The Grief Eater

Grief has a scent. It is heavier than death itself—an iron tang laced with rot and the sour musk of sleepless nights. It seeps through cracks in the soul, lingering in kitchens where dinner plates still sit untouched, in bedrooms where pillows remember the weight of those who will never return.

That is where it comes. The Grief Eater.

No one sees it at first. It waits in the corners of photographs, in the blur of shadows beneath staircases. It waits for the house to fall silent after the last mourner has gone, after the casseroles in the fridge have grown cold and congealed. It waits until the bereaved are alone, hollowed out, and whispering names into the dark as if the dead might answer.

And then it feeds.

Its mouth is not a mouth, but a hollow that opens wherever the sorrow is deepest: in the center of a chest, in the curl of a sob, in the moment someone screams into their palms. It presses close, unseen, drinking the agony as though it were honey. The more it devours, the less the grieving remember of their loss. At first, it feels like mercy—like someone has lifted the unbearable weight.

But the Grief Eater is no savior. It leaves nothing behind.

Photographs grow blank-eyed. Faces in memory blur and dissolve. Voices of the dead grow faint until they are silenced altogether. Soon, even the graves are forgotten, their stones worn smooth, their names unspoken. A person consumed by the Grief Eater cannot recall who they have lost—only that something vast and important has been torn away.

And the creature smiles, though no one ever sees it.

You may ask: how do I know this? Because it came for me. It took my wife’s laughter, my son’s face, my daughter’s lullabies. It hollowed me out until I was lighter than air, a man unchained from love and sorrow alike. For a while, I thought I was free.

But freedom is only emptiness by another name.

The Hunger Deepens

In the weeks that followed, I began to notice small things vanishing. Not just memories—objects, too. My wedding band was the first. One morning I woke and found my finger bare, though I had never removed it in all the years since the ceremony. Later, the framed photographs on the mantle were gone, the glass rectangles filled with nothing but fog, as if smoke had seeped behind the glass and erased everything within.

Neighbors came to offer condolences, but even they seemed confused. They would look at me strangely, as if trying to place my name. One of them, a woman who had brought soup after the funeral, frowned as she stood in my doorway and said, “I thought you lived alone.” Then she blinked, shook her head, and quickly left.

The Grief Eater was still feeding—but now not only on my sorrow. It was feeding on me.

The Hollow House

I stopped leaving the house. The world outside seemed too sharp, too loud, too filled with faces that didn’t remember me. The walls grew damp with shadow. I swore I could hear something moving in the attic at night, not footsteps exactly, but the sound of paper tearing slowly, methodically—like someone unraveling the fabric of my life page by page.

When I tried to sleep, I felt the hollow press of its mouth on my chest. Not a kiss, not a bite, but a suction, pulling at the last threads of who I was. Sometimes, when I awoke, I found words missing from my vocabulary. I would reach for a thought and find only silence. I began writing things down, frantic scrawls on scraps of paper: I had a wife. I had children. Their names…

But the ink bled and blurred. Each morning, the words were less legible, until they were gone entirely. The paper itself eventually dissolved into dust in my hands.

The Final Meal

Last night, I saw it. Truly saw it.

The Grief Eater stood at the foot of my bed, tall and thin as a shadow cast against firelight. Its face was not a face, but a void, and within that void, I saw all I had lost. My wife’s smile stretched there, distorted; my children’s laughter echoed faintly from its depths. They were inside it—swallowed, preserved, and broken.

“You’ve taken enough,” I whispered, though my voice shook. “Leave me.”

It did not answer. It never does. Instead, it opened wider, the void splitting me open with its gaze. I felt my breath torn from my lungs, my skin prickle and loosen as though preparing to slough away. I realized, with a clarity sharper than any knife, that the Grief Eater had not come to take what I loved. That was only the beginning. What it truly feasts upon is the self that love creates.

I am the final course.

Tonight, I will not resist. Tonight, I will let it consume me, because I no longer remember how not to. And when the last of me slips down its gullet, I wonder—will there be anything left? Or will someone, somewhere, feel a sudden weight of sorrow without knowing why, and begin to whisper names they never knew?

If you are reading this, beware. The Grief Eater does not leave its table empty for long.

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