Thick rivets of sappy liquid slid down the curve of his sharp jaw, pooling on the ruffled collar of his shirt like iridescence bile.

He smacked his lips once, then twice, and finally let his heavy lids flutter shut.

“Ah yes, that’s much better than the last”, he exclaimed, swiping at his chin with the lace hankerchief in his hand.

He marvelled at the flavours still lingering on his tongue: sweet and tart and salty with fear.

He, unlike many of his kind, savoured his meals in tiny morsels rather than swallowing them whole.

Dreams, he found, tasted better the longer you fed on them.

Give someone a single nightmare and you had a quick meal that was neither bad nor good, just satiating.

But repeat that same nightmare time and time again, letting it build and grow in intensity, and suddenly, you fattened the meal tenfold.

With chaos unravelling down below, the human world beneath his feet had full with nightmares, like an overflowing basket of provisions. Their nightmares, fuelled by their incessant curiosity of the unknown, were the best delicacies of all the animal kingdoms.

Warm and sticky, sliding down his throat like honey pouring down the rim of a glass, their dreams were something he soon realized, had become addictive.

———

This was going to be a bigger piece but I got so uninspired halfway through. It’s still a fragment piece and lacks depth, but I might add to it later.