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With her hand still shaking, the Little Girl wipes a circle of blood clean from the kitchen window. Her pinky is missing. Still bleeding where it's been bit off.

She knows He's out there. Watching.

There. The shadow between the hungry-eyed houses. Short round man on a unicycle. Tall hat. Flat teeth. No eyes. Just an eyeball he stole in a monocle loop that he holds to his forehead with four-fingered hands.

The Little Girl puts the teddy bear by the sink. A ratty old bear with greasy olive-colored fur. She hopes it's the last one alive.

Dead teddy bears fill the kitchen counters beside her, each killed in a different way. One with its head severed and grape jelly blood still spurting thick and gloppy onto the floor. One dismembered. One burning on the stove giving off thick grape-scented smoke.

Careful of the claws, she checks the toaster-cords that bind the last bear’s wrists. She tries to remember his name so she can question him, but her sister had so many bears.

Are you going to kill me too? he asks.

Where are the others?

He cringes and whimpers but doesn’t answer. She glances at the knife lying on the stained counter.

Don't kill me.

You work for Him. That thing outside. After all those years keeping us safe. You let Him touch you! Change you! The Little Girl picks up the knife. It's as long as her arm. Blade sticky with jelly.

I'll tell you anything! Just don't kill me!

Where are the others hiding?

In the attic.

The girl pulls the knife close to the bear's neck.

It hisses and shows its vampire fangs. Don't kill me! Don’t you love me anymore?

Where's Angie? Where's my sister?

He has her!

Where?

I don't know!

She saws a single gash across his cheek. Olive fur separates. A purple smile. So pretty. So pretty.

He screams. And she keeps him screaming.

I don't know where she is, he says when she stops cutting. Don't kill me! I still love you!

I love you too.

One more cut and he falls in half. The purple blood stains deep. Her apron. Her palms. Her lips. It smells so sweet. She licks it. Mmm. Concord grapes.

Her belly leaps and growls for more.

* * *

She opens the door to the living room and peers in. Every shadow looks dangerous. Like it could move. Jump. Dig its fangs into her throat. The ceiling pillows down. Water-stained with brown clouds. Without even looking for them, she sees the twisted faces hidden in the pattern. Her parents' faces. The neighbors' faces. Everyone the house has ever eaten. Staring down at her. They are the house. And the house is hungry.

The faces can't get you, she tells herself. It's daytime.

And there aren't any bears.

Just a few more steps. Get past the couch.

Don't be scared.

Don't. Be. Scared.

Shadows move on the mantelpiece and the end tables. She freezes. The family pictures are moving. Brass frames buckling into bow-shaped mouths. They want to eat her.

Don't be scared, she says. Of course they’re hungry. Everything must eat. And there isn't much food.

One picture has starved to death. She knows because it doesn't move. Only dead things are still.

The picture is Angie. Eyes like blue diamonds. All straw-hair and smiles. Having a tea party with the teddy bears. Before the magic came back. Before everything came alive.

* * *

The stairs creak and sag under her feet. One even whines like a hungry dog.

Shh, she tells it, I'll feed you later.

Creeaaak, the stairs say again.

She hears footsteps in the hall. Soft whooshes on the rotten rug that sound like a tiny voice whispering murder, murder.

Her stained hand grips the banister so hard her bones hurt.

* * *

When she crawls into the attic she slips on the grape-flavored blood. A dozen teddy bears are scattered with long purple smiles gaping around their necks and spilling onto the greedy floor. She hears someone crying and wonders if it is her sister.

Angie?

No answer. Just the boards creaking. Saying they are hungry.

Haven't you had enough blood?

There's never enough blood.

She follows the voice and finds Ollie Cat behind the big box of shining Christmas stars. His Oliver Twist clothes are soaked red. A new scent. Strawberries. She didn't know there were other flavors. Her belly reaches toward the plush cat.

You killed the other bears?

He starts crying. We were so afraid of you. Of what you would do. We didn't want to suffer. They asked me to kill them.

She stares. Her eyes are empty mouths. Why did one of them stab you?

