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Ageusia.
It was the lack of taste. That even the thicket tar sludged to oblivion would taste like nothing. The sweetest of throat intoxicating nectar tasted the same. The most bitter of Brussel sprouts would taste the same. The fine golden chocolate of swirled possibilities would taste the same.
Everything tasted the same. Black, white. Impurity and impurity were all one. Unnoticeable. Undetectable. Under their noses.
Hunched up in a leaky cave, Wilbur ate some sandwiches. His holed shoes rooted deeply into the gravestone stone. Each crack and egg piece clear, claws marking each prison mistake. His spindly legs were forced down so deeply, he could break his legs. His arms were hunched closely together as well. Like generating warmth in an incoming storm. The rest of the man told a similar story.
His hands, bandaged almost to restriction with medical tape. Like he was trying to keep himself from unveiling, honest orange peel. His under eyes seemed sickly as well. A rocking boat of waves of bruised purple and grooved black. A single wrong fall in the groove and you could fall, drowning in this surreal dream.
He sat there, eating a sandwich. It tasted the same to him. Tommy sat next to him as well. A whickering candle next to a blackened one.
An obvious story, beat by beat.
Tommy sighed as his arms hugged himself. Reddened and raw, like a pig that just gave birth. He was not a newborn however. He was just too young to experience all this. His hands were in a similar state, fresh peels of skin that flaked off. Like snowflakes, each little pattern and curl unique.
They all melted in the end. And with each thread of a new life, it left expectantly.
Humorous.
Tommy sighed deeper, with the two hunched in the cave. Umbering storms hummed outside. A rain was sure to come, midnight blue.
“You know these taste like shit,” Tommy shook. Wilbur didn’t reply and kept eating.
“They’re rations, they’re not meant to be good,” Wilbur sighed. He kept chewing, a lump in his face. “But are they meant to… taste bad?” Tommy asked. His eyes kept dodging around, like he would choke on his words.
Wilbur kept eating. His hands wrapped around the gluttonous mound, overfilling with blood ham. The other sandwich had little, lifeless and surgical.
“I’m eating them and I’m fine, so what’s the problem?” He shrugged his shoulders casually. There was a silence. Tommy shifted himself away with a deep sigh. Like he had given up, like that thought hadn’t rampaged through his head before.
There was another silence. A gun shot defeat.
“You always say that,” Tommy said.
“You’re fine so everybody else is…,” Tommy diverted his eyes to the floor. There was another silence. Wilbur kept eating.
Wilbur heaved himself down on Quackity’s bed. The velvet shine overwhelmed him, too luxurious for his liking. The overfilled pillows were fluffed up and plentiful. Quackity emerged from the bathroom, droplets enringed in his hair.
He was wrapping a towel around his hair. “Since you’ve been waiting, we should probably have some dinner hun,” Quackity winked. His words came out like honey, cooling to the wound.
Wilbur sat there awkward and hunched in the bed. Like he was preparing for some black attack.
The smile on Quackity’s golden face turned away. He stopped drying his hair. “On that topic, when was the last time… you’ve eaten?” He said as he looked him up and down.
He was always thin. He seemed to have gotten worse though.
His ghost wrists. His bones could snap at any minute.
Wilbur took in a deep sigh. Like his lungs would collapse any minute. Filled with fluid, fluff covered blood or the lack of it.
“I haven’t in a while to be honest Quack,” Wilbur said.
“Not since Tommy you know…” Wilbur wrapped his arms around his shoulder. A pill bug in his throat, scuttling up and down. To induce sickness, nausea.
“Left us,” Wilbur whimpered out.
Quackity left a shaking breath out.
“This year has been long enough,” Wilbur shook. He stared at his hands, empty of what was once there.
Apathy being sung to nocturnal death. Only for the last chance of golden arched redemption. To only be realized at the midnight turning of another, to sullen eyes.
There was nothing except.
A hungry silence.