They watched him, attentive eyes, tiny faces, joyful smiles on their lips.
No. Crooked smiles. Dark gleams in their irises. Something slid its way down his leg, something with teeth and he would prefer to just close his eyes and die. Under his clothes, crawling vermin and small creatures, pushing themselves into crevices, biting him with teeth, eating him alive.
“Humans like pets.”
“He should be happy we gave him ours.”
“He should be glad he feeds them.”
“So they aren’t hungry anymore.”
Please kill me, he wanted to mutter into the earth. Their spells kept him pressed over the forest floor. The happy faces, elated faces, everywhere. And the sound of his flesh. He felt it being drilled by hundreds of tiny teeth. But he couldn’t scream. He couldn’t. They took it from him. His voice caught up in in his throat.
A laughter, somewhere near his ear. A joyful giggle, innocent like a spring. A cornucopia of colors around him, like spring too. He wanted to disappear in it, give himself to colors. Yellow, blue, and green… but all he could think about was red. Crimson. Rubies splashed over his skin.
A small hand caressed his face, a face on his peripheral gaze.
“Maybe we give him time.”
“To enjoy.”
“Maybe he breaks the spell.”
“Maybe he fills us with his beautiful voice.”
A hopeless moan left his mouth. The teeth reached his tigh and the creature resumed to eat him, slowly. His eyes watered. He tried to reach behind, but his hands were tied with the spell, which squeezed him even tighter, pushing him deeper into the soil.
“We might give him sweet death.”
“But only if he pleads very nice.”
“Can he plead nicely?”
“So it broke our hearts.”
“And made us love him.”
“More than our pets.”
He choked on his words, unable to form a sentence. He wanted to tear the air with screams. Please allow me. Allow me to scream.
The creatures under his clothes seemed oblivious. There was no fast escape.
Only pain.