Silence. Then: I still love you.

You all say that.

The pull string loop that makes Ollie Cat purr has a thumb stuck in it. Angie's thumb. Bit off by bear teeth. The Little Girl takes it. Tucks it in her stained apron.

What did you do with Angie?

He tries to crawl away but he is too weak. His jelly-filled body folds in on itself and quivers.

She pulls his string. Forces him to purr. Drags him back under the knife.

He pisses himself then. Sweet strawberry piss.

She thinks of Angie. Straw-hair and smiles. Then she thinks of the thumb.

I'm going to make this hurt a lot, okay?

Okay, he whimpers.

She loves strawberries.

* * *

She sees Him out there. Hiding behind the street corner on His unicycle. Staring at her with eyeless eyes. She moves from window to window, but He is always there. She knows He has her sister. He has Angie. But the Little Girl is too scared to face Him. All she can do is listen to His unicycle creak creak creak as He pedals around the house.

On the third day the bear blood runs out. By the next day she is starving and the house is starving too. The faces in the ceiling start following her around and smiling at her. Always smiling. If she doesn't leave soon they will eat her.

She licks the purple stain on her palm because it is sweet but with every lick she remembers teddy bears screaming and dying. She tries to scrape it off with her fingernails. But no matter how much she licks or scrapes, it won’t come out.

* * *

The Little Girl holds the knife in front of her and opens the door. He creaks back and forth on His unicycle beside the rusted swing set on the front lawn.

How are you? He says. The hungry houses behind Him lean toward her. Boards creak. Bricks pour powdered mortar like blood.

Hungry.

I gave you blood.

There's never enough blood.

He smiles with black lips. Do you know who I am?

Angie knew. You're Him.

No, I'm Hymn. Like the song. Like the psalm on your palm.

She spreads her four fingers wide, and sees her scraping has reduced the stain to shapes. Words. No, thoughts.

She cuts them away with the knife because they say the truth. But no matter how deep she cuts they stay. When the skin is gone, her blood starts singing the words-that-aren’t-words until they echo down from the sky.

She is crying now. She has never cried before. Her tears taste like strawberries and grapes. Where's my sister? Where did you hide all the children?

He eats her then. Black mouth stretches wider than the sky.

* * *

She falls and the falling is like flying. Soft wind sweet and cool. Freedom. Her hand sings to her but she can't understand it anymore. The notes shiver her blood.

She opens her eyes and the stomach is huge around her. Dark and dank above. The echo of water dripping. Subterranean vastness with hungry shadows.

She follows hints of light wondering where the light comes from. Then she realizes that the light comes from her. Bloody hand burning bright where she carved away the words. She presses her red palm forward. Four fingers singing against the darkness.

Soon she finds a wall. Moist. Fleshy. Hundreds of eyeballs set deep in the skin. Monocle loops glisten like the halos of devils. Each eye stares at her in turn. Black tongues where the pupils should be. Hungry mouths eating up the light of her.

Her hand begins to fade and she feels dry and brittle and sandy inside. A doll full of sawdust. Barely any blood.

She runs away from the wall of eyes. Away from the hunger and naked need.

* * *

Angie sits in the shadows at a table with two steaming teacups. But Angie isn't Angie anymore. Her face is china and glimmers with blue and purple and silver underneath. Black opal eyes half-lidded. Her straw-hair is silky now. The wrong texture.

He stole your eyes.

Sit down, says Angie. Have some tea. Her lips and cheeks are bright strawberry. But they don't move when she speaks. She is too perfect.

Too still.

Only dead things are still.

The Little Girl peers into the cups. Hollow white and painted with shadow. There isn't any tea, Angie. Just steam. Empty steam.

All you have to do is sit. Be still. Just for a moment.

Is that what you did? Be still?

It's what we all do. Eventually.

The girl holds up her hand and burns the darkness back with her fading soul. A hundred tables shine back. Countless dolls sitting in broken circles. Pale china faces so still.

You can't fight Hymn, you know. Sit down. Be still.

I'm too hungry to be still.

I'm not hungry. If you sit, you won't be either.

