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NOTE: These stories are
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Blood Brothers
A "Vorare" story
By
Ivan Ewert
Start at the beginning of the Vorare series

The rain fell steadily on the metal roof of their prison, a percussive beat they had grown to recognize as well as the sound of their own breath. They sat tailor-style, watching the door with eyes that spoke of fire in a dry summer. Paul would come today. They knew without knowing how, the song of one another's flesh tuning them into the rhythm of the Farm.

"Was it like this before?" Gordon's voice barely rose above the rhythm of the rain. "I wasn't around others when I first ate. Does the blood always sing when they draw near?"

"I've never heard it," said George. "That doesn't mean it wasn't there. Quiet now, so quiet. Remember. Remember their death and the dream."

They heard the squeak of the gate, tearing through the delicate harmonies which had built in their communion, heard the flight of the swine ripping the rain's melody into bite-sized shreds. They sat, watching the door with the terrible eyes of the long-suffering prisoner.

Paul opened the door and stopped short, the tin plate in his left hand threatening to spill its cargo of vegetables into the muck of the pen without. His eyes had been prepared for bones, for blood, for the torn and frayed edges of a cooling corpse and a smeared, hag-ridden ghoul above it ? but not the sight of two living men, their ribs pressing insistently against parchment-pale flesh, their eyes speaking of storms that brought no rain. When he spoke, he licked his lips, unable to hide his surprise.

"What's happened here?"

Gordon knew that surprise. He smelled it on the breeze from the doorway, and he closed those wild eyes to drink it in deeply, to let the first breeze of autumn wash over his face. To savor the scent of a ghoul taken off his stride. Neither he nor George spoke, George's own eyes still locked with Paul's own.

"I asked a question, boys." Nervous now, no longer simply surprised. His eyes left George's to cast around the walls, to look for signs of anything that might have kept both men alive. "You best answer if you want to ... eat."

Both smiled in union, Gordon's eyes now open, clear and bright, as Paul's slipped into doubt and shadow. He realized the emptiness of the threat ? how pathetic it must seem to men who did not hunger. When next he spoke, he spoke flatly. "Someone's been feeding you boys."

"Yes," said Gordon, the thin smile on his lips spreading to his eyes. "Someone has."

Paul lifted his chin, sniffing at the air with a grimace. Gordon had never noticed the weakness of that chin before, how easily it was lost beneath the man's overbite. He watched suspicion and anger play across those thick, gruesome lips, and he wondered at the fact that he had ever feared such a man.

"You're going to tell me who's been feeding you." When they remained silent, he bared his teeth. "You hear? I said, you are going to tell me who's been feeding you."

Gordon let his lips part, a laugh that was more simple exhalation escaping from the thin smile. "Or you won't feed us?"

Paul's face twisted, and with a quick step forward he hurled the tin plate at Gordon's head. Gordon did not dodge. He did not move as he watched the vegetables arc across the room like the tail of a shining comet, green beans and bright carrots, pale potatoes and thumb-sized radishes, all of them spilling onto the concrete floor moments before the plate sailed true to strike his cheekbone. His eyes remained open throughout, and he did not flinch.

"Look, George. Side dishes."

Paul's breath came through his teeth now, an angry bull's panting as he blocked the exit neither prisoner seemed interested in. They sat, thin lines of watery gravy now trickling down the side of Gordon's face to land on his shoulder and chest ? sat, and watched as Paul visibly brought himself under control.

"I will find out," he promised. "And when I know who's been bringing you food, do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to bring you both another platter, five feet tall, and steaming with the scent of your savior and salvation. I'll make it a field trip for the children, and you can hear and smell us as we make a picnic lunch of the faithless bastard who's tried to undermine me. You hear? I'll toss the waste bits to the swine and the children will laugh to watch the hands that fed you two trampled under their hooves, as those hands that betrayed the Farm burst into mud and blood and pigshit."

They said nothing, but the smiles carefully vanished from their faces. Paul's returned at the sight. "Now careful. Slide that plate back over here."

