Gaunt

(I've come up with an experimental sub-genre of pasta. I would appreciate feedback on this, as I don't know if the idea is viable or not.

For maximum effect, read this pasta in a liesurly manner; slowly, if you will, while listening to 'the Blossoming Beelzebub' by Dir en Grey. Youtube will be happy to provide this for you.

Enjoy.)

Two weeks.

I can't, for the life of me, fathom why it hasn't ended yet, but it's getting to the point to where if I even think about looking back out the window, my stomach does a backflip.

The field next to my house, no bigger than a football field, has inexplixably become occupied by partially clothed, bony people. Husks would be a more accurate term for them, but they just sit upon the grass with their hands beneath their backsides. I don't know why they stare upwards, or why their mouths never close, but they do nothing other than gawk at the sky.

The smell of excrement and urine steadily grows stronger with each passing day, and I haven't had any way to stock up on more food. I'm forced to eat very little each day.

Three weeks.

There are roughly two or three more every day and they've spilled into the streets, onto driveways, and past where my eyes can see. The white ones have turned scarlet, the black ones grow shinier, and the few latin ones grow slightly darker as time passes.

Body odor has also become a problem for my nostrils, and the chorus composed by the miriad of flies has drowned out the static of the radio. It's become hypnotic, mind numming, and infuriating all at once.

When I peer out the window, they all snap their mouths shut and violently whip their heads around to look at me. Some of them fall over when this happens, and their struggle to get back into their odd positioning makes me uneasy and so does their inate ability to know when I peek through my blinds.

Four weeks.

They've begun to bloat, and a lot have started to die. The ones on my porch won't quit emitting this high pitched wheezing inhalation with every breath. It doesn't sound like a rhespiratory problem, but rather eerily purposeful.

...

I made the mistake of looking out the window at night. The porch light doesn't faze them; but their behavior fazed me. They each take it upon themselves to scoop each other's overflown excrement and sloppily place it in their mouths. Their mastication is rudimentary at best, and their attempts at keeping it behind their lips are completely nonexistant.

Now and again, once they've finished eating they'll let out poorly moderated bellows, but then it'll die down, however it is not uniform when they do this. It evokes the cicadas that I was once able to hear, but more like the gutteral grunts of livestock.

Six weeks.

Some have apparently given birth. It was difficult to notice a pregnant one through the bloating. The babies are still-birth as it would seem; I hear no cries.

They're cuddling with the corpses of the fallen at night. I've become numb, but I still somehow feel terrified. They're cuddling with their own dead. They've taken to screaming now, and they will not stop. It sounds like a highly disgruntled audience. They seem angry now, but their mobility is shot.

They've taken to crawling around feebly. Some dragging their badly decomposing "dolls" with them. They haven't let up on the cuddling, even though some of their dead have quite visibly popped or begun to leak. They will eat the excrement of their peers and their dead. Dogs and other scavenging animals have long since been picking at them, which -- as it would be implied by my observations -- does not bother them in the least.

Eight weeks.

Missing arms, eyes, teeth, and some missing their lips, they've taken up convulsing quite regularly on top of vomiting quite horrifically. The colors range from clear to crimson, but they seem intrigued by their rejections, and do their best to lap it back up. They'll even crudely try to feed it to their dolls, if they've taken one, and then drag them to a new location to sit and gawk.

The ones on my porch haven't been able to figure out how to relocate, and all but one of the three have died. The one that "survived" hasn't done anything but utter strange, throaty gurgles and cries; aside from the default convulsions.

I've stopped looking out the window.