The Hunger

by Ryan Casey

  “Mum,” Jonny said. He could see the disappointment in her face. Her smile had gone back slightly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to flip. It’s just… well, I don’t want you thinking I need help. I don’t. I’m perfectly happy, I really am. I don’t worry about things. I’m… I’m living my dream.”

  Jonny’s mum looked back at her son. She blinked fast. Her eyes were watery. They exchanged a stare for another few minutes. Jonny could tell she wanted to say something. He could tell she wanted to go against his word.

  And deep down, deep inside, he kind of wanted that too.

  He wanted his mum to tell him he wasn’t okay and that he needed a kick up the backside to get back out into the world.

  He wanted to know that the way he was living wasn’t the only way.

  He lifted his half-full bowl of Frosties and headed over to the ornate white sink, which was in front of a large window, looking out at their garden.

  “Pour those down the… Oh, bloody hell, Jonny.”

  The Frosties slurped down the sink, going soggy as they gathered around the plughole. Cereal down the toilet, she’d always say. Every day, without fail.

  But every day, without fail, the cereal would go down the sink. He didn’t do it on purpose. He didn’t do it to be a dick.

  His mind was just elsewhere.

  Usually, it was in that doctor’s office, at 1.14 p.m. on August 29th, 2013.

  He wasn’t sure he’d ever left that room. The Jonny he was—the real Jonny—had never left that room.

  He probably never would leave that room.

  He walked across the cold tiles of the kitchen floor and back through the door.

  “Have a good day, son,” Jonny’s mum said. Her voice was flailing and weak. It sounded sympathetic rather than genuine. She was playing the game, still. The illusion of normality game. The “say the right thing” game.

  Jonny thought about turning around and thanking his mum. He thought about going over to her and giving her a hug for all her support and all her concern. He thought about sitting down with her, the pair of them looking on the Internet for a part-time job.

  But he just kept on walking, towards the stairs, up the stairs, down the light brown light brown light brown triple-assault of a corridor, then back into his dark, clammy cave.

  Old Jonny wanted all those things he’d thought about, in his mind.

  But Old Jonny couldn’t have any of those things, because Old Jonny was stuck in that doctor’s office, twenty-one weeks ago.

  Denise Ainsthwaite could pinpoint the exact moment she lost Jonny.

  She was sitting outside Royal Preston Hospital. Jonny had called her and asked her to come along because he’d had an appointment with a doctor about one of these routine STI tests. Nothing major. Jonny always needed a lift to one place or another. She didn’t think much of it.

  Not until he got in the car, his face completely pale.

  She remembered asking him what was wrong. Whether he’d had another late night. He’d seen some friends the night before, so it made sense.

  But the way he stared out of the window of the car. His eyes were wide, the whites bulging. His hand looked like it was shaking.

  “Jonny, what is it?” she asked, as they sat in the visitor bay in front of the hospital. It was a quiet day. Stuffy and humid, but quiet. The window of the car was partly open.

  Jonny turned to her, and he just spat it out, just like that, staring her right in the eyes. “I’ve got HIV. They’ve done two blood tests and both have come back positive.”

  And then, he’d hugged her and he’d cried and she’d cried with him.

  She couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. Perhaps when he was a baby, or a toddler. No—it was when he was seven. He was going on a roller-coaster with Stuart—his dad—at the Blackpool Pleasure Beach. They waited for forty-five minutes to queue for this roller-coaster. The Big One, it was. When he got to the front of the queue, the guy working there told him to stand against a wall for measuring. Turned out he wasn’t big enough. “Come back next year,” the guy had said.

  That’s what Jonny seemed the most upset about. He’d held it together until that point.

  “But next year is forever away,” he screamed, as they bundled him in the back of their car and drove home, salt and vinegar-laced fish and chips—the smell of the seaside—so strong in this car.

  “It’s forever away,” he screamed, over and over.

  But now, here he was, a recluse, trapped in a self-imposed prison, crying inside over something that really was years away, once again. Her son hated waiting. Arrive five minutes early to a party and Denise would never hear the end of it.