Silence like ice between them. Angie remains perfect and pale. The Little Girl sweats and steams.

Do you have my thumb? Angie asks at last.

I ate it.

Ate it?

So hungry. You don't know. The whole world is starving since the magic came back. The houses. The teddy bears. The swing sets. Everything has to eat now. Everything has blood. The Girl licks her lips. Remembers the Concord grapes.

Angie's voice sounds scared. You're thinking about eating me too. Aren't you?

No, the Little Girl lies. I came to rescue you. To bring you back.

To what? There's nothing left.

There has to be something left.

You can't beat Hymn. Sit down. Rest. Just for one second.

I'm taking you home, Angie.

I don't want to go. I like it here. You will too.

The Little Girl steals Angie then. Tucks her under her right arm. And runs.

* * *

The Girl doesn't know where she's going until she gets there. The wall of eyes. She stops when she sees it. Awed by the size and the countless glistening monocle loops.

How many eyes does He have? she asks.

All of them.

The eyes turn toward her again one by one as she walks past. The red light from her hand flickers. Fades. Sand starts to scrub the inside of her veins.

They eat up the light of you, Angie says. They turn you into sawdust and china. The hungry eyes with black tongues. You're the milk. They're the cats.

Just a little farther, the Little Girl tells herself. Her breath comes in short gasps. She is so hungry. Her stomach feels full of cold gnashing teeth.

What are you looking for anyway? You'll never find it.

Then the Little Girl stops and points. Look, Angie. Your eyes. Blue diamonds, blue diamonds.

She sets Angie down and pulls the knife from her apron. The blade a slice of fire in the shadows.

She grabs a fist full of flesh and slime. Pulls herself up. Stabs with the knife. Pulls herself up farther.

The nearest eyes lick her with their black tongues. She feels so cold. Angie keeps telling her to come down. To rest. To be still. But she doesn't.

She climbs like this until she is next to the blue diamonds. She reaches deep into the socket and pulls one free with a pop. It rolls over in her palm and looks at her.

The wall grumbles and shakes. Sand spews out and glitters in the air.

Don't do it, Angie says. I don't want my old eyes. I like my black opals.

The Little Girl is shivering now. How can eyeballs be so cold? They burn.

She reaches in and grabs the other eye. It tries to shake her grip. The monocle loop twists. Tries to cut her and steal her blood. The edge sharper than scissors. Sharper than her knife.

Don't do it, Angie says again. The wall shakes like jelly now. The rumbling gets louder.

The Girl pulls the eye free. The sand pours like a river where the eyes used to be and rips open the wall. Already there is a pile of golden sand below.

The slimy wall slips in her grip. She grabs for it again and misses and falls end over end. But the sand catches her. She struggles to her feet and staggers to her sister.

As Angie screams, the Little Girl pries out the black opals and pushes the old eyes in. They're too big at first. But she jams them in and somehow they work.

Then Angie blinks.

You beat Him, she says. Her lips don't look painted, instead like flesh. But they don't move either. You beat Hymn.

Maybe. Just a little.

The Little Girl wonders how her sister’s eyes would taste.

The sand rages down. The rest of the eyes in the wall spit on golden jets of dust. Then just as suddenly the sand stops. The eyes on the ground stand up using their black tongues like legs and begin to hop around. The monocle loops are still around them and spin like saw blades.

The eyes are hungry, Angie says. We should leave.

The sisters stare past the torn wall and into the core of Hymn. They see golden gears. Silver levers. Teddy bears as big as they are, running and running in a turning cage to keep the bellows pumping.

A whistle sounds in the fiery vast. Jets of steam wet the air and make it boil. And behind the gears and the grinding and the whistling steam they hear a clang clang clang. Constant. Never varying.

I think that's His heart, the Little Girl says.

It is. I can feel it in my seams. His hungry starving metal heart.

The Little Girl grabs a gear and starts to climb.

* * *

The heart is far below them now. She can see it still through the forest of gears. A giant kettle with a metal arm scooping out green soup and pouring it into funnels. Every scoop the arm hits bottom. Clang. Clang. Clang.

