Hungry

by Daniel Parme

  “Pearson will be there.”

  And there it was. Nothing will kill the mood quite like the thought of a man who is quite possibly out to make sure that you become what you eat.

  She was right, of course. If I was going to be on time, or at least close to on time, I had no time to shower, so I got dressed and left. Although I did wash her out of my stubble, I would get to work with the scent of Synchek’s niece hiding out in my pants. There’s always something exciting about knowing you have sex on you, but this time I was a little worried. It’s not like anyone would be sniffing my crotch; even if they would, chances are they wouldn’t know it was Angela who’d been down there last night. Even the most potent of them aren’t that identifiable. But you don’t always think straight when you think you might die, so it was on my mind.

  I left Angela at my apartment, where she would leave for work at Barnes and Noble in an hour or so, just in case I was being followed. If someone broke in while she was still there, we’d be in trouble, but whoever might be following me wouldn’t wait outside the building once they’d seen me leave. They’d follow me. That’s what following someone is all about.

  I got into the waiting room and saw Eli sitting behind the desk, his coat already covering his pale, thin creepiness. “Figures. The one day I actually make plans around you coming in early, and you show up ten minutes late.”

  “Sorry, E.” Of course, in my head, I was thinking screw you, you ungrateful weirdo, but I didn’t want to get into that.

  “Yeah, well, there’s nothing to do. I don’t get it. Suddenly, nobody’s dying.”

  I laughed. Right out loud, I laughed. And it wasn’t a brief little chuckle or a quick snort of breath from my nostrils. This was a hearty, belly-shaker of a good time.

  “What the fuck are you laughing about?” He wasn’t pissed or offended or anything. He just couldn’t figure out what he could have said to get that reaction, so he asked. People want to know.

  Sometimes, you slip up. Sometimes, you tell them.

  “Trust me,” I said, catching my breath, “people are dying. People are most definitely dying.”

  Eli, he just stood there, frozen waist deep in an icy lake of befuddlement. “You on something, Eliot?”

  “Oh, not really.” I laughed again. “Not really.”

  “Whatever, man. I gotta go. Dick’s in his office. He wanted to see you as soon as you got here.” He put his bag over his shoulder and bolted.

  The last person who would see me alive, and I didn’t even get a goodbye.

  He did manage to get me to vomit a little in my mouth, though. I guess you take what you can get.

  Let’s think about that vomit for a moment. I’d never been so scared I puked. Come to think about it, I’d never felt any emotion so intensely that it made me sick. That vomit got me thinking maybe I should just leave, run out the door, screaming and waving my hands over my head like a terrified Muppet.

  But I didn’t. I just lingered there in the waiting area for a minute, the way the acid taste of puke lingered in my mouth.

  I couldn’t have left anyway. Something had to be done. I wasn’t sure what, exactly, because Angela had never gotten around to letting me in on her plan, but something would not have included running scared through the streets of the city. There were lives at stake, here. I wasn’t sure whose, exactly, because Devereaux had never gotten around to letting himself into my apartment, but more lives than mine, to be sure.

  So I went to Dick’s office.

  “Wasn’t sure you’d show up today, Travis,” he said, playing with his desk-caddy’s luggage, scrawling something onto something else.

  I sat on his couch and tried to pin my voice to the mat, to stop its shaking. “Well, it’s my job, Dick. Gotta pay the bills somehow, right?”

  He put the pen back into the golf bag and looked up. “The way you skipped out last night, Walter thought we’d have to put out a search party for you. He gave me an earful for taking you without telling him about it.”

  “No,” I said. “I think a man is only entitled to one search party per lifetime. I don’t want to get greedy.” I hoped the clever-boy routine would soften him up a little.

