The Feast in Apartment 6B

an feasts on child as eyeless creatures swarm from shadows, hunger in their snapping jaws.

By the time the neighbours called the police, the smell had been there for weeks.
A thick, rotting stench leaked from the door of 6B, curling into the hall like invisible fingers.
Officer Raines kicked the door in. The hinges groaned, and the air inside hit him like a slap.

The apartment was dark except for the flicker of a television—cartoons playing on loop. Something wet squelched under his boot. He looked down. A hand. Small. The skin was grey and peeling, and the fingernails bitten down to the quick.

From the kitchen came a sound—slow, deliberate chewing.

He raised his flashlight.

A man sat at the table, gaunt and pale, shirt soaked to the chest in blackened blood. Before him, a mound of meat glistened on a cracked plate. The meat twitched. A child's arm dangled from his mouth, teeth tearing through tendon. He chewed with a sickening calm, looking up only when the beam hit his face.

His eyes were filmed over, yet fixed directly on Raines.

“You’re just in time,” the man rasped, spitting out a stringy vein. “There’s plenty left.”

Behind him, in the shadows, something moved—several somethings. Tiny, eyeless heads rose from the floor. Little hands clawed the linoleum. Raines realized they weren’t children. Not anymore.

The man smiled, his lips splitting where the skin had dried.
“They get hungry fast.”

The swarm rushed forward, teeth snapping, the sound like a hundred knives sawing through meat. The flashlight fell, spinning wildly before going dark.

The chewing never stopped.