Streets and roads were flooded with people at lunchtime, as he had come to learn rather quickly. Nobody paid him any mind, thankfully. Ever since he'd first arrived in the city a few days ago he'd been drawing stares thanks to his weird clothes and strange hair color.
Apparently men weren't supposed to wear long flowing robes and have stark white hair in this city.
Ayatan pushed his way into a storefront, his eyes dull and full of resignation as he made his way over to the bargain section of the store. He checked his pockets and sighed again as they remained empty of miracle money appearing in his pocket.
He looked at the door as it opened, his own appearance as foreign to him as it was when he'd first woken up two weeks ago. That'd been a very hard day. No self-recognition, no memory, and no knowledge of how to exist in society. Society, thankfully, had taught him rather brutally and quickly how to do that.
He finished his trip over the store's threshold and fully entered the wonderful gift of air-conditioning. The sun was blazing in the sky above without a cloud in sight, so any respite from it was welcome.
He sniffed the delightful smells of meat samples and fresh fruit being offered throughout the store, his stomach grumbling in protest at not being offered any of them. Several times now he'd tried stealing from various stores, but each time a small voice in the back of his mind had stopped him. These days he mostly entered a grocery store to torture himself.
He followed his nose to the produce department first, his mouth watering as he looked at the wide array of glistening fruits. He could feel his fingers twitching towards them, and grunted as he looked the other way and forced himself to leave the store.
"Sorry." he muttered as he looked down at his emaciated stomach. "No good food today. More dumpster diving for us."
He supposed that it wasn't all bad. Sometimes he'd get lucky and find some great food in a dumpster! People threw away all kinds of delightful treats. Especially at restaurants. He shuffled out of the store with only a few sideways glances cast his way, and disappeared into a crowd of people walking by.
His bright green eyes scanned the area, looking for good alleyways to scrounge food from. He mostly looked for restaurant side alleys and cafe trash bins. Quickly his eyes were drawn into a rather clean side street, and he ducked across the busy road with little to no incident.
"Watch it you moron!" someone roared out of their window as he hunched his way across the street. Several cars had to swerve to avoid the slowed car and yelling driver; Ayatan cringed as he jogged towards the side street.
His bare feet padded on the harsh asphalt and cement light and fleet, his pace quickly bringing him into the safety between two skyscrapers. He sighed as he sat down against the much cooler pavement, his back resting against a deep blue dumpster. Strangely enough, the entire alley didn't smell like rot and death. Instead there was a faint floral scent wafting through it.
His eyebrows furrowed as he attempted to find the source of the scent, first smelling the dumpster he was resting against. He'd expected to be forced to recoil from whatever was inside it, but he instead was surprised with a pristine interior and perfectly tied trash bags.
His eyebrow rose in confusion as he looked at several other trash bins in the alley to find them all in a much similar condition. He stood to his full(frankly small) height and walked down the alley, inspecting cans and dumpsters alike, each and every one of them as pristine as the last one.
Ayatan heaved one of the bags from a dumpster about halfway down the alley, tearing it open on the pavement beneath him. Beautiful fragrances and exotic dishes spilled out from the bag, coating the street in a lustrous sheen of delightful remains. He stared at the bounty beneath him and felt a strange tightening in his chest.
HIs vision got murky as he continued to stare at the beautiful contents of the bag before him, his mouth watering as he picked up a half-eaten fruit. Its internals were a bright golden yellow with a delightful red exterior. A broken plate made from a material he couldn't even identify rested on the concrete.
The amount of money he imagined was probably spent on this stuff was insane. Why was this kind of thing not in a fancier part of town?
Pushing that thought aside, he carefully pocketed several expensive-looking things and picked up the golden fruit, taking a bite out of it. His tongue could barely process the flavor because of how fast he down the entire fruit. Very quickly there was nothing left save for the massive seed in the middle.
He sat down in the corridor between buildings and happily munched on the food he'd obtained from the precious bag, memorizing its location so he could always come here for food. Quickly, though, he realized a problem. He'd simply torn open the bag with no regard for the stains it would leave on the ground. Beneath him the concrete had already taken on a bit of a light yellow tint.
"Shit." he muttered. He quickly gathered everything up back into the bag and tossed it into the dumpster, praying that whoever filled these bins would simply clean the ground and not think any more of it besides maybe a stray raccoon.
"'Shit' is right."
Ayatan wheeled around so fast he nearly fell over, scrambling away from the person who'd just snuck up on him.
He was tall, unbelievably so, and rippling with muscle. A bemused smile was drawn across his lips and wrinkling his eyes, a good-natured temperament emanating from his posture.
"You hungry?" he continued as Ayatan scrabbled away. "We've got plenty of food inside, and the whole lot of it is better than what you're eating out here."
Having placed what he felt was a safe distance between himself and this man, Ayatan continued to stare at him in fear. The man simply chuckled and his smile turned into a pleased smirk.
"I know you can talk, so why don't you try that out instead of looking at me like some kind of deranged animal."
Ayatan stared for a moment more, taking in the also frighteningly handsome appearance of the man. Broad and chiseled, everything about him screamed power.
"Uh…" he droned as he tried to think of what to say. "Sure?" The man barked a singular laugh and gestured towards one of the doors.