  He straightened up to show me it didn’t. “I’m not joking, Travis,” he said, and he came to stand directly in front of me so I’d have to look up at him, so I’d be reminded that I was smaller than what was going on here. “I just want to make sure you know that Walter means what he says about protecting our interests. You’re a good kid.” He put his hand on my shoulder and took a breath. “I much prefer seeing you walking into work as opposed to being wheeled in.”

  I’ve watched enough psychological/police dramas to know what was going on here. This was the old good cannibal, bad cannibal shtick. Walter the scary tough guy, Dick the compassionate, I’m here to help you guy.

  I figured I’d go with it. “I feel the same way, Dick. And I didn’t mean to make anyone nervous. I just had to leave. This has been a confusing couple of months.”

  “I can understand that. Sometimes, this is a difficult lifestyle to accept.” He meant that. He wasn’t a monster.

  “Next time you get the urge to take off like that, come talk to me. I’ll listen.” He meant that, too.

  “We don’t want you to stay because it will make us happy. We want you to stay because it will make you happy.” Yep, he meant that, too.

  “If it doesn’t make you happy, just talk to me or Walter about leaving, and we’ll figure something out.”

  That last one was total bullshit.

  “Thanks. I guess maybe having a little support would make this easier for me.” Two can play at this game.

  “Well, good.” He smiled, smug. “It looks like today’s going to be an easy day in this place, and I’m done with everything I needed to do, so I’m getting out of here. Here’s a snack if you get hungry.” He pulled a styrofoam container from his mini-fridge and handed it to me. “Leftovers from last night. I have more at home.”

  “Oh. Uh, thanks, Dick.” I hadn’t eaten breakfast, so I was sort of hungry. “Anything in particular you need me to do?”

  “Not that I can think of.” He got out into the waiting room, almost to the front door, and turned around. “Oh. You haven’t seen Angela since last night, have you? Walter’s niece? Apparently, she never went home last night.”

  I would have lied and said no, but it’s hard to speak when you’re about to choke on your bite of McGovern au piovre. I shrugged and shook my head instead.

  “Oh, well. I’m sure she’ll be around.” He lowered his head, almost a bow, and left.

  Chapter 28

  Dick was right; coming to terms with the fact that you are, by definition, by diet, a cannibal – it’s fucking hard.

  I’d been struggling with it since it first crossed my mind, way up on that mountain.

  The first time you eat someone is not like the first time you smoke pot, not like the first time you have sex. The first time you eat someone brings up a whole new set of ethical issues you never dreamed you’d have to deal with.

  It starts with the separation of body and soul, spirit, aura, whatever. In your head, you may have always thought you knew it – a body is just a vessel, a temporary home for what some would call our greater consciousness.

  How very worldly of you.

  But try looking at your friend’s face just before you have to cut him open. All the things you knew him to be, they all came from that face. That’s the face he wore when he did all those great things that were the reasons you loved him. All those great things he said, from that mouth.

  It’s not as easy as it sounds, separating the absolute truth about who that person was from what that person looked like.

  Granted, it’s easier if the person is a stranger, but it’s still no walk in the park.

  Then you start to think about that person’s family. You imagine the looks you’ll get from his mother. It’s a difficult expressi
on to picture because you can’t possibly imagine what it must be like to look into the face of the man who ate your son.

  Survival or not, you ate him. You chewed him up, swallowed him. He was dissolved by the acid in your stomach, absorbed through your intestines.

  Survival or not, you lived because he died.

  Survival or not, your crap was, at one point, comprised of this woman’s son.

  Even if she can possibly bring herself to understand, she’s going to hate you until the day she dies. She’ll hate you in ways you can’t possibly fathom because you’ll never have a reason to hate anybody that much.

  Of course, this is only if she knows it was you. Unfortunately, I had two mothers to deal with. Exponentially worse, I had to look both of those mothers in the face. And they used to like me so much.

  If you’re a religious person, you worry that this may be a big no-no. It’s not written anywhere in the Bible, there’s no commandment that reads “Thou shalt not eat the flesh of another man”, but it’s got to be somewhere in the bi-laws.

