I know hunger more than you ever could. I have been “gifted” with a curse from what some call God, though I clearly see her in a different light. She decided one day to punish me for reasons I am uncertain. I simply woke up and I was hungry. Not hungry in a peckish kind of way, not hungry in a discomforting kind of way, not hungry in starving kind of way. Hungry in a kind of way that is reminiscent of having a hole where your stomach would be and your body desperately trying to tell you something is wrong the only way it knows how. Pain. Indescribable, unrelenting pain. I thought I could simply eat, and the problem would be solved, just a cruel joke my body was pulling on itself. I was wrong. I ate and ate and ate but I was still hungry, I had to eat more, I had to eat something, I had to eat someone.
I don’t remember the first time I tasted human meat very well. I remember it was my own arm, out of sheer desperation to alleviate the pain I took a heaping chunk of it off. To my surprise it was filling. It alleviated the pain and I felt a moment of serendipitous relief as the blood trickled from my teeth down my arm and onto the once clean wooden planks below. I thought that was it, but I could feel the urge deep down, dormant. I realized that this hunger will not go away after such a small snack and my body can only hold so much flesh.
I was not a murderer. I was not a cannibal. I will not kill, I will not eat, this is a test that I can overcome, I told myself. Other people will not suffer because of my ailment and I will not be the cause of pain and destruction in others when I have felt such pain myself. I can overcome this. I can overcome this.
However, the hunger remained unwavering. It grew and grew with such force that it drove me mad. The pain was hardly bearable, and to have the solution be right in front of me at all times, just out of reach, was torture. What do morals matter when you’re desperate? It’s survival. I was hungry and I must survive. I stormed outside and made my way to the neighbors plot.
My first full meal was alive when I had them, albeit not for long. It started with their thigh, if I remember correctly. I strapped them to a chair and made sure their leg was secure and sunk my teeth into the side of the leg. I suppose I must’ve hit an important artery because they fortunately bled out only a few minutes later. Good for them. What came next disgusted even me, selective memory has blocked it out. The point is, I had no leftovers and a big mess to clean, but I wasn’t hungry. I had a feast.