlife
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It jumps and twists, sways and crawls. The spindly, black legs scrabble frantically over the ground, looking for hearts, alwas looking for hearts.
I want a heart. I want one. I want one now.
The sickly needing filling their empty, heartless bodies. They travel in masses, huge, black swarms. Their huge, bulbous yellow eyes searching, always searching for a fertile heart, a good and juicy heart. Especially in the populated cities. Cities. Always the places filled with people.
Where is my heart? Where? Who took it from me?
Their pitifully stupid eyes looking around, gazing blindly at trees and bushes. One jumps out of the pack, and scrambles over an overturned cart in an abandoned city. It is searching for a heart. Always a heart.
The sky darkens, but the creature is always on the move, always searching for a heart. Always.
It leaps over boxes and carts and stalls. It cares nothing for fruits or sugary confection. It wants a heart. Filled with emotion. Lovely, lovely emotion. It hasn't felt anything for a long, long time. A terribly long time. Because it is Heartless.
A heart?
It has no thought, other than that of craving a heart, needing a heart. It must have a heart, no matter what. Crumbling buildings block the sky from its view as it runs unsteadily through the abandoned city. Skyscrapers rise high into the smoky sky, and pieces of broken glass litter the streets. Leaves are blown, in spirals across the roads and into gutters and drains. Water runs nonchalantly, blatantly ignoring the creature floundering in the shallow water. It gets out, and doesn't bother shaking itself dry. It takes off towards the end of the city. It has smelt a heart.
I want it! I WANT IT!
The greedy needing of a heart made it blind to anything else. Nothing existed, except for the heart. It needed the heart to live. It wanted to feel, even if it was stolen emotion. Because if it didn't have a heart, it wouldn't feel. The painful feeling of emptyness in its chest was blistering, scorching, burning, but at the same time, it was ice cold, as if freezing it from inside out. It wanted to feel. It wanted to be someone, not something.
An empty soda can rattled as its feet kicked it out of the way. It rolled down, down onto the road and made a curve. It then dropped into the drain, to flow along with various newspapers, leaves and glass as it flowed along a deep, dark pipe. But it cared nothing for these things. It only cared about the heart.
A wheel barrow lies, abandoned in front of it, and it clears the contraption in one long, high jump. It clattered to the rocky ground and clambered up clumsily, and kept on crawling, as fast as its stubby little legs can carry it, towards the heart, which was beckinging it tauntingly, seductively.
Its animalistic instincts told it nothing about the dangers that might befall it. All it wanted was the heart. What was the harm in that?
No harm, no harm. The heart is mine, it will be mine forever.
Its antennaes waved crazily in the air as it flew through the city, past bricks and dry fountains, past broken down sheds and rusty bikes with nothing but burst tires. Bottle lids scattered on the ground, rolling this way and that as it kicked the up off the ground in its haste to get to the heart before its kind got to the heart first.
I'll have it FIRST.
The prey was in sight, standing, unsuspecting on the sidewalk, facing away from it. It's wide, luminous yellow eyes widened and darkened slightly in excitement. As it stood, hunched over, a few metres behind the idle human, who was watching the sky, at peace. It's long, clawed fingers unconsciously unfolded and folded greedily, as if already the beating, wet and bloodied feel of the heart, its claws piercing the soft, stretched skin with the thick, pumping veins. It could almost feel the warm, spreading, thick gush of red, coppery-smelling liquid staining its black skin and the delicious taste of it, the thickness, the living taste.
It started towards the human, its yellow eyes only seeing the figure's heart. It's mouth stretched wide, normally unseen. Streams of steaming, silvery saliva poured out of its open mouth. It's rotten, grey tongue pulsated gently, maggots wriggling out of the dry cracks in its tasteless skin.
Its claws dragged along the ground, the sound no more than the whispering of leaves.
Its eyes with its
invisible pupils gazed at the human with captured wonder, the
horrifying blankness of one hypnotized into believing that killing is
the answer to everything, bloodlust is the most seductive feeling of
all. It was all a fun game to it, child's play.
Mine,
mine, mine ...
The human seemed to sense a
presence behind himself, and started to turn slowly around to see
what it was, convinced that it was merely a figment of his
imagination, making his movement slow and relaxed. After all, who
else could be wandering through this empty ghost town?
That was his mistake. It would be the last conscious thing that he would ever do.
The last thing he saw was the bulbous, yellow eyes of a nightmare rearing up behind him, and the dead, rotting tongue which would later bite into him disgustingly. As his mouth opened to utter an unearthly shriek, the thing pounced.
Blood, bone and pus. Everything was flung carelessly around, as if a spoilt child flinging away their expensive toys because they did not get what they wanted. Hard, black claws scratched greedily until the head was nothing but a crushed mass. Something not even remotely human.
An eyeball rolled away, to gaze sightlessly upwards at the clear, dark sky. Its pupil was dilated, in horror, and in terror. It was nothing was a replica now. The thick, sticky gel that covered it stuck to the ground in strands, dangling stupidly.
A torn mouth, gaping open in a scream of horror, showed bloodied teeth and a tongue, ripped and torn. Soon, it would look like its own. Strewn with maggots and grey and dry.
Yellow pus leaked from his head, and the grey mass of brain seemed to beat, softly, grotesquely.
It paid no attention to the gore spread out in front of it and continued to dig through the human's chest, ripping away the lungs and flinging them away, but not before piercing it cruelly. The small, grape-like clusters of air sacs inside it burst, and the red and yellow veins wrapping it together burst as the soft, fragile lungs collapsed upon itself.
A long stream of sausage-like intestines were flung away, too. Steam rose from the disgusting, bloody mess.
Broken shards of bone stuck into the ground, and further away. The ribs were totally demolished, destroyed. The pink, bloodied flesh was warm to the touch and blood spread like an infant, not toilet-trained, leaking on the floor.
Its yellow eyes narrowed as it licked its lips with its dried, dead tongue. Greed reflected sharply in its eyes as it reached out one trembling hand to stroke and caress the trembling organ which used to pulsate and beat with healthy intensity, and was snuffed out in a second.
Streaks of blood were on its fingers as it wrapped its hands gently, as if handling something incredibly vulnerable, around the heart and slowly ripped it out, without causing it serious damage. It left behind frayed veins and tubes, trailing behind strips of dead flesh. Flies already were buzzing annoyingly around the place. It waved the flying insects away patiently and cradled the heart in both hands, crooning to it as if to a child.
Mine. Mine, finally, mine, forever ...
Its body was soaked in blood flowing from the heart as it nuzzled the organ lovingly, without any true emotion. Its ugly, round mouth stretched wide open and it slowly bent its head, trembling in excitement as it dreamt of, within seconds, tasting the emotions of a human. The warm, pumping blood.
But it never got to take a bite.
Its short, pointless life was wiped out in an instant.
Thanks to a brown-haired human. A glinting, bloodied keyblade was clutched in both his hands as his impassive, blue eyes stared a the small, crumpled body of the-
Heartless.
The heart lay, uneaten, unconsumed. It was all the thing wanted. All it wanted. Why couldn't it have just that? Why? Was it too much to ask for?
Apparently, yes.
Where is it now, where? The Afterlife.
But the thing is -
There is no Afterlife for sinners.