  If you’re a spiritual person, you worry about the karma, the chi. This has to put the negative way in the lead. If you ever want to recover, you better figure out how to bring about world peace, and you better do it quick.

  If you’re neither religious nor spiritual, you start to think that maybe you should be. If anyone can forgive you, it’s a benevolent spirit who’s created the universe.

  The first time you eat someone, since you’ve never researched the laws regarding this type of thing, you worry about the possibility of going to jail for a very, very long time. You don’t worry too much because it’s not like you killed this person, but the system is a funny place, a house of mirrors, so you can never be too sure.

  The thing is, you’re so worried about all this other shit that you don’t have time to worry about the potential psychological effects this will have on you. If you’re this close to eating somebody, chances are your psyche’s pretty fucked anyway.

  But after the first one, things are a little different. Everything gets easier with practice.

  It’s dissociation. It’s forgetting your glasses are on your face. You start to get used to not thinking about it. You just chew and swallow. You just eat. You’re hungry, and you’ve already eaten one person, so what the hell? Once you’re fucked, you’re fucked. And besides, who’s counting?

  You are, if you’re smart.

  And you’re also keeping track of the circumstances. The first three, they died in a plane crash, and you would have died if you hadn’t eaten them. You did what you had to, and that’s perfectly forgivable.

  The fourth, he was slipped to you like he was a mickey. You didn’t know what you were eating, so that wasn’t your fault. Also forgivable, but barely.

  This fifth guy, though, this guy you’re eating while you’re at work, is different. Like the first three, if you wouldn’t have eaten him, you’d have died, passed on, been murdered, whatever. So, when you rationalize, this guy was also a survival thing, too.

  And there it is. It was survival cannibalism, and you’re protected by the law. It’s not like you’re some crazy fucker, and they’re going to find kidneys in your crisper. It’s not like they’re going to come to where you work and find you noshing on this guy who’s missing and presumed dead, murdered.

  And that’s where it all falls apart. You’re sitting at work, eating leftover dead guy and enjoying it.

  That’s where it all falls apart, and you know that things are wrong that need to be fixed. But not until you’re finished with your meal. You did, after all, miss breakfast.

  Chapter 29

  “Yeah, right. Whatever you say, man.”

  I was at Dave’s apartment, Adam’s apartment, trying to tell Dave what was going on. I told him I hadn’t seen Adam in a couple days, so I couldn’t help him get his weed. I told him Virginia was more than a little pissed at me because I sent her home with a potential murderer, and I didn’t even wait up to see if she got there safely. I told him that the meetings I’d gone to, the meetings Adam and Virginia had told him about, were meetings for people who like to eat people. I told him that his uncle, my boss, was a founding member.

  I told Dave everything. Passwords, fancy dinners, unclaimed dead. The possibility of becoming one of those unclaimed dead, one of those fancy dinners.

  I told him everything, and all he could say was, “Whatever you say, man.”

  I could have killed him. I told him he had to believe me. His uncle was a cannibal. I knew. I’d seen him. I’d been there with him.

  “So, you’re a cannibal, too?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not a cannibal.”

  “Then why were you allowed to go to cannibal meetings?”

  “Because they asked me to go. But I’m not one of them. I swear to fucking Christ I’m not.”

  He ground a butt into the sole of his shoe, tossed the filter into the trash. “So you didn’t eat those fancy dinners, then?”

  I felt like he was missing the point. “No. I mean, yeah, I ate the dinners. Just the two. The first one, they didn’t tell me what it was. And the second they forced on me.” I saw no need to tell him about my gift from his uncle at work.

  “Oh. Let me see if I got this straight.” He took a sip of whatever he was drinking. “A one-armed man sends you a letter inviting you to meet him at the James Street Tavern. So you do, and then he invites you to speak at this meeting. So you do, and they feed you, but they don’t tell you what they’re feeding you. Then, on your own, you find out about the next meeting, and you go. They feed you again, but this time they tell you you’re eating a dead guy. But you don’t want to eat a dead guy, so they make you and tell you they’ll kill you if you tell anyone. Is that about it?”

