The Marrow

A short horror story of loss and regeneration

She rattled her hollow bones, scattered across the forest floor. Her consciousness, unlike her meat and sinews, could never be devoured. Dissociated though it was from the rest of her, it still had power.

“No marrow,” her disembodied voice lamented. “So difficult without the marrow.” A broken metatarsus, carefully hollowed out by long, sharp tongues, shivered beneath a fern. It’s other half twitched a few feet away. Dragging them through the leaf litter, she aligned their jagged, slivered edges and fit them back together. Still hollow, but together, nonetheless. It was a few hours of work, sifting through fragments, piecing them together like a puzzle. Not all of the pieces were there.

Soon she stood, embodied again, if wobbly and all hollow bones. Taking a careful step she felt the lightness, the fragility of her skeleton. Heavy antlers, weighed down her head, forcing her eyes to the dirt. To the tracks. The long-clawed three toes of her destroyers. The greedy ones who took her marrow. Nosing the tracks with her naked skull, she thought she caught the scent of herself. Her pelt, perhaps they’d dragged it off to line their den. She took another step, her knees ached, the joints dry and grinding. Carefully placing her forelimbs to either side of the frenzied clusters of tracks, she began to follow them.

The forest around her grew dim as she walked, slowly and painfully, to her marrow. Her strength. Smaller creatures scurried before her, running from her plodding steps. She snapped the slower ones up in her jaws, using all her strength to toss her head back and gulp them down. Feeling her gullet and stomach as they reformed to catch the treats. Her bones ached more with the added weight. Though hunger gnawed at her, she couldn’t eat more, or she’d have to carry more as her body rebuilt itself.

The marrow, though, and the bones, those she couldn’t replace. Only the greedy ones took those. She’d tried to stay far from their territories, but they strayed into hers sometimes when they’d eaten too much in their own. With the fading light it was getting harder to see their dagger-like tracks, just three slits in the soil, but she could still sense herself in each, deep footfall. Soon, she could hear their laughing, shrieking calls echoing from a shallow cave. The scent of herself became overpowering as she moved closer to their den. Her bones itched to be whole again, to carry the weight of her entire self.

The night was dark now, but the moon shone through the trees, lighting her battleground as she bellowed for the greedy ones. They slunk out, wide grins on their greedy faces, giggles erupting from between sharp teeth as they snaked their razor tongues out at her. But those tongues couldn’t hurt her now, and the three long claws on each foot would only get tangled up in her bones. She charged forward, catching the first greedy one by surprise and flipping it with her antlers onto its back. Her skull, without its flesh, tapered to two sharp incisors, with these she sliced its belly open, her tongue grew in her mouth and she ate her own flesh and marrow from with in the warm hollow.

The greedy ones howled at the death of their own and threw themselves at her, but she was quick and sliced them all out of the air. As they writhed, she feasted on their stomach contents, her marrow slipping back into her bones. Her strength returning. Soon, she was whole again. Her new fur shimmering in the moonlight, her antlers draped once again in soft black velvet. Her skull, however, she kept free of flesh, just her tongue for swallowing. She didn’t plan on losing her marrow, ever again.