a/n: This is based off a short story I wrote in the 5th grade. Obviously, I've made some... corrections, but the initial idea is still the same... I was super weird as a ten-year-old...

Chapter One: "Monster"

Phagophobia: the fear of being eaten

“I’m scared,” Annie whispered, her chapped lips trembling with fear and exhaustion. “Kaylee, I want to go home!” Helpless tears dribbled down the girl’s face as she scooted even farther away from the partially devoured body that sat, slumped as if just resting, against the opposite arm of the couch. Annie tucked her legs up against her chest and hugged them with her scarred arms. She looked up at her older cousin, who stood stoically at the window, pulling the curtain back and peering out the glass discreetly, a bloody knife curled in her fist.

Kaylee glanced at Annie out of the corner of her eye, then back to the window with a shake of her blood-matted brown hair. “We can’t go home, Annie. We can’t leave,” she said thickly.

Annie bit her lip and slowly turned her attention toward the other end of the couch. Her eleven-year-old eyes roamed over the corpse. The mangled remains of what was once a woman’s beautiful face, if the pictures on the walls were any judge, stared blankly at the ceiling with one milky orb set deep into a pale, white skull. “Kaylee… Are we gonna die?”

Kaylee let the curtain fall back over the window. “‘Death is when the monsters get you,’” she said softly. After a reverent pause, Kaylee turned, the gaping hole in her cheek even more gruesome backlit by the fading light of dusk than it had been when it happened. “Did you find a needle?” she asked, her teeth and tongue visible through the cavity in her face.

Annie nodded and tore her eyes away from the body. She pulled the small packet from her pocket with trembling fingers and tossed it to her cousin. “One’s still got thread on it… It’s yellow though.”

Kaylee caught the packet with both hands. “Does it look like I care what colour it is?”

Annie shook her head resolutely.

Kaylee dropped her knife on the coffee table where it landed on a plate of a half-eaten sandwich, disturbing a few flies. She flipped open the packet to reveal a row of gleaming sewing needles. Selecting the one that was already threaded, Kaylee slipped it out from underneath its clear plastic cover and held it up to her cheek. A deep breath rattled through her lungs as she squeezed her eyes shut. With one quick motion, the Kaylee stabbed the needle into her cheek. Tears ran down into the wound and mixed with fresh blood from the needle puncture.

“Do you need help?” Annie asked, wincing.

Kaylee shuddered. “N-n-no.” She pulled on the needle from the inside of her mouth with her other hand until it went all the way through her skin, the yellow thread stained a rusty mustard-colour when as it came out the other side. She braced herself for the next pass.

Annie looked away and down towards the knife where it lay on the table. “I’m sorry!” she said suddenly. “I didn’t know they-!” her sentence choked off into a cough. “I’m sorry you got hurt. I really didn’t mean-!” she coughed again. “Please don’t be mad at me!” Annie rested her forehead on her knees and her shoulders shook with silent sobs.

Kaylee opened her eyes and looked down at her little cousin as she continued sewing her cheek closed. “Don’t… be sorry,” she breathed heavily in between stitches.

She began to sew faster. Her skin was already numbed enough from pain that she barely felt the point of the needle anymore. “It’s not your fault…” Kaylee pulled the needle through one final time and then took the thread in both hands. It snapped audibly and Kaylee, grimacing, threw the needle to the floor.

She ran her tongue around the freshly sutured wound. Kaylee turned away from her cousin and strode to the window, once again peeling back the curtain and looking out. Four pairs of yellow eyes stared back at her from the shrubbery of the yard next door. "You didn't know..."