  A part of her was certain that her son would’ve preferred to have just rolled over and died in that doctor’s office. He’d rather have rolled over and died than be told he had a lifetime of waiting ahead of him.

  In a way, he had died in that doctor’s office. Old Jonny, who used to be the cheeky, likeable life of the party, had died.

  Now he had no university to go to and distract himself—a decision that Denise regretted a little as the days went on, the days and weeks and months without seeing his friends. He said he had his music, sure, and God knew she wanted him to succeed. But he was living a lie. He wasn’t working on any music. She knew that and he knew that.

  But it was a game. A face they had to hold. Because if the illusion cracked, then the world would fall apart.

  Denise finished off her smoothie from the new blender and retched. Too sour, way too sour. Bit of a daft idea anyway, to be honest. She didn’t even like smoothies, not really. A quick way to get the five-a-day, though. Really, it was to encourage Jonny. She’d read on the Internet that a stable exercise and vitamin regime would keep him fit and healthy. He could live a long, worthwhile life, right the way into his fifties and sixties these days. The blood tests had shown no real sign of CD4 decrease in the last few months, not significantly, which was another positive. By her calculations—or rather, the Internet’s—his HIV would progress when he was in his mid-thirties. He’d start his first batch of treatment then, and by then the treatment would have further improved.

  They might even have a cure by then. Who knew?

  But Jonny didn’t share her attitude. Jonny didn’t share her optimism. The HIV had changed Jonny. He woke, he ate, he “worked,” he ate, he slept.

  Not so much sleep, though, she knew that too.

  She grabbed the paper again and flicked through the job section. It’s a shame he didn’t want a part-time job at the local ASDA. It was near enough to her workplace at the sorting office. It’d get him out of the house, keep his mind off things. Might even meet some new friends. A girlfriend, even.

  She scanned the job listings and sighed as she placed the newspaper back on the table. Above her, she heard footsteps. A large thud. The sound of her son climbing back into bed. “Working,” apparently. “Working.”

  She wished she could do something. She was “too patient, too lenient,” according to Stuart, but it was hard to know how to play these things. Mothers didn’t get a guidebook on treating a depressed, HIV-riddled son. It wasn’t something they prepared mothers for at mum and toddler group, or pre-birth support classes.

  She walked over to the sink and rinsed out her smoothie cup, staring out at the garden. It was a sunny day. Frost was forming on the grass. A chilly late January. Her favourite time of the year.

  The floorboards squeaked above her. The sound of Jonny rolling over, turning onto his side. She wanted to see inside his mind. She wanted to go inside his head and take away all his negative thoughts. She wanted to go inside his body and take all of the sickness away from him and let it invade her. She’d do that for him. She really would.

  A pain jolted through her hands. She realised she’d had them under the hot, steaming water, staring into space. Daydreaming was something she did these days. Something she’d done since that moment her son had opened up to her.

  A part of Den
ise Ainsthwaite never left that car outside the Royal Preston Hospital on August 29th, 2013.

  A part of her was still there, with Old Jonny, holding him tightly as his final breaths—his final fragments of youthful optimism and positivit—slipped away into an endless, miserable void.

  She sat down and opened up her laptop.

  She’d find something for him. Something that would make his life worth living again.

  One day, she would.

  2.

  The beauty of working at a leading pharmaceutical company was that you got VIP seats to the future of mankind.

  Donna Carter sat in her office on the top floor of TCorps. She finished taking notes of shipments and dealings that TCorps were going to distribute to chemists across Britain, as well as the rest of the world. The data wasn’t the most fascinating part of the job as a Chief Executive. Then again, it wasn’t the data that brought her here in the first place.

  It was the discoveries. The sense of accomplishment that ran through the body upon a new medical breakthrough. Nothing matched that in her life. Nothing.

  She looked out of her window. Being right at the top of the building, she had a fantastic view of the British countryside, which stretched out for miles and miles, right over the horizon. She was lucky to have a window, really. The offices downstairs—the lab rooms, the canteens, the animal testing facilities—they were all windowless. TCorps was a living, breathing world in itself. She was one of the lucky few who got to see the real world outside, too.

