A Feast of Fear

On a withered street by the name of Brooke's Karr, a little boy went missing after sundown. The boy's name was uttered from mouth to mouth, heard by every ear that would pay it mind, but in the streets of old Town life was cruel. People were forgotten. His single-mother ended up a beggar on those very cobblestones. After Kylin's disappearance she dedicated every waking moment to locate her son, eventually, she was fired from the gambling Den she'd worked at. She lost the small apartment, ending up in a rental room and even that she forfeited because she wouldn't do anything besides wander the darken corners, the grim docks or even the industrial spot. Jill would cough; the hackling grew worse with her stay in the horrid cold, enough that one day people scurried away as a splotch of dark red streamed from her ashen lips.

Jill was never a stocky woman, just the opposite. She had little in the way of food, scraps old neighbours would bestow upon her, even they ceased nearing her once it became obvious she had contracted some sort of decease. Maybe there were rumours circulating about her murdering her child. The despair on her shoulders couldn't amount to simple grieve, could it? A shroud of guilt was the gossip twirling in the wind.

Jill cried until she couldn't make out the world. On the ninth night of Kylin's disappearance, she jolted awake. Normally, the abrasive cold would have been to blame or even the pelting rain, but... Jill thought her vision had been stripped away, replaced with a sweet delusion that her son was here.

"Mother," the shape of her son spoke. His voice calm, smooth. Jill couldn't recognize the soft, sweet child-like embrace it should still carry.

"K-Kylin?" she was stunned by the rustiness of her voice. These days she spoke little, either because she had little to say and also to avoid the sharp pain radiating from the middle of her throat. There was a lump on the inside, but no matter how hard Jill coughed, it wouldn't upend its roots.

The shape became a bit clearer. She saw the head nod.

"How... Your v-voice..." Jill struggled to lift her failing body from the damp, smelly alleyway she'd been dozing in. She stumbled forward, her bare sole, blistered and bruised slipping. Hands steadied her. They kept her standing. "How...?"

Her son—her ten-year-old boy was taller. Much more than she. Jill stared wordlessly at Kylin as his features became more apparent, the scratching in her eyes subsiding.

"Look at what's happened to you, mother. You're ill." this wasn't the voice of a boy. This was the voice of a young man. Just as the shape of his face; the baby-fat was no more, his cheeks were no longer plump but smooth, wider, his nose crooked as if it had healed without being set correctly after it broke. Kylin's eyes were the only thing untouched: green with speckles of gold that she could spot even the twinkling street light. "I wish you hadn't troubled yourself. I was alright. She took good care of me."

"She? You were—you were taken?" she'd had her doubts. Sometimes the crippling fear that her baby had died underwater assaulted her. Kylin's father had been a merchant with his office near the docks, that's why he'd loved playing there from dawn 'till dusk. Despite her frivolous warnings.

"Yes, she was very kind and generous."

"Generous?" Jill spat. "Someone took you from me..." a cough tore through her leaving her a shaking mess in her son's arms. Without a word, she was tilted backwards, forced to stare at the face of a familiar stranger.

"She made me new, mother." he whispered, not unkindly as he held her shoulders in a vice grip. A smile that showed teeth stretched across Kylin's face. Those teeth were anything but human; elongated, sharp and dainty each of them. Jill couldn't comprehend how they fit inside his mouth, how he didn't cut the skin of his lips while speaking. "But I have to prove myself to her. She is all that matters now. I hope you will understand." Jill's hackling eased but Kylin's strength did not, if anything it became tighter, a suffocating weight compressing her from all sides.

Jill drew a shred of breath drinking in fear in its stead. She was horrified by the sudden change her lost son showed, his face became darker than anything she could explain, but not so much that she couldn't make out the shiny hue of it. His eye colour was a deceit, a lie to lure her into a false sense of security. In the arms of this thing—a thing that used to be her son—she found only pain. So excruciating that Jill wondered if her heart would give out before whatever this was ended.

"Fear..." Kylin's deep voice breathed across the nape of her neck. "Is an exquisite taste only appreciated by those she makes. Our Queen, the Lady of Shadows." Jill didn't understand what babbling Kylin was going on about.

Suddenly she was squirming for freedom, like a herring fighting to get free of net. Jill's flopping gave away to a sharp scream as her back gave in from the pressure of Kylin's embrace. She wasn't made aware that she could no longer move her lower limbs, the last thing she saw was Kylin's monstrous mouth open to a degree inhumanly possible, where his jaws should've broken apart.

Jill thought he would tear into her flesh. Instead, he poised his mouth above her face. The change was instant. Her body had been weighing her for weeks, yet, now, it felt like there was nothing tethering her. She was a feather. She felt less and less, saw and heard less. Until she was nothing but a shrivelled corpse in Kylin's arms.

With a howl, Kylin allowed the woman's body to fall on the rank ground. He'd despised each second near her. She had a foul smell. The Dark Queen had warned him that the human world wouldn't be the same as before, but he suspected she'd stunk especially bad because her clothes, skin and hair had been coated in dirt.

Be that as it may, his quest was complete and a thrilling success it had been. Surely his Lady would be pleased to no end. He would climb through her ranks and her Court. This husk's soul was a mere trinket to pay. Without a guilty bone in his body, he turned away from the foolish human who had waited for him.

He whistled a low, sweet melody through the night.