  I couldn’t tell if he was patronizing me or not, but at least he’d been paying attention. “That’s about it, yeah. And I think Virginia may have gone home with this guy that the one-armed man had following me.”

  “Wait. She did a guy you think might kill you?”

  “No,” I said. “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if she did, but all I know is they left at the same time, in separate cars. She left a message, but didn’t say anything about him being there.”

  “Ok. And this guy wouldn’t kill her because she doesn’t know anything, right?”

  “I hope he’s not going to kill her, anyway.” I wasn’t fully convinced of this, but I was working on it.

  “And he’s really only after you?”

  “Right. Well, I think he might be after me, and only maybe to kill me. And if he knows about it, this girl that stayed with me last night. She’s from there, too.”

  “So, you fucked one of them?”

  “She’s not one of them, but I did fuck her. She’s One-arm’s niece.”

  He looked like his head might explode.

  “It’s a long story.”

  Dave, poor Dave, had had enough. “All right. Shut up. That’s enough. There’s no fucking way you’re telling the truth. No fucking way. I mean, come on, you don’t really expect me to believe this, do you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

  “But, come on, Dave. Why would I make all this up? Have I ever lied to you before?” I thought for a second. “I mean, other than about that girl in college.”

  “I think you should go back to the doctor, man. You sound like a fucking lunatic. And you’re talking like you’re all coked up.”

  I had to give him that one. “But it’s not coke. It’s… It’s people, man. You get all this energy and you can’t…”

  “Wait, wait, wait.” He stood up. “When’s the last time you ate someone?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “They made you do this today?”

  “No. Your uncle had some leftovers in his office. He gave them to me.” It just slipped out.

  “And you ate them?!”

 
“I, uh…”

  He made like he was going to hit me, and I, all folded up in the chair in his living room, went to protect my face. But he didn’t hit me. All he said was, “Wouldn’t that make you a cannibal by choice?”

  I’d have rather he hit me. I knew Dave was right.

  People want to know.

  I want to know.

  But I did not want to know how messed up I’d become. I did not want to know that I was falling off of that fence that separates the crazy from the eccentric, and falling to the wrong side, at that. I did not want to know that I had found a path and taken it, only to find that it was leading me to a place where I’d be hiding human blow-up dolls under my bed and collecting fingers in a coffee can.

  It’s funny how something so big can change so suddenly. How you can go from being fucked up by force to being fucked up by choice. How you don’t even notice the change until someone else points it out for you.

  It only takes a little nibble. Just that first bite. Just because you’re hungry.

  “Shit, Dave.” I put my head in my hands. Melodramatic, yes, but not intentionally.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  He tried to rub the skin right off his face, smushing his cheeks and nose, grinding his eyelids with his fists. “Oh shit, Travis.”

  I lit two cigarettes and hoped he’d take one. He did, and without hesitation, but this does not mean he was ok with all this new information.

  “Jesus! You’re a fucking cannibal! What the fuck, man! I mean, how… why…what the fuck?!” He was in a healthy pace now, back and forth across his living room, hands gesturing out in front of him. “This is so fucked up, Travis. I mean, shit. Like, I get the whole accident thing. Anyone would’ve done that. But this is fucking crazy. You are fucking crazy.”

  He was handling it surprisingly well.

  “And my uncle?! Shit. My uncle! I swear to God, if I find out you’re fucking with me, I’ll fucking kill you!”

  “You’ll have to get in line, buddy. And besides, you should be relieved if you find out I’m lying.” For a second, I thought I may have said the wrong thing. This was only because, for that second, Dave’s eyes were on fire. I swear it. His irises, brown and plain, actually went reds and oranges. It was really frightening.