Gluttony is Next to Godliness

There’s a word more evil- more sinister- than any other. It leaves a rather unpleasant taste on the peaked taste buds of wet tongues everywhere. Maybe unpleasant isn’t the correct word for it. Vile, foul, disgusting, putrid; any synonym stands in the shadows of it, only adding layers to the horror.

What word, you ask, could evoke such an ardent response simply by allowing it to slip past lips or spill onto a page?

Hunger.

At first read, it seems no more harmful than any other. 

Merriam-Webster defines it as, ”feeling an uneasy or painful sensation from lack of food;” 

Such words, of course, reveal no underlying depravity. A methodical observance with no bias, no feeling. To read this definition with naive eyes and feel nothing is to be expected. But to observe hunger up close... That’s an entirely new experience riddled with it’s own consequences. 

There’s many different kinds of hunger. Hunger for food, hunger for affection, hunger for property, and hundreds more. 

Everyone comes into contact with their own form, but the one that brings revulsion to the hearts of many is the one defined above. However, at the same time, not. Not the hunger that has you wandering to the fridge or the nearest store; this is the hunger that drives you to insanity. The kind of starvation that burns morals to the ground and stomps on them with a toothy grin covered in gore.

Andrew wasn’t paying enough attention when it stumbled into his lap, mistook it for a man more interested in him than he was comfortable with in that dive bar wherever the hell he was. It brought back a look from his youth. A man sitting on the side of the road, body wrapped in a large, filthy blanket, eyes sunken and cheeks hallow. Andrew had rolled down his friends car window, zealously throwing an enormously large cup of soda at the homeless man, hitting him right in the chest with that pitch he had perfected after seven years of baseball. 

The look in the eyes of the man staring at him now made him restless, so he’d grabbed his girlfriend’s tiny dark hand, squeezing in emphasis to the fact that he was with her. A girl. His girlfriend. With breast and sweet doe eyes that made his blood drift downwards.

Relief washed over him with waves when he saw the man move his attention elsewhere, and Andrew finally gave Kendra the awareness he had been neglecting her the whole night. 

“Where were you, baby?” she asked, pulling away from his tight hold to lay her hand on the back of his neck, noting the perspiration building among the tiny hairs.

Andrew’s eyes narrowed without knowing, jerking his head away from her invasive fingers. “I’ve been here the whole time. How did you not notice me sitting beside you?”

 Kendra sighed, eyeing the room in her attempt at avoiding her boyfriends glare. “I meant in your head. You were with me physically, but not mentally,” she scooted to the edge of her stool in discomfort. “Or emotionally,” her quiet mumble added.

“Whatever, you know I’m not, like, into talking about stuff,” he so eloquently provided, once again leaving Kendra squirming. 

They stopped speaking after that, and later, Andrew wished he had just kissed her and left to their hotel, whispering apologies that he probably wouldn’t have meant.

In his pouting, he almost didn’t see the man from before return, same perverse gaze from before, but this time accompanied by four other men. He couldn’t quite recognize what had been clouding their expressions then, but he soon learned. 

The couple was leaving out of the building and heading through the alley that they had taken to get there from the hotel when Kendra spoke up again, reaching for his hand.

“Andrew, there’s someone here.”

Andrew immediately spun around, searching the dark, but finding no one. “Come on, Ken. Stop worrying.” But inside, his stomach was churning butter made from bile and four hour old hot wings that had taken up too much space. 

The next sign that something wasn’t quite right came when Kendra knelt over, scraping the brick wall with her fingertips. “Andrew, I don’t feel so good.”

Andrew grabbed her shoulders softly, watching her with concern and annoyance. She had been drinking too much. This was her fault. “I’m going back to the hotel. Find me when you learn your limits,” he shot back, lifting himself from her crumpled form and moving out of the alley.

When the sharp pain cut through his head, rendering him helpless while large, calloused hands yanked him up from the pavement, Andrew could see Kendra now laying in a puddle of her own vomit a block away, not noticing him while she held her hair above her head.

“What-what’s going on?” His voice was rasped by the gurgling of saliva in his throat. He wanted to sound intimidating, but sounded nothing more than an elderly man deprived of his daily glass of water. 

They didn’t answer him, and within moments, the world switched from hazy vibrant colors to deep, irrefutable black. 

When he awoke, it wasn’t to Kendra picking up his socks and underwear like he usually did on a Sunday morning. 

It was to flat yellow teeth on his naked inner thigh, biting down just right for him to not know if it was playful or malicious, but breathed out something akin to a groan anyway. Then, Andrew saw the man from the club, teeth still pressed against his skin, and before Andrew could protest, the teeth sank in completely, tearing the flesh and gashing through the muscle like a fork through roast beef. Warmth dribbled down his spasming legs and he curled his toes from the white hot pain the wracked up his spine and out his eyes, feeling like they were going to pop out and bounce along the floor until finding purchase in the dirt. He screamed, shrieking aimlessly into the dark room, listening as the sounds echoed back to him. It oddly made him feel less alone.

Another mouth bit through the skin of his shoulder, eating him alive with vigor, Andrew recognized the look on their faces. 

He’d never seen it so pure before.

Never witnessed it beyond a sharp pain when he went too long without food. 

But this- this was beyond that. This was insatiable.  

Hunger.