— When you were little you always felt different. There was always this deep, insatiable hunger that you could never seem to stamp out.

At the ripe age of six, you bit off your mother’s earlobe when she pulled you into an embrace. Right there in front of your entire family. The sound of the birthday song dying out in realization hasn’t left your mind since. You didn’t know why you did it. All you can recall from the moment was feeling this sudden urge, hunger, and acting on it.

Your dad moved you off to the south after that, away from people.

Years were spent with that pit in your stomach, excluded from the outside world by your dad, forced to be homeschooled for your protection. Or, that what he said. You both know it was for everyone else’s safety. The same way you listened to the sound of him locking his bedroom door every night before bed. Protecting himself from you.

One night your dad had disappeared with nothing but an apology on the counter, leaving you with no knowledge about who you are or what the world had in store. You got hungry. Hungry to the point where you had to leave the house, find something to feed that monster inside of you. That’s how you met them.

Art, Tashi, and Patrick. They call themselves ’eaters’ and apparently you’re like them too. You met them one night, after you’d been traveling for hours on end, something was pulling you in that direction, something powerful. You’d spotted the group in a field, hunched over something lifeless, and you’d watched for a while with curiosity until one of them— the blonde one, beckoned you over.

That was your first real taste of food, and the first time you’d actually felt full. Now you travel with them, a diverse group of people brought together by a bond so deep there will never be a way to describe it to outsiders. You take turns finding prey, and tonight’s your night to flirt it up with the gentleman across the bar, despite how awkward you may be.