We snatch the centipedes off the boulder and crack their carapaces, sucking the insides out. There are rules to our eating. Guts slide, wriggling, into four mouths and down four throats. All this under the moonlight, which reflects weakly off the waist-high saltwater that is inescapable in this endless labyrinthine swamp. Around us thickets of gnarled drowning trees snake away in lines, perhaps artificial in their measured growth––forming interminable pathways and clearings by their absence––but there is no time for unimportant questions. All we know is to eat.

Guiltymouth eats the most centipedes, beating Bittermouth by a few. The victory-prize is a revelation, a memory; she shudders as it pierces her. Opens her eyes wide and fearful, says there should be five of us, not four, but she’s lying, she’s lying, she’s lying.

Our stomachs rumble as we wade to the next clearing on pruned feet. The hunger is already gnawing again inside us, trying to eat its way out. Anxiousmouth sloshes ahead and finds a good omen: the trees curve gently moonward, wending away imperfectly to the left, leaving one thick branch poking out just far enough away from the thorns. We take turns crouching on it like hobbled grotesques, scratching the itches on salty knees drawn tight up to our chests.

Guiltymouth wants to stay but our stomachs ache. Our hands knit around her and drag her from her perch.

At the center of the next clearing there is a fallen log on which a wolf lies half-butchered and rotting. Below a shining moonbeam the meat is splayed out on the beast’s pelt like a trophy. We are at war inside ourselves: a somatic urge to vomit rises in our throats at the stink of decay, but four mouths are already watering. We fall on the carcass in a hideous splashing rush.

As we scoop up chunks of filthy meat, snatching crow-quick and jealous, clutching piles of offal close like thieves, we wonder. Between bites—in fleeting hungerless instants—we dream of what else may be, of what other forms the world could take, of how else we could endure this place.

This swampbyrinth could be paradise, or punishment; we four are sinners, or saints. We do have our theories. So hard to refine them, though, to waste time with mouth-noise when we could be biting down on meat. Why bother?

The pelt we save for dessert. We tear with wet calloused hands and slice at the skin with fragments of bone. It’s greasy and cold and tick-flecked and Guiltymouth eats the most, wetting the fur in moon-glistening saltwater and swallowing soggy lumps by the handful. Another vision-revelation-memory engulfs her. If only we could chew less, force our throats wider, gulp down guts and flesh and skin faster. We watch, eyes narrowed, nails biting into our palms as she drops to her knees and sobs.

We look to the moon, which hangs eternal, lending long shadows to the endless trees, and for the first time we feel disunity. We push Guiltymouth ahead of us and plug our ears when she claims to know the nature of our confinement. She’s lying, she’s lying, she’s lying.

Waves undulate along the next path. Fallen logs shift with low shudders like the resigned sighs of the long dead and we are hungry, so hungry, and then we find the source of the water’s throbbing motion.

The writhing mass in the clearing looks like an overgrown blue tumor. It should not be here. It’s still alive: a single black eye is quivering, winking at us. Not an eye, Guiltymouth says, a blowhole; we can’t eat this. But we’re so hungry.

We walk around the thing, marking flippers, tail, colossal baleen jaws. It should not be here, but should we? Haughtymouth breaks a thorned branch off from the thicket, hefts it. It’s sharp enough on one end to pierce skin. To dig.

The whale takes forever to die, and—forgive us—we’re too hungry to wait. We eat as we cut, tunnelling through flesh and prizing the rich organ meat we stumble upon like miners striking gold. Guiltymouth refuses, says this is all wrong, says we should fight this impulse, try to escape this swamp. But she should know that we have no time for anything but eating, and the shared void of our hunger compels us to hold her in place and shovel the blubber into her mouth handful by handful.

She shudders, she flails, a memory flooding her, whale blood sheen red on her skin. That envy rises in us again. She gets all the memories, and for what? Nothing has changed. We’re still hungry. We drag her to her feet.

No. Something has changed. She is distinct, somehow. There are three of us, three mouths, and this other thing, gurgling and moaning through a guilty gullet still muffled by fat and gristle. There is nothing in the next clearing, no food awaiting us, and we’re so hungry.

Her eyes widen as she feels the rest of us staring at her, feels the totality of her separation. There are rules to our eating. If she isn’t one of us, there is only one thing she can be.

In the hungerless instants, the brief flashes of clarity, we taste melancholy. Between bites of tongue or liver or cheek we long for a place beyond imagining, a non-swamp outside of the world, a treeless place without saltwater or reeking flesh or the endless gaping pit of us. As we finish we wonder whether we are driven by something that could ever be filled.

The feeling passes, as it always does. But Anxiousmouth is picking the last few strands of hair out of her teeth when she convulses, a shudder ghosting through her. Something in her eyes changes. She gasps, says there should be four of us, but she’s lying, she’s lying, she’s lying.

* * *

Ⓒ Parker M. O’Neill