Nonexistent, that was my childhood. As soon as I was taken in by this organization, it was a repeat, every day. Wake up, go to class, learn, "play". The only difference in our schedule was when we ate. It wasn't that often, since we could eat very little and not be hungry for a while, but it was the only time I had that I could talk freely with Beelee and Dragon. One day though, Dragon wasn't there. Instead, there was a scientist with a creepy smile. He seemed familiar to me, but I couldn't place where I had seen him. He watched over the other kids and looked at us as we walked in. We sat at our usual table, but there was already a serving of meat there for us. Both of us sat, puzzled, before eating. As I bit into it, the juices ran down the brown paper onto my hands and gushed into my mouth. This one tasted succulent and savory, a perfect flood of delicious flavour.
"This is the best meat I've had Beelee." I said, and I looked up to see if she was happy with the taste as well. I was surprised to see tears running down her eyes as she spat out the meat onto the plate. The scientist walked over to where we were and looked at her with a strange mixture of curiosity and pleasure.
"What could be the matter young one?" He asked her, his voice scraped the air like nails on a chalkboard.
"I don't want to eat it. I know who it is." She put down the meat on the plate and pushed it away from her.
"Are you sure about that?" He said, kneeling down beside her. "It's the only thing you'll get for a while. Why not at least eat half of it?"
"I don't want to eat him. I can't eat him." She started to get up, but the scientist pushed her back into her seat.
"It's either this friend or that one." he pointed at me as he finished his sentence. I stopped myself from taking a bite and put down the slab of meat in my hands. The scientist looked at me and said, "What? Are you not going to eat any either?" He looked furious, as if we had ruined a grand scheme of his. "Both of you will eat these whole, unless you want to end up eating eachother.
"I can manage sir." I said to him, "I'm pretty full already." I looked at the half-eaten slab on my plate, a mixture of hunger and disgust running through my stomach. He stared at me angrily for several minutes before leaving us both.
"Fine, eat each other for all I care, cry when you realize that you've killed your only friend in the process of satisfying your hunger." He was screaming at the top of his lungs, piercing the air with his anger.
"What was that about Beelee?" I asked her. She sat there crying for a few minutes before answering.
"I bit Dragon once, because he made me angry. I made him bleed I bit him so hard." I nodded at her, not understanding what she was saying. "This tastes just like him. I couldn't eat it." With that, I realized why the scientist was pointing at me when he said to chose which friend to eat. "I won't eat my friends, not ever!" she shoved the plate off the table and ran down the hall to our room. I couldn't help but sit and stare at the meat in front of me. If that was Dragon's, I just ate part of him. He could be dead for all I know. I got up and rushed to the bathroom, washing out my mouth at the sink. As the savory blood and leftover bits of meat washed away from in between my teeth, I forced myself not to cry, to stay optimistic. Dragon couldn't be dead. He was too strong for death, too important. He cannot die.
After spending the day in the bathroom, I headed to the room I shared and passed out on my bed, not bothering myself to hide under the covers. Soon after, I was awoken by Teelee, her tail wrapped around my stomach, slowly preventing me from breathing.
"Teelee stop!" I choked, reaching out to slap her face but connecting only with air. "Don't make me hurt you Teelee." I could barely breath now, her face came close to mine, a look of unfathomable hunger came from the red in her otherwise black eyes. I released my tails and lashed out with them, taking care not to cut her or pierce her skin. She fell on the ground and started crying. I got down from my bed and touched her shoulder to see if she was alright.
"Get away from me!" She yelled, lashing out with her tail. "Don't get near me, I might hurt you!" I blocked with my tails and hugged her.
"Are you hungry Teelee?" I asked her, holding out my hand in front of her. "You can eat a finger or two, I won't mind." She hesitated with her mouth open, drool spilling from her lips making a small pool on the floor.
"I can't I don't want to eat my friends." She struggled, trying to get out of my arms.
"If you won't eat my finger, I'll put my hand in your mouth instead. It's only a finger Teelee, I can grow it back." I put my hand closer to her mouth, wrapping her in my tails so she couldn't struggle.
"No. No, I won't eat you. I'm not hungry, stop!" She screamed and struggled. I finally ripped off a couple of fingers and stuffed them into her mouth, putting my hand over her lips so she couldn't spit them out. She thrashed in my grip, tears running down her cheeks and blood dripping from my hands. After a while, she calmed down and started chewing. She whimpered and cried while she ate my fingers, and all I did was sit and hold her. She finally swallowed and I retracted my tails back into my body.
"Don't worry Teelee, I'm not going to let you eat any more of me." She passed out in my arms, the tears slowly drying on her face. I picked her up and placed her on her bed, trying my best not to cover her in my blood. I walked out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom. As soon as I entered, my hand started to hurt, and I couldn't help but scream in pain. I fell to my knees, clutching my bleeding hand, until a group of suits entered, followed by the crazy professor that had threatened Teelee earlier.
"Oh my, it looks as if we have to take care of you young ghoul." He walked up to me and took out a needle. "Don't worry, we'll take good care of you." He took my head in hand and lifted my eyelid, embedding the needle into the soft tissue within. The pain echoed through my skull as I flailed around, trying to escape this man's grasp, but it was no use. My strength was gone, and I could not bring out my tails. Something was wrong with the solution in the needle, something that made me weak. The man injected another needle into my eye and I soon fell asleep.
I awoke strapped to a table, with nothing on but my underwear. I struggled against the restraints, but to no avail. The man stepped out of a shadow in the corner of the room and chuckled.