"Great," he replied. "I'm Retea, by the way. What's your name?" a meaty hand rose to shake Ayatan's in greeting. He reached out and shook it tentatively, a smooth hand and firm grip surrounding his hand.
"I'm Ayatan." he introduced himself. "Thanks."
Retea's eyebrow rose as Ayatan introduced himself, though it quickly fell back into the amiable air the man had about him. Retea clapped his hand together as their handshake ended, a loud 'pop' sounding throughout the alley.
"Well, now that introductions are over and niceties are out of the way, how about you follow me? We can go get that food you're looking for." Retea gestured out of the alley toward the main road.
"Can't we just go in the side door?" Ayatan asked as they began to leave the side road. "No reason to make you look weird for bringing in a street bum into a fancy place like that." Retea just waved a hand to brush off the comment.
"Nonsense. We're not going in there." He sounded almost insulted by the insinuation. "We're going somewhere way better for food."
Alarm bells were going off in Ayatan's head, but his desire for food overrode them. If this man was promising something more delicious than what he'd just had, then who was he to argue?
"Follow me." Retea then started walking down the road after exiting the corridor, the loud rumble of cars and thunder of pedestrians once again drowning out anything else. Ayatan gladly followed behind him, Retea's massive size cutting a path through the crowd of people.
Even if the man weren't imposingly tall, he wouldn't have been hard to follow in a group. Long, flowing black hair helped him stand out easily. They made their way across many streets, through side alleys and cutting across parking garages. People yelled at Ayatan whenever Retea ignored street laws, though they quickly backed off when the larger man glared at them.
They spent several hours simply making their way across the city, large skyscrapers and ritzy apartments giving way to monotone warehouses and massive storage buildings. It got to the point where even Ayatan's feet were starting to hurt from how much walking they were doing, and he spent pretty much every day doing nothing but walking. It got to the point where the sun had set.
"So, how long until we get to wherever we're going?" Ayatan eventually asked as Retea made his way around another storehouse corner.
"Not long." The burly man's voice resounded from the other side of the building. "We like to keep this place hidden so the stuck-up humans don't come around here and raise suspicion."
Humans?
Ayatan rounded the corner and discovered why such odd terminology was used.
Whatever shape Retea had before was now gone, in his place was a revolting mass of splitting flesh and mutating bones.
"Sorry for the appearance." Retea's frighteningly human voice came from the vile amalgam. "Normally I can change shape faster than this. I'm a bit starved, though, so I hope you understand."
Ayatan yelped and fell backwards, once again scrambling away from Retea.
"What the hell are you?" he screamed. The shape began to coalesce into something more definable besides 'fleshy blob.' Orbs of skin shrank and elongated into long, clawed arms. Bone outcroppings sharpened into razor spikes sticking out of every inch of bare skin possible. His once-human teeth had been replaced with sawblade-like appendages extending from his jaws.
The six spider legs that had formed as the body finished developing certainly didn't help the appearance of whatever this was either.
"Oh," Retea's voice turned to a paradoxically deep shrill. "Haven't you figured it out yet?" his eyes appeared, deep and sunken into a skull composed mostly of bone and sinew. A pair of mirrors were now in their place, and as Ayatan stared into them it made sense.
"Eater." he muttered as his own stupidity dawned on him. He should've known better than to follow a strange man promising a homeless person good food. Not to mention he should've guessed bad intentions from the strange name.
Oh well, the problems with only having a couple weeks' worth of memory were many. Apparently this was one of them.
"See, you could detect The Garden." Eater's voice shifted now to a grunt as one of his thick legs cracked the concrete underneath him. "And any human who can do that is worth a bit of extra effort to kill. Not to mention you're all tired now, so killing me is out of the question."
The Garden?
Ayatan continued to back away from Eater, the ten-foot-tall monstrosity clacking forward on its six legs. Muscles bulged from monkey-like arms as they finished developing, though the claws unfortunately didn't disappear. A pair of insect wings exploded from the torso with a disgusting squelch.
Finally, Ayatan's reflexes kicked in. He spun on his heel and started sprinting as fast as he could, completely ignoring his protesting heels as his lungs heaved to supply his body with air. Eater roared with laughter behind him, the buildings around him shaking from the volume.
"Oh, I do love a good chase!" the monster sprang to life, the distance between itself and Ayatan closing at speeds befitting a monster like itself. Ayatan had barely rounded another corner by the time it had caught up to him. A hand as large as his torso slammed into Ayatan's side, sending him flying into a building.
The first strike alone had created a sickening 'crunch', but when Ayatan slapped into the side of the warehouse, a far more disconcerting 'snap' came from his ribs. He tried to cry in pain, but there was no air in his lungs to do so.
"Mmmm, so much for a chase." Eater snarled as he hovered over Ayatan. A clawed hand descended and wrapped around his throat, hoisting his body like a paper bag. "Ah well. Chow time!" His jaws opened impossibly wide and Ayatan's vision began to fade.
Unable to speak or struggle, Ayatan's last moments of consciousness were filled with brilliant purple and a roar of agony.
:)
Here y'all go! First piece of my existence's proof in a while.
I'm pretty sure that was english, but honestly I spent too much effort making sure everything above this was english. And I'm like 90% sure I still missed a whole bunch of stuff. That aside, though, hope you all liked it! More to come in the future!
Please review, I need those like an addict needs his fix.