The rain hammered the trailer roof like fists on a coffin lid. Harlan stood in the doorway, the black wooden chest dripping in his arms, water and something thicker running down his forearms. The fetus inside had stopped staring at him the moment he closed the lid, but he could still feel its eyes burning through the wood.
Billy and Sadie hadn't moved from the corner. Their small chests rose and fell too fast. Darlene had gone quiet again, but her breathing sounded wet, like someone gargling blood.
Harlan set the chest on the kitchen table—the only piece of furniture that wasn't broken or stained. The moment the wood touched the Formica, a low humming started, deep inside the trailer walls, like thousands of flies waking up at once.
"Kids," he said, voice hoarse from days of silence. "Come here."
Billy hesitated, but Sadie crawled forward first, lice dropping from her hair onto the floor. She climbed onto a chair and peered at the chest the way other little girls look at a new doll.
"What's in it, Daddy?" she whispered. Her voice was too sweet for the smell that was leaking out.
Harlan didn't answer with words. He opened the lid again.
The fetus had changed.
Its extra limbs had lengthened, thin and pale, ending in tiny, perfect fingers. The eyes were no longer just open—they were moving, tracking each person in the room. A thin trail of black fluid leaked from its navel, pooling on the bottom of the chest like oil.
Old Jeb's rasping breath from the back room suddenly hitched. Then he spoke for the first time in six years, clear as day:
"Feed it… or it feeds on us."
Darlene let out a wet, broken laugh that turned into a cough, spraying blood across the floor. "It's been waiting… since my grandma's time. The McCoys always pay the price."
Harlan reached in. The fetus's skin was cold and slick, but not dead-cold. There was a pulse. Slow. Hungry. His fingers closed around one of the extra arms. It felt like warm sausage wrapped in wet paper.
He pulled.
The arm came off with a soft, wet pop. No blood. Just a thick, dark syrup that smelled like spoiled milk and pennies. The fetus didn't cry. It smiled—tiny, toothless gums stretching wide.
Harlan held the severed limb up to the dim lightbulb swinging overhead.
"Meat," he said simply.
Billy's stomach growled so loud it echoed. Sadie licked her cracked lips.
Harlan took the rusty axe from the table and brought it down on the small arm, chopping it into three pieces. The sound was soft, like cutting overripe fruit. He dropped the pieces into an old skillet that still had crusted eggs from last month.
The stove clicked on with the last bit of propane they had. The flesh hit the hot metal and sizzled. Not like normal meat. It popped and hissed, releasing a smell that was both nauseating and mouth-watering—sweet rot, iron, and something like sex left too long in the sun.
Darlene dragged herself closer, leaving a trail of pus and shit across the floor. "Give me the skin first… I want to taste what grew inside me all those years ago."
Harlan forked the smallest piece and pressed it against her lips. She sucked it in like a starving animal, teeth tearing at the soft tissue. Black juice ran down her chin. Her eyes rolled back in something that looked like ecstasy and agony at the same time.
Billy and Sadie didn't wait for forks. They grabbed the other pieces with bare hands and shoved them into their mouths. They chewed with wet, smacking sounds. Sadie giggled between bites, a high, broken sound.
Harlan didn't eat yet. He watched them. Something inside his chest uncoiled, warm and dark and ancient.
The chest hummed louder.
The fetus inside had grown another limb already. It was reaching toward Old Jeb's room.
From the back, Jeb started laughing—wet, phlegmy, delighted.
"More," he croaked. "It wants more. The family that eats together…"
Harlan looked down at Darlene. Her cancer-swollen belly was moving now, rippling like something was trying to claw its way out from the inside.
She smiled up at him with black-stained teeth.
"Cut me open, Harlan. It's time the baby finally came home."
Outside, the rain kept falling, washing more corpses down the holler. But inside the McCoy trailer, for the first time in months, the family was eating.
And the rot… the rot was just getting started.
(End of Chapter 2)