Duck, Duck, the Goose is Dead
General Summary
Most people who fall from the heavens do so on purpose. At least, in the old world they did. They would take big winged machines and leap from them for sport. Some would even do flips and tricks before letting the wind catch their floaty backpacks. Kory, unfortunately, did not live in the old world, and was very much confused as to why she was hurtling towards the Earth with alarming speed.
Rushing air forced its way into her nose and past her ears. Her lips wiggled in all directions, pulled by the strength of the wind, and saliva trickled its way over her cheeks. Her eyes bore into the land below her, still approaching quickly. Suddenly a patch of dense green came into view beneath her. Kory had never seen anything like it before, but she could recall Momma talking about tall poles with even smaller poles sticking out of it, and the entire structure was alive.
She braced as she finally arrived at these bizarre objects. The vertical poles gave way as she tossed and turned through layers of them faster than she could process. Kory’s small body tumbled to the ground and into a fluffy ball with the same color as the tall poles. White hot pain shot through her left arm and into her shoulder, but she couldn’t make a sound. A pathetic, muffled gasp came from her mouth, but no air with it. She took one breath in, one breath out, one breath in, one breath out. And then let out a shriek.
---
Her bare feet were stained a repulsive shade of brown from the soft terrain. She shielded her eyes and looked towards, what had Momma called it? The “Sun”? Kory yearned so desperately to be able to ask her, but she had no inkling where Momma might have been. She knew, at least, that this was Earth. It was a place she heard of in the fairy tales Momma read to help her sleep, but thought was surely a myth. She focused back on the light above her. It was in a different place from when she lugged her injured body off of the ground and began walking.
As she wandered, unsure what to do now or where to go, she thought back to those stories Momma had told her and tried to remember the names of these foreign objects. The poles were “trees”, she had landed in a “bush”, and fell from the…”fry”? No, that didn’t seem right. As she pondered this last word, her attention was stolen by a new sensation in the pit of her belly. It was uncomfortable, and almost lustful.
---
The Sun was low in the pie now, and this feeling still hadn’t left Kory. The drive to satisfy the craving was intense, but how to appease it still confounded her. Just as she was about to give up and take a nap under a tree, she exited the foliage and arrived at a clearing. It would be a rather unremarkable and empty clearing, were it not for a lone man kneeling several paces away. He was bringing something to his mouth from the ground, glee spreading across his face each repetition. Sinking his teeth into his prize with a gratifying squelch caused juice to spatter, most of it landing on his face. Not that he seemed to mind.
Kory let the scent waft its way into her nostrils, expecting a sweet smell to accompany the bright colored filling of his “meal” (she gave a small smirk, proud of herself for remembering another word). Instead, her nose felt violated with the acrid odor it emitted. She reeled as she looked next to the man’s knee and saw a human face, frozen in terror. He looked to be middle age, but it was difficult to tell. His left eyeball was missing, and the other one rolled around in its socket as the body was jostled. The savage had ripped off a cheek as well, exposing the man’s bony jaw and ripping his mouth so that it extended to his ear.
After a stunned moment of silence, the cold-blooded lunatic rose from the ground and began to turn in Kory’s direction. Thinking on her feet, she darted into a nearby bush before the man had finished his rotation. He let out a snarl and lumbered towards the trees, one painstakingly slow and heavy stomp at a time. The shrub tickled her arms and legs but Kory refused to move even an inch, holding her breath with enough tension to nearly hurt her chest. Tears of fear blurred her vision but she dared not wipe them away, rapidly blinking to force them to drip from her eyes.
She almost had a clean getaway. Almost.
A barely audible whimper came from another bush just a few feet away. However, it was just audible enough for the barbarian, and he whipped around to face its source. He stared, first at the other bush, and then at Kory’s. She was still as a statue as they seemingly locked eyes. This was the first chance she had to actually see the man’s face from the front - it was heavily wrinkled, and his facial features looked compressed. An unsightly mole adorned his flat nose, and his cracked lips were outlined with crimson and perhaps a layer of magenta. Kory didn’t have time to dwell on the shade of the brute’s mouth, she had a more pressing issue. Should she stay put and cross her fingers, or choose a direction and make a mad dash for her life?