The soup stinks like rotten meat. She thinks she can see car tires in it. But her stomach still growls.

Are you still hungry? Angie says from under the girl's arm.

Yes.

Are you still thinking about eating me?

She doesn't answer. She kicks a gear instead hoping to hurt Hymn. But the gear doesn't budge.

Then she hears a new sound. Like a screen-door slamming. She sees teddy bears climbing toward her.

He set the bears loose. Run!

* * *

She kills the first bear near Hymn's skull. Cuts its hand off, then stabs it in the heart. The body falls with the knife still wedged in tight and bounces gear to gear until it hits a catwalk. Splat. A smear of thick green jelly.

No fair, he was apple!

Apple's my favorite, Angie says. And I'm hungry too.

The Little Girl stashes the hand in her apron. We'll eat it later, she says. She licks her fingers clean before she climbs and tries not to worry about how she will kill the other bears without a knife.

* * *

The skull is a hall of mirrors. Dark voids full of her own shape. Shorter here. Fatter there. Taller. And then a mirror that turns her body into cubes and moves them around. An eye where her lips should be. Her teeth in her throat. She stares.

The teddy bears. They're coming. Angie sounds calm. Too calm.

Do you want to get away?

I don't like being hungry. Easier to be still.

The Little Girl shivers. Angie is bigger now. Heavier. Her hair looks more like straw. The Little Girl wonders how she will feed Angie when she can't feed herself.

They find a ball of lightning bolts hissing and shivering against each other like snakes. Each white bolt trying to eat the next until it seems that each one is eating itself. Throbbing heat presses itself into their faces.

Hymn's soul, Angie says.

The Little Girl reaches her hand out toward the snakes of light but doesn't touch. Somehow the lightning is inside her eyes. He is changing me, Angie. Making me into something new.

Angie is quiet for a moment. Then: The bears. They're here.

The bears step around a corner wielding sharpened gears tied to sticks. Homemade meat cleavers to cleave girl meat.

Angie cowers in the corner. Shaking. Her hair looks like straw.

The Little Girl is tired and worn too thin. She’s seen too much violence. Done too much. She doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore. Don't make me do this, she says to the bears. Don't make me kill you.

A big blue bear with white paws laughs. Steps forward. He doesn't have to say he doesn't believe her. He says it by raising the sharp-toothed gear.

The Little Girl grabs a fistful of thunder with her four-fingered hand. The flesh scorches and blackens. Smells like burnt bacon. White lightning bleeds inside. Turns red. The psalm in her palm pulses loud. A hammer on the ears.

The bears freeze mid-step. They see their doom in red lightning.

She throws. Zeus from the hand of a child.

The bears are red ashes then, and the lightning returns and hides inside her hand. Hymn's skull unfolds outward like paper. White-bone origami undone. Smoke. The scent of cheesecake.

* * *

Two blocks ruined. Houses smoking voids. The swing set charred so it can only limp along on one rusted leg. Doll bodies scattered everywhere slowly changing to flesh.

But Hymn is still. Still and dead. All the many pieces of Him strewn and smoking and unmoving.

But the Little Girl can feel her hand tingle. Sees the sparks.

Because they are starving she and Angie eat the apple-flavored hand. The Girl starts at the pinky. Angie starts at the thumb.

One by one the stolen children wake. Some with their own eyes. Some with black opals still. And the two sisters tell them:

Don't sit on the swing set, and don't trust your friends. And feed any house before you go in. The world is alive since the magic came back, and children are small and make a good snack.

And everything tricks and everything cheats and everything everything everything eats.

S. Boyd Taylor lives in Dallas, Texas, where he dotes on his family, practices Internal Martial Arts, writes weird stories, and attempts to play guitar.

S. is a Writers of the Future Semifinalist and has a story forthcoming in Farrago's Wainscot. He was first published at age 13 in a 'zine called “Longbow” (1988). There’s an autographed copy roaming around somewhere, but the signature unfortunately reduces its resale value.

You can find his blog here: http://sboydtaylor.livejournal.com/