Day 739

He had never been allowed to sit on the plush armchairs of his aunt's house before. She used to say he'd break them, like they were made of porcelain instead of faux leather. No matter what he insisted (and after a few years it just became pure habit rather than desire) she'd always circle back to her final answer of "you'd only damage them with your persistent wriggling."

Fair point to her, he'd been squirmy as a child but mostly due to the cold wooden floors he'd been made to sit on while the adults got those invitingly comfortable seats. He only got the chance to sneakily sit on them when his aunt was taken to hospital with a bad chest infection. They insisted on keeping her in for a few nights and being the kind nephew he was, he'd offered to house-sit until she was well enough to return home.

The first thing he did when he got there was carefully sit on one of the chairs and not just any chair either - he sat on his aunt's favourite chair. The one she insisted was perfect for her delicate physique and arthritic back now cushioned him like it had been tailored to his own frame.

He must have fallen asleep there as he found his eyes opening to pure darkness. He remembered that the light switch was right beside the chair and flicked the room into yellow-tinged brightness. It never occurred to him to get up, not for the entire week he was there. He didn't eat or drink or move anything other than his right arm to gracefully flick the light on and off as day and night cycled about him.

By the time his aunt arrived home he was bone thin and lethargic, his skin the same shade of white as the chairs around him. The first thing his family did was to check the back of his neck to see how much of him the chairs had devoured. More than three inches off and he wouldn't be worth saving - at that point he'd be little more than impulses firing around the meat sack that used to be their little lad.