She decided to wait. And wait. And so did the man, madness in his cold, blue eyes.
Just as Kory started to lose hope of escape, the man huffed and shook his head in dissatisfaction. He turned his back again to the bushes, and meandered into the woods. She made sure that he was truly gone this time before rising from her cover. On any normal day, she would have explored the neighboring bush to find the source of the noise. Today, though, she learned in the most terrible way what eating is, and wanted - no, needed - food.
She rushed to the corpse and collapsed to her knees in front of it. It took all of her willpower to block out the putrid stench and keep herself from gagging. Up close, she could see claw and tooth marks scattered across the body, remnants of the savagery she bore witness to just moments ago. His right ear was hanging on desperately to his mutilated head by a strand of pink, stringy flesh.
A small tug was all that was required to peel it from its body. She brought the flesh to her lips, and was surprised to find it was warm to the touch. Kory wondered if he had been alive as the man ate him, and for how long. She widened her mouth, raised what would be her first meal to it, and promptly vomited.
Her projectile puke landed squarely on the body’s white coat. It was unfortunate that she ruined one of the only parts of him the maniac left alone, but she also had an epiphany. Kory brought her teeth to the sleeve of his once pristine jacket, and tugged with all her might. She only managed to rip off a little of the fabric, but it was enough. She couldn’t describe the taste even if she wanted to - she has never eaten anything else to compare it to. It was tough in her mouth, but not unpleasant, so she kept working at the sleeve until the corpse’s arm was completely exposed.
She only roused from feeding by the shuffling of footsteps behind her. A patch of fabric still hung from Kory’s mouth as she jumped up, fearing the fiend from before had returned for round two. Instead, a boy stood, mouth agape. He looked to be about ten or eleven years old, roughly double Kory’s age. His clothes were stained green, almost matching the camouflage cap that covered his dirty blonde hair. He didn’t seem dangerous, only frightened. She finished chewing.
---
Kory sprinted through the forest, dodging trees left and right. Her breathing was heavy, but she knew she couldn’t give up. Just a little longer and she’d be okay. Her safe spot was in sight now, only a few more seconds and - she felt a hand on her shoulder. It stung, but she giggled in hysterics anyway. “Got you!” the boy exclaimed. They had spent several Sun cycles together by this point. Kory was slowly learning about him: his name was Andy, and he had been travelling with his father to study the people eaters he called Purple Mouths. Kory had an idea who the corpse they encountered before belonged to but decided not to ask, an uncharacteristic move for the otherwise impulsive young girl. Now, he was teaching her a new game.
“Tch, what’s this game called again?” Kory asked, trying to calm down.
“Duck, Duck, Goose,” Andy replied between laughs. He kept snorting involuntarily, something that made Kory cackle even more. They both took a moment to relax.
“Tch, what’s a goose?” she inquired, finally breaking the silence. Andy’s fair face lit up.
“That’s my favorite animal! Wanna see one?” Kory’s expression matched Andy’s now.
“Tch, yes please!”
She buzzed with excitement as Andy slipped off his backpack. He was still somewhat of a mystery to her. He was so picky about what he ate, while just about anything would satisfy Kory. His favorite were the little violet berries from the bushes. He also knew much more about this world than she did, and she wanted to learn all of it. He twisted his head to look at her, still rummaging through his blue bag.
“By the way, why do you do that thing? Like, with your mouth?”
“Tch, what thing?”
“That.”
“Tch, what?”
“That!”
“Tch, what?!”
“Nevermind.” Andy finally removed a light blue book with winged creatures on the front from his backpack. She recalled that they were “birds”, and smirked with pride. He flipped through a few pages, and then held it up triumphantly in Kory’s direction.
“This is a goose,” he announced, pointing at a picture of a white bird. “They waddle and go HONK!”
“Tch, HONK!” Kory mimicked. They both bursted into laughter. “Tch, what’s a duck?” Andy turned a few more pages and pointed again at a new picture. This bird looked like the last one, but had a beautiful emerald head contrasting with its brown body, and was smaller (and therefore cuter) than the last one.
“Ducks and geese can go anywhere. They can fly, they can run, and they can swim too! One day I’ll be that free.” There was a hint of wonder mixed with jealousy in Andy’s speech. His blue eyes sparkled as he spoke. Kory didn’t understand what his last statement meant, but before she could ask, Andy interrupted her. “And ducks go QUACK!”
