Hungry Boys

note: horror genre, mature themes

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There are always hungry boys for the hungry girls.

This one is called Silver, named after a horse in a book from the 70s. He has grey eyes and burned-blonde hair and his skin tastes like sunscreen and sweat.

It gets so hot in Melbourne I can almost feel my skin melting. It wouldn’t, though. That’s not true about us. We feel the heat, that’s all. Ice loves corpses. The sun, not so much.

So many things they don’t tell you, the ones who make you and the ones who make up stories about you. Like that years begin to spill like seconds. That they’ll never catch you — they’ll barely even try.

I once woke up with a possum pulling on the tendons of my ankle. I wear a reinforced boot on that foot now. The flesh doesn’t heal. It just isn’t there anymore.

Silver says he wants to die, but really he wants to pretend he’s about to die, that he won’t have to go back to his parents’ house, see the fresh burns on his father’s flesh or hear what his mother has to say about his grades. He wants to think that he won’t grow up bored and ordinary like everyone else. I can let him think that, and in return he makes me feel full, at least for a few hours.

I’m not going to kill him. He’ll find a job and move out and get a door he can shut to keep the world out, and he won’t need me anymore. It doesn’t matter. There will be others.

There always are, their eyes flicking across the pub floor or the dusty road side, looking for me.