Hatchlings

A teenage boy, around the age of seventeen, slowly opened his eyes to find himself inside a dark, dank place that he could not recognize. As he awoke, he could feel his body falling over as some slimy substance that he could not see slowed his descent. Once the boy was horizontal, the slimy tendrils holding him up snapped, causing him to slam face-first on the ground.

"Ugh..." the boy groaned, rubbing his head as he leaned up from the ground.

𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘱.

"Agh!" the boy then wailed in agony as he could feel his own brain beating against the inside of his skull. It felt as if his brain was trying to escape from within, but the walls of his cranium held it in place.

He looked back to see that he had just emerged from what looked to be some sort of strange incubator, one that appeared to be made completely out of some strange, black slime. "What the hell..." he thought to himself, peering at the grotesque contraption with his eyebrows bent and his jaw dropped.

𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘱.

"Agh! Fuck!" his brain pulsated again, this time more aggressive than the last as he held onto his head with both hands while sitting on his knees. The boy looked around, seeing that he wasn't the only one who was inside an incubator, in fact, there were hundreds of them scattered all around the seemingly abandoned building he was in, though he was the only one to escape.

Whether it be the floors, the walls, or the ceilings, they were littered with the slimy, black pods. Each pod had a sort of see-through film on them, showing the person within it.

Men.

Women.

Toddlers.

Elderly.

Weak.

Strong.

Anything in between.

It didn't matter to whoever or whatever placed them all inside these living coffins.

"What? Why did I wake up first?" the boy whispered to himself, continuing to scan the room until he noticed that his incubator was the only one that was directly under the sun's rays that poured in from a window. Like a chick who hatched too early, the boy found himself all alone with no way out.

Panicking, the boy frantically searched for an exit, however, they were all completely blocked off with the same black sludge that the incubators were made of. There was nowhere for him to escape.

He tried pulling on the mysterious black slime, but he wasn't strong enough. He used whatever tools he could find to try and cut through it, but his tools were far too weak.

It was all fruitless.

𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘱.

With his head still pulsating, the boy made his way back to his incubator that rested beneath the warm Sun and sat on the ground in front of it. He would soon find that his brain wasn't the only organ in his body that felt as if it were trying to withdraw from his body as his stomach began to growl aggressively.

He could feel it retracting and extending, growling and moaning as it begged for food. However, to the young man's horror, his brain was only asking that he consume one thing.

Humans.

Holding his crying stomach, the boy would occasionally glance at the people within the incubators, wondering what they'd taste like before snapping himself out of it. He felt disgusted with himself, he felt like a monster and he wondered if this had anything to do with the incubator's effect on his body.

"Oh God..." he muttered, realizing that if the incubator was the real reason why he hungered for human flesh so much, the others may also share his same yearning to devour man.

'What's going to happen?'

'Will it become a battle royale?'

'Will we eat each other?'

'What about everyone in the outside world?'

'Will it be a repeat of the Connors Incident?'

'Who put us here?'

'Why me?'

The boy thought to himself as he stared blankly at the ground, unsure as to what his next plan of action should be. The only thing he knew was that he was starving and there was only one type of food he could consume if he wanted that hunger to go away.

.

.

.

He sat in the same spot for hours, occasionally glancing up at a random incubator as the thoughts of filling his stomach began to consume him. 'No, I can't.' he would often think to himself, however, at the same time, he knew that he was capable.

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By the time it was evening, and the moonlight gently trickled into the abandoned building, the young man felt as if he were about to die of starvation. He couldn't take it anymore.

He approached one of the incubators and looked at the person inside through the translucent film at the front of it. The boy licked his lips, knowing that he could easily break through the film as it appeared much softer than the black slime surrounding it.

There was a middle-aged man inside, one that looked so average that the boy looking at him felt as if eating him would be the least problematic. The man must have lived a decent life due to his attire and good looks. The boy thought that killing him would be better than harming a lady, a child, or an elderly.

Besides, a man as healthy as the one in the incubator probably tasted fantastic.

Using his discolored finger, the boy poked at the incubator, rupturing it and causing a pool of clear liquid to spill from the inside of it. Almost immediately, the man inside opened his eyes, only to be met by the hungry boy who set him free.

However, the hungry boy did not pounce on the man, he just glared at him, holding back his gluttony. It wasn't that he didn't want to devour the man, it was that he couldn't. Despite having changed due to however long he was inside the incubator, the boy was still mostly human.

The man fell to his knees and began breathing sporadically just as the boy was when he first rose from his coffin.

𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘱.

"Agh!" the man bellowed as his brain pulsated, just as the boy's did.

"It hurts, huh?" the boy asked the man, kneeling down in front of him with a pained expression. "It'll hurt less in a few hours, or maybe you'll just get so used to it, you start to ignore the pain..."

The man who just woke up was confused, he couldn't comprehend anything that his eyes were sending to his brain. The incubators, the strange slime, the discolored boy in front of him... it was horrifying.

"What? Where am I?" the man asked the boy, getting a chuckle as a response.

"Hell if I know... I'm just as lost as you."