“Tch, QUACK!” Another giggling fit ensued. “Tch, I want to have a favorite bird too! I like ducks!”
“My dad said that in the old world, they had cars that looked like ducks, and could drive on land and on the water.”
“Tch, wow,” Kory whispered in awe. “Tch, what’s a car?”
---
Kory and Andy slept shoulder to shoulder with their backs against the trunk of a tree, only visible by the moonlight peeking through the thin canopy. She missed her blanket and Momma reading her bedtime stories, but this wasn’t half bad either. She could still picture Momma tucking her in, pulling a book from the shelf, and telling her a tale of a faraway land with soft, green ground, and an azure ceiling, littered with white blobs that changed shape and formed pictures. Momma’s soft voice would lull her to sleep, helping her drift away into bliss.
Her eyes shot open. She wasn’t imagining whispers, they were real and they were far too close for comfort. She shook Andy awake. “Tch, something’s wrong. I’m scared.”
His eyes parted halfway. “What?” he asked, still groggy.
“Tch, what’s that noise?”
“I don’t know, probably some bugs. Let me sleep.” He sounded annoyed, something Kory hadn’t heard from him before. She didn’t like this side of him, but the pit in her gut was too powerful to ignore.
“Tch, Andy…”
“Leave me alone I’m ti-” A ghastly wail pierced their eardrums from the depths of the trees, it's source shrouded in darkness. Blood splattered across Kory’s face, shooting from Andy’s ears like a geyser. Gore waterfalled from his eyes and mouth. She could taste the blood dripping on her tongue as she let out a scream of her own. She scurried backwards on all fours before picking herself up and fleeing into the black. A soft moan behind her made her hesitate, looking back to see Andy’s body slump to the ground.
Gazing down at the body was an ivory being. It looked human, but had wings protruding from its back and through its robes. Just seeing it caused Kory’s hair to instinctually stand on end. At the same time, though, she felt that they were one and the same. That they were both in a place they didn’t belong. But this creature was evil, a perversion of life. She wasn’t sure how she knew all this, though she was certain of it nonetheless. It creaked its head, twisting it in impossible ways until it faced Kory. A single arm with an outstretched finger raised from its side, aiming at her. Fear kicked in again and she took off in the opposite direction. The whispers didn’t stop, and she could barely see thanks to her tears and the trees blocking the moonlight. The monster followed her as she ran, its pale face appearing and disappearing next to her in the gaps between trees. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to escape to, where is Momma and why isn’t she helping?
Her foot snagged on a tree root.---
A combination of the Sun in her eyes and a throbbing on her forehead caused her to stir. The events of the previous night were still a blur in her mind, but she rose to her feet with a determination to find Andy. A trail of dried blood marked the direction she came from like morbid bread crumbs. She traced her path, already dreading the grim scene waiting for her at its end.
---
His body was too large for her, especially with her weakened arm, but she ignored the strain it caused her muscles. She stubbornly dragged it out from the woods, but let her grip go at the sight of a pair of black birds with bald heads. She yelled at the top of her lungs for them to shoo with a ferocity she didn’t know she had, making them abandon the rotting corpse they were scavenging. She resumed carrying Andy’s body, and placed it next to the remains. A single tear formed as she looked at them side by side. She could see the resemblance between the two, as disfigured as they were.
Kory placed his camo cap over her white hair, pulling it through the back in a ponytail. She also put on his backpack, hefty with the weight of various trinkets and the bird book. They clashed with her white and pink polka dot shirt, but she didn't care. She just needed something to remember him by.
She looked up, and could still see those onyx colored birds in the distance. Vultures, her book called them. She wanted to hate them, but she saw herself in them as well. They were scroungers and scrap-eaters, just like her. But she wanted to be more like the stunning birds she and Andy read about. Free to go anywhere they pleased, maybe even to the place Momma used to tell her about in her stories. She made a promise where she stood, both for Andy and herself, that she would find that place; here certainly wasn’t it.
Kory held her gaze upwards with new conviction. She finally learned what that color morphing dome above her was called, thanks to Andy. It was the sky.