"It's no use my boy, you are under Rc suppressant, everything that makes you inhuman is all but gone for now." He walked over to a table next to me and started picking up one knife after the other. "Which means that I can cut you open and look inside of you, but as long as I feed you, you won't die." He chuckled again, taking pleasure in the position of power he had over me.
"Why am I here?" I asked him, still struggling against the binds. "You can't just take me."
"Oh, that's where you're wrong. You see, this was the perfect opportunity to steal one of you away and study you on my terms. The facility has so many rules against just cutting you open and seeing what makes you tick. I want to see if there's anything different in this body of yours that we can use. And since your friend 'ate' you. No one will come looking for you. They'll think that she is at fault, and have her killed on the spot." He put a long sharp knife to the middle of my chest. "Now, please don't squirm. It's not that I dislike it, but it would make a real mess of these incisions if you do." He pressed down on the knife, immediately splitting my skin, causing blood to slowly drip down my chest. I screamed and struggled, the pain taking over my train of thought. All I could think of was to get out. Just get out of here and I will be fine, but there was no escape. There was no way to get out.
He dragged the blade down my abdomen, making a clean cut through my sternum and down my stomach. Blood spewed onto the floor, and I could not scream anymore. My chest was cut open, allowing me only to breath slightly.
"See, wasn't that easy? I heard of a torturer in Japan who's specialty was ghouls. He would have his victims count down from one thousand by sevens. I think that would be quite fun, don't you? Why don't you start now." He separated my rib cage just enough to look inside, causing tears to spill from my eyes even more than they already were.
"One thousand." He said, taking a lamp and positioning it over my chest cavity.
"Nine hundred ninety three." He went on, reaching into my chest, studying my organs.
"Nine hundred eighty six." He continued, taking notes on what he was observing.
"Nine hundred fifty eight." My vision started to blur, and the numbers started to pass faster. The next thing I knew, I was awake and my chest had healed shut. I could breath correctly again, but I was still strapped to the chair.
"You almost died. I forgot that ghouls needed to breathe as much as humans did." The scientist walked into my vision again. "I was afraid I would have to kidnap another of your kind. You were such a precious instance, as it so happens. The chances of replicating a situation so perfect would be difficult indeed." He grabbed the same knife and inserted it just below my diaphragm, making a squelching sound as it passed through my now soft skin. "Now, to continue with yesterday, but this time I'll make sure you stay conscious." He slid the blade down my stomach and I cried out in pain. He took his time, relishing the torture I was going through, cutting into my stomach so he could fold back the flesh that would usually protect me from this treatment.
"Let's start over with counting shall we." He reached into my intestines, pulling them out slowly to examine them. "One thousand." I almost vomited as he let my entrails lay out across an operation table next to me. "Nine hundred ninety three." He pushed my stomach upwards, causing me to throw up, bile dripping down the sides of my mouth. "How distasteful child." He said, looking at me with the rest of my intestines in his hands. I turned my head and spit out what bile was left in my mouth. "Nine hundred seventy two." He continued counting, becoming slightly more aggressive with each number. "It seems I have reached your predatory organ, or kagune." He lowered his head into the cavity that used to hold my intestines. "There seem to be more veins around it than any other organ, as if it were a tumor receiving food from your blood." He wrapped his hand around it as best as he could and squeezed. The pain that I felt could not be described. It was as if he was pinching every nerve in my body, making me numb but still able to feel pain.
"This is quite interesting indeed." His face was suddenly in front of mine. "Could it be that this is what makes a ghoul a ghoul? What if I were to extract this organ and prevent it from growing back?" He yanked on the sack of Rc cells attached to the base of my spine. The wave if excruciating pain filled my body again. I could not see or hear anything. The only sensation my body could give me was pain.
I suddenly found myself in an abyss. I was away from the pain, away from the evil doctor. I was at peace. I called out into the expanse of darkness, asking to talk to anyone, to see if I was dead. After a while, there was a response. A chilling voice, not unlike my own, but it housed a tone of insanity and cryptic pleasure.
"Do you really wish you were dead?" The voice echoed through the darkness. "Do you really wish it was all over?"
"Yes. Yes I do. I can't stand it anymore. The pain is too much!" I yelled out to the voice.
"But we are so young. Me, younger still. I do not want to die so early."
"I don't care. I can't take this anymore. I'm only nine, how am I supposed to deal with this."
"No, you are actually ten. You've been in the facility for a year, and you don't even know that."
"Nonsense. That can't be true." I started to get frustrated, I knew my own age, didn't I?
"You've been part of this system for little over a year. You were captured on your birthday, and you forgot about your parents' deaths. I have been keeping track of time, unlike you, who shut me out." I fell to the ground and wept. "It's okay though, I forgive you, since you were going through something so traumatic. But you really must pay more attention, unless you want me to get angry." Cold hands rested on either side of my face. I jumped away and looked at the creature they belonged to. He looked like me, but with pale white skin and scars all over his body. His fingers ended in sharp points like claws, and he smiled with jagged teeth. His eyes seemed to permanently be black and red, with red streaks running down his cheeks, and his hair was like a white rat's nest, as if he had never lived anywhere but the wilds.
"Who are you?" I asked him standing up in front of him. He smiled wider, showing off his fangs. There was a sound like liquid exiting his body as nine kagune grew out from behind him, exactly like mine.
"Just call me your personal ghoul." He said with glee as he rushed forward and enveloped me in darkness.