DRABBLE CHALLENGE 2024: DAY 3 / UNHEALTHY Stella Wachter Eats A Rat.

DRABBLE CHALLENGE 2024: DAY 3 / UNHEALTHY Stella Wachter eats a rat.

Stella could no longer take it. 

The rat squirmed against her fingers as she pinned it to the floor. Dirt and debris shed off its fur, no doubt from the attic above her room where it was so loudly skittering around. It was curious, Stella was sure, for her mother had taken great pains to isolate her room in particular from the outside world--part safety, part shame, part real desperation for her condition--and it must have noticed the oddness of it all. Strange meows from a room within the house of the oh-powerful Fiona Wachter that appeared to have no door or windows to the outside? Of course it would take notice. Of course the Devil would care. 

Normally, Stella could steer herself away from these sort of harmful distractions, but the skittering. The squeaking. The cat in her body remained awake at night, tip-toeing on the corner of her bed where it could reach the ceiling and claw at the boards with its blunted, human fingernails. Exhaustion seeped into the sanctuary of her broken mind. 

The best Stella could do was stop her body from eating it--her disgust was enough for at least that--but the hunt that preceded it? Her mouth closing around its dusty, fuzzy body? The crunch of grit between her teeth and snap of bones in her ears? The hot blood on her tongue and the alien silence that followed? 

There was a dull thud as Stella forced her jaws open and the now dead rat tumbled out. She could pray to whatever gods still listened that her mother would not notice, but the irony of her condition was that her mother always seemed to notice the things she wanted to hide away the most. 

In the dark, Stella could see its broken silhouette. Part of her was grateful her mind could retreat to a place where the senses posed no threat. 

I’m so sorry mother.

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