They did not move ? only stared with a hatred as cool as it was quiet. Paul was caught. He could either leave the plate in their cell, a tool that could be used for God knows what, or move in between the two of them to retrieve it. Gordon left him dangling on that line for several breaths before reaching slowly forward to take up the plate, then skimming it across the floor like a child would skip a stone.

Paul nodded. "That's better. Maybe for that I'll leave your friend's ears as a holiday treat for the two of you." He took up the plate and stepped back, never turning from them, closing the door and rattling the chains as he locked them back inside.

George held up a finger, and Gordon nodded. The two passed an hour in that same utter silence until they were certain the gate was closed, and heard the bulk of a boar rubbing himself against the chains of their door. Paul was gone. They were once again alone.

"He means it."

"Good." George nodded. "Let them wonder about each other. It's past time they do. Why'd you toss the plate back?"

"He's simple but not dumb. He'd have seen our hands, and the game would be up." It was true. The white-ridged moonscapes that remained of their fingers had been stripped down to a thin, blushing layer of skin over muscle, to the point where placing their hands on any surface was a painful reminder of what they must continue to endure. Each digit had birthed a dozen bloody mouths or more in the name of sustaining one another's life.

"We have the vegetables, at least."

"We'll eat soon." Gordon was standing now, extending one ruined hand to his fellow-prisoner despite the pain each clasp caused them. "Come on. One pea every foot along the breezeway."

"What?"

"Birds. They're around, and the rain will drive them toward the rafters if we can set the bait properly. We'll do it on all sides, and if we're quick enough we'll have meat enough to let us spare our hands a while. You understand?"

"Perfect."

They took turns, one lifting the other into the air, hands throbbing with the effort of supporting the other's feet while they stood and delicately arranged the peas along the wall. Gordon laughed to himself every time the pain shot through his palms, watching the green sentries they arranged and calling to mind the fairy tales his mother would spin as he tried to sleep, back in a better world. Peas hidden beneath mattresses, lines of bread crumbs leading to the witches' oven, tiny birds warning the little prince of what existed within the forests of the night. He laughed, even as the skin tore away from his left hand and the blood pooled beneath George's foot.

"Gordon."

"It's all right."

"Gordon. Sit, we have enough bait. The birds won't come a while. Not in the rain. Sit down and hold that hand under your armpit. I'll get the shirts."

They wrapped their hands in what remained of their shirts every night before going to sleep, both to ease the dull and constant pain and to keep themselves from gnawing as they dreamt. It had happened to Gordon already, waking to the iron taste of blood in his mouth after he had stripped away more flesh without even knowing that he was tearing at himself. The dream had been of a great ocean and a ship the color of night...

"Sit." George wrapped the hand softly, tying the sleeves together to hold it at the wrist, the deep red stain of Gordon's blood slowly spidering its way across the fiber and fabric.

"Can we eat now? The food. The vegetables. I've forgotten how beans feel in your mouth."

"I remember. They're crisp, and cool, and they taste of green and sunlight." George took one up and reverently put it to Gordon's mouth. "Eat. You're hurt."

"It's not so bad. In a way my skin feels better now that it's truly broken. Like the soreness in your muscles after a long jog under a September sun." Still, he took the bean between his teeth and lifted his good left hand to his lips. With a sharp snap that cut through the dull percussion of the rain, Gordon tasted the rich soil-cradle of a bean.

"It's good, George." The corners of his eyes suddenly sprang into focus, tears forming from the overwhelming joy that the good green food provided him. "Oh, God, George. It's delicious."

"If you insist, I'll have one."

"Eat. We'll eat. Let's save some, though. For when we have our bird."

It was too much to ask. Slow but unstoppable as the seasons, they devoured them all: the carrots, bright as the sun beneath thick black soil; the radish-moons peeled like the prisoners' own thumbs, white and pink and angry red; the softly snapping song of the potatoes, half-raw and full of the white root-milk of their kind. The food was gone, save only the tiny green satellites they had set into orbit around the walls of their quiet, cool, rain-rhythm world of hate and hunger.

Story and image by Ivan Ewert, Copyright 2006