  Donna took a sip of her coffee and placed the documents she’d just signed off to one side. She leaned back in her office chair, which was moulded to support her body perfectly. Classic paintings lined the cream walls. She had her own personal gym area over on the left. She even had a large leather sofa that doubled as a bed in here. Good job, really, considering this place was her life.

  Scattered around her desk, which she had in the middle of the room—a feng shui thing—were photographs. Photographs of her kid, Paul. She picked one up and smiled. It was the one Barry had taken back when they’d visited Gibraltar. Paul, aged nine, with his skinny little frame and short black hair, grinned away, his vibrant blue eyes staring back at her.

  It was better to remember him that way.

  Better to remember him that way than the way he was when they scraped him up from underneath that lorry.

  She dropped the photo back on her desk and rubbed her face. She had to snap out of these thoughts. It had been over ten years ago since Paul had died, now. “Remember the good things,” her therapist told her, time and time again.

  Remembering the good things was difficult when it ended like it did.

  The bell above Donna’s office door rang. It was sharp and abrupt, like a vuvuzela, or whatever the fuck those horrible things had been at the 2010 World Cup. It caught her attention, anyway. And barely anybody came up here these days, so she figured it must be slightly important.

  She rose from her comfortable leather chair and walked across her plush cream carpet towards the door. She hit a button to open it up and waited to see who appeared at the other side.

  As the door slid open, she wished she’d stayed sat down.

  “Mrs. Carter,” Mr. Belmont said. He grinned at her with a smile that hid all his teeth. “Can I have a word?”

  Donna cleared her throat, then stepped to one side. He scuttled in through the door and plumped himself in Donna’s comfy chair, frowning, as it didn’t quite form to his short frame. Mr. Belmont was technically her boss. He was one of the people responsible for overseeing everybody at TCorps. He was a single man in his mid-forties with a dark ring of hair around a bald patch, thin-lensed glasses, and always wearing that same cheap suit three sizes too big for him.

  That was TCorps’s overseer. Ruthless little git with a monk-head.

  “Take a seat,” Mr. Belmont said, opening his hand in the direction of Donna’s visitor seat. He swung from side to side slightly. He had a black file in his hands. Had she done something wrong? Another bollocking for no reason on the cards?

  Donna pulled the grey, hard chair across the carpet and sat on it. The cheap plastic dug right into her back. No wonder he’d gone straight the fuck towards her comfy seat.

  Mr. Belmont swung from side to side on her chair, slumped right back like a college kid with attitude. He didn’t say anything. He just smiled at her. Stared and smiled.

  Donna cleared her throat again and leaned in to her desk, peeking around the computer screen that almost blocked her view. “Is there something you want to talk about, Mr. Belmont? Something I should—”

  “You know the exact revenue figure we brought in in the year of 2012, right?” His delivery was short. Snappy. It had come out of nowhere, like Gollum’s transformation into Sméagol.

  Fucking Sméagol.

  “Um, yeah,” Donna said. She could feel her cheeks heating up even though she knew the answer. “I… in dollars, or…?”

  “Dollars, pounds—whatever.”

  “Well, $27.34 billion dollars, I believe.”

  Mr. Belmont clapped his hands. “Right. That’s right. Spot on. Now, what date is it, Donna?”

  Donna’s heart picked up in pace. What was he trying to ask her? “What… what—”

  “Just tell me the date, please. Today’s date.”

  Donna glanced at the RSPB calendar behind where Mr. Belmont was sitting and squinted at the date. It was a Wednesday, right? Or was it a Thursday? Time blurred together in this place. Days, weeks, months—time moved at its own pace.

  “It’s the 28th January,” Mr. Belmont said. He shook his head and picked up Donna’s empty coffee cup, squinting as he looked at it. “28th January. What’s so special about the 28th January, I wonder?”

  This man was truly insane. Donna was sure you needed some level of insanity to run a company this huge, but he really was off his rocker. “I… I’m not sure, Mr. Belmont. Is there something—”

  “You’re a chief executive, aren’t you? You should be aware of our two-yearly revenue report dates.”

  Donna’s heart felt like it had skipped a beat. Shit. