I woke up to the morning sun creeping its way through the cracks in my bck out curtains. I wanted to turn my back on the day and resume my slumber. But the nightmares that haunted my sleep caused me to hesitate. I was awake now, better not to indulge in sweet oblivion and rather get ready for the day.

  I crawled out of bed and righted myself. I stretched out towards the ceiling hearing my vertebrae clicking into pce and my muscles straining against the exertion. I rexed and went back into a half slouch.

  I gnced at the mirror across my room and examined myself. Gaunt greyish green skin clung to my skeleton, my ribs visible through my skin. My hair, long and dark, spilled out from my head and over my shoulders. I adjusted it slightly so that I didn’t have to look at the entirety of my face. Eyes red, teeth sharp and nose just existing inoffensively.

  By the standards of a Ghoul I wasn`t too bad looking. I had a full head of hair for one, a rarity amongst my own kind. Most Ghoul men went for the clean shaven look but I refused. My hair was a blessing from the Goddess and I wasn`t going to take it for granted. Not to mention it helped me hide my unsightly face.

  I took a deep breath and did a few joint exercises; bent my knees, moved my arms about. Loosened myself up a bit then tried to straighten my back as much as I could and held it for as long as I dared. A few minutes passed and I let out a gasp, hunching back over slightly.

  It had taken a while and required a lot of work but my spine was slowly straightening itself. It was a common problem with Ghouls, a history of creeping and skulking through tunnels had left us with curved spines. Those days were behind us now but we still had to deal with the unfortunate result. Still, I took soce in the progress I had made.

  I dug through my wardrobe and got dressed in my usual baggy attire. Loose sweat pants held up with a rope and a two sizes too big hoodie. Anything to hide my skinny, diseased looking frame. Another downside to being born a Ghoul, a ck of viable nutritional sources.

  We weren`t always this way you know. Things used to be better, so to speak. We used to dine on the finest of cadavers full of everything we needed. We were still lithe back then but also muscur. Now however, after the great awakening, we had to do with bone meal porridge and whatever other supplements we could afford.

  Which for me, being a poor student and all, meant I was stuck with the porridge. It wasn`t too bad, but people still looked at me funny for eating it. Wondering where I had gotten the bone meal from. Not even I knew and frankly I didn`t care to be honest.

  I made sure I looked somewhat presentable in the mirror, it was good enough. I grabbed my book bag and my keys and left my dorm, deciding it would be a good time to grab some coffee on the way to css.

  Coffee, if you can believe it, was the single saving grace of all Ghoul kind. Bone meal, as you can imagine, isn`t exactly the best source of energy. Caffeine however was and to our fortune it did not disagree with our backwards digestive systems.

  I arrived at the on campus coffee shop and ordered myself a double shot of bck coffee, no milk or sugar necessary. The barista, a purple haired gnome girl with way too many piercings, gave me a funny look before tending to my order. I was used to the looks, it had only been a few years since the great awakening so Ghouls weren`t a common sight yet. In fact I was pretty sure I was the only one on campus.

  I fiddled with my hair a bit, trying to get it to obscure my face a little more. My coffee was ready, I paid for it as well as a bone meal protein bar. This too caused the barista to look at me with an unsettled look. Again I tried to ignore it but couldn`t help but feel self-conscious.

  It`s not like I enjoyed having to maintain a cannibalistic diet, it was my bodies fault. Well that and my ancestors I guess, but they were dead so bming them was pointless. It was just the luck of the dice. Mind you, people never gave anyone grief for eating meat. Heck even the elves had stopped compining about other races eating animals when it was proven that pnts and mushrooms had feelings.

  But Ghouls, we were always getting the short end of the stick. Yes, we used to eat people, living people and dead people. Yeah fine, we would hunt them down and tear them limb from limb and cackle while we did it. But that was back then, before our Goddess Valka had ascended and gifted us all with the sentience we so desperately craved.

  We knew better now, we only ate people who volunteered for such a thing and even then it was done after they were dead and in a way that was less unseemly. Like my protein bar for example, which I nibbled on. It was a simple combination of blood and bone meal mixed up, pressed into shape and packaged. Far less barbaric that sucking the marrow straight from a femur.

  Anyway, I tried not to think about it too much, tried to talk about it even less. People would think what they thought and sadly they chose to be close minded about the matter. Their loss if you ask me, burying or cremating ones dead sounded like an awfully ineffective away of disposing of one’s dead.

  I made it to css a good half an hour early but that wasn`t too bad. It would give me time to organise my notes from the previous lesson. You know, people had thought I was crazy to enrol in university to become a healer. The more generous opinions thought it was a waste of time and effort, the less than generous thought I was doing it to snack on the dead or the dying.

  The truth, as it always was, was far simpler. I just wanted to help people, to give back to the world. I liked to think it was what our Goddess Valka wanted. To use our sentience for good, to change people’s perceptions of undead kind.

  I was fortunate to get myself a full schorship to study here. It wasn`t the most prestigious of universities but it was good enough. Css was ready to start and I sat ready and eager to learn as much as I could.

  Alchemy for Beginners, Herbalism 101 and Basic First Aid were my morning csses and coincidently my favourite csses. They, I felt, were the most important when it came to the basics of healing. Dressing wounds and creating poultices and medicines. All good stuff that I absolutely ate up and digested whole.

  It was midday by this point and I needed to get myself some lunch. The on campus food court didn`t stock any Ghoul-friendly meals so I had to sort myself out. I found a nice sunny spot in the courtyard and dug out a pack of dry bone meal from my bag, just add water.

  I sat there quietly, watching other students as they passed by and tried to enjoy the chalky fvour of my porridge. I admired the sights and the sounds and just generally tried to enjoy the moment and the self-awareness I had been gifted with.

  I still had memories of the before times, memories that would turn up as nightmares when I slept. Memories of hunting, killing and devouring the innocent. I shook my head, that wasn`t me, that was someone else, someone who didn`t know better. I was not to bme for the actions of someone who looked like me but very clearly wasn`t me.

  I took a deep breath and tried to distract myself again with the passer-by’s. Then I saw her, Vyke, the half-orc, my bully. She gred at me with a sinister smile from across the courtyard. The second our eyes met she and her minions started walking straight for me.

  Vyke was a delinquent, only allowed on campus because she attended night csses and made the universities athletics team look good. I hated to admit it, but she was a good looking woman. Tall, strong and confident. A handsome face with hair that looked good both loose and tied up. A killer smile with sparkling lower canines and a fashion sense that bordered on scandalous. Her muscles weren’t the only big thing attached to her body, she also sported a huge set of tits that she loved to show off. Low cut shirts, strapless tops and when the weather permitted just a sports bra.

  Still, as conventionally attractive as she was I was disgusted by her for the most part. She might be beautiful on the outside but on the inside her heart pumped venom. Her and her friends, fellow delinquents, had finally reached me, just as I finished my meal. I tried to get up to dispose of my trash but they blocked my way.

  “Well if it isn`t the lil corpse eater. Who did you eat today hmmm? Did they have a name, or a family?”, Vyke queried with a sickened smile that revelled in my torment.

  “I wouldn`t know.”, I mumbled back, not interested in whatever she had to say. I tried to move passed her but she remained firmly in my way.

  “That`s a real shame. But I guess it makes sense. Wouldn`t feel very good if you knew you had just eaten a father with seven kids would it.”, she sniped back, snatching the empty pre-packaged bone meal from my hand. She tossed it over her shoulder and looked at me with a wry grin. “You know you really shouldn`t litter, then again, your kind likes rolling around in their own filth don`t they.”

  An image fshed in my mind: bones and half eaten carcasses littered about a burrow. A memory of the before.

  I shook my head and force my way passed Vyke and her friends. One of them tripped me as I moved through and I colpsed to the floor near the empty bone meal packet. My knees burnt from the impact and I bit down my pain. I knew better than to give them the satisfaction, to see me bleed.

  I grabbed the discarded packet on the ground and picked myself up, skulking towards the trash can to dispose of it. I kept walking after, to my next css, hearing Vyke yell after me.

  “Try not to eat any unaccompanied minors while you`re out and about. Would be a real shame if you were decred feral and had to be put down. A real shame.”, she snickered, ughing with her friends, giving each other high fives.

  I stifled my anger and just marched myself to css, their words burning their way into my mind without my consent.

  My st three csses of the day were my least favourite. Intro to Anatomy, Healing through Prayer and Basic Psychology. Subjects which I knew had a pce but just weren`t my particur favourites.

  Studying anatomy always got me funny looks from people, like they thought I was reverting back to old ways. Healing through prayer was pointless because the only Goddess ghouls had was Valka and she wasn`t exactly the healing kind of deity. Lastly was psychology, which, yes helped me to expin a lot of the bigoted behaviour I ran in to but did nothing to make me feel better about it.

  Just because I understood why people were mean to me didn`t make it any less painful.

  As the sun began to set I made my way back to my dorm, back to another bowl of bone meal porridge, a single supplement pill and the warmth of my bed. That st one I wouldn`t get until after I was done with studying todays notes. I needed to maintain high marks for my schorship and that often required pulling an all-nighter. I didn`t mind though, the darkness was comforting.