Sorry, Sedjet. Sorry Melissa, and everyone else.
But you WERE paying attention, weren’t you?

Didn’t you see the Idol absorb, not eat, anthro flesh?
Didn’t you hear them talk about how good it felt to belong to it?
Didn’t you see how they were all so inexorably drawn to it?
Didn’t you find yourself overwhelmingly curious about it?
Haven’t you always self so lonely and isolated?
Haven’t you always felt so hungry?

Aren’t you
always
so
hungry?

Transcript

1: In a flashback to Sedjet’s conversation with Julia. Julia is pressed up against the glass separator as she crawls back up to stand.

Julia: I didn’t touch it. I didn’t breathe it.

It wasn’t there on the planet.

I wasn’t sick and I’m- WE… we, we’re not… damaged…

2: Sedjet has leaned in, listening, watching with horror and confusion.

Julia (off-panel): And here… alone… I saw it in dreams. I heard it, but… it was my voice. I was talking. We were talking.

I know it now. Some… gut feeling. I can’t deny it anymore.

Sedjet…

Why do we get so hungry? So lonely? Why does the ache between us all hurt so much?

3: Sedjet steps back from the glass. Julia is still pressed close, face grinning and drooling. As her mentality breaks down, she’s grinning wider than before, face peeled back to show jagged, drooling teeth, her many eyes watching him.

Julia: We are the Black Idol.

All of us. Me. You. Melissa. Everyone.

We’re the same. We’re not us. We are the Idol in a dream.

We always were.