"Are we the only ones that are awake?" the man asked, looking around at all of the pods containing a slumbering being within them.

"Yes. It was just me for pretty much a whole day until I woke you up."

"Why did you wake me?" the man questioned, looking at the boy with a puzzled look on his face.

"Because I was hungry." the boy answered plainly, causing the man's eyes to widen as he reeled back.

"Are you gonna eat me?" the man was horrified as he asked this, however, the boy eased his worries fairly quickly with his response. "Not anymore. Despite how hungry I am, I don't think I could eat a person."

Just as those words left the boy's mouth, the man's stomach began to growl. He too could feel the hunger for human flesh. "You can eat me if you want." the boy told him, feeling as if he no longer served a purpose. He knew that only human flesh would satiate the new body he found himself in, so there would be no point in living.

"What? No I- I can't eat a person." the man responded, despite his brain and stomach screaming at him to eat the boy in front of him. He could easily overpower and consume him like a lion slaughtering a zebra, but he was against it.

"I see. Well, I guess we can wait and see what happens when someone is fully cooked in one of those things, huh? I'm sort of curious about it." the boy said with a blank expression on his face. "I wonder if since we're underdeveloped, we maintained our humanity or something. I wonder if those guys will come out like mindless monsters..."

"Well, shouldn't we break them free?" the man asked him, however, the boy shook his head.

"I've been up all day thinking about it, feeling the agonizing pain, the fear, and the feelings of hopelessness... I wouldn't wish that on anyone. If they do become mindless, it would be as if they aren't even alive to feel the pain, right?" the boy spoke his side of the moral dilemma, however, the man had a different point of view.

'Well... we can put them all out of their misery. I don't know... stab them in the hearts in their sleep or something." the man saying this triggered the boy to laugh a little. This was something he thought of too.

"I tried killing myself already. You know, my heart has stopped beating for a while now, a couple of hours. Yet, I'm still here. I can feel my body aching a million times more as time passes, I think maybe now that my heart isn't functioning, whatever happened to me is working overtime to keep me alive."

"So you're saying we can't die?" the man asked the boy. This was all crazy to him, hearing a high schooler talking about such a thing, but it was all too real.

"Not unless we starve and whatever is keeping us alive no longer has any nutrients to live off of. At least, that's just my theory." the boy said quietly, walking back over to his pod before sitting down. The room was starting to become pitch black, shrouding both men in darkness. "So you can eat me if you want to live on. I've decided that I choose death by starvation."

The man stared at the boy for a few seconds, he didn't fully understand what the boy was saying, he could tell that he was extremely advanced for his age. It pained him to see such a bright young man in so much agony, a young man with no more will to live. However, he too had made his choice.

"I'm not interested in eating you for the time being... I hope that doesn't change." the man said, leaning up and sitting with his legs crossed in front of the boy. "So what now? We just wait till these eggs hatch and eat us both?" the man asked.

"Yeah, seems so."

"I see..."

"Yeah."

"What's your name?"

"Kyle, you?"

"Marcus."

"Nice to meet you, Marcus."

"Nice to meet you too, Kyle."

"How old are you?"

"I'm seventeen, you?"

"Thirty-eight. I'd have been thirty-nine next month."

"I see... well, Happy Early Birthday."

"Thanks..."

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"Did you have any plans for after high school?"

"Yeah, I wanted to go to college, and get a doctorate. I wanted to save lives... My dad is a doctor and my mom is a nurse so I guess it was ingrained in me."

"You would've been a great doctor I bet."

"Yeah, I think so too. What about you? Did you have any future plans?"

"I did. I wanted to take my wife and son to see the world. I was planning a summer trip for all of us, I was going to surprise them this month. Guess those plane seats will be empty, huh?"

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"What's your son's name?"

"Brandon."

"He into any sports or anything like that?"

"Yeah. He loves baseball. He's the starting pitcher for his team. He has quite the arm on him."

"I used to love baseball... didn't really have the time to join the team though. I was too focused on my studies... I didn't really get to do much because of it, really."

"Do you regret it?"

"I didn't before, but now I do. I wish I had more of a life."

"I understand. I regret a lot of things in my past. I was also too caught up with studying back in high school. I uh... I lost my best friend at the time. He died in a car accident. He was too drunk to drive, he called me and asked me to come to get him, but I had an exam the next morning. I figured he'd somehow convinced me to drink with him so I told him no and went back to studying... I regret not picking him up."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Yeah."

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"You know... there was this girl I met a few years ago in one of my classes. She was the one, I know it. I still believe it. I was in love with her for so long, but I was too afraid to say anything and I also knew I didn't have time for a girlfriend. She switched schools and I regretted not telling her how I feel ever since. I tried to find her socials but I guess she doesn't have any. None that I can find."

"Maybe in another life?"

"Yeah, maybe."

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.

.

"You good over there, man? Haven't really said anything in a while."

"Kyle?"

"Hey."

"Kyle."

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.

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"The sun's up... guess I fell asleep..."

"Oh... there you are..."

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"Looks like everyone's waking up. I guess I'll be joining you soon."

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"Looks like you were right about what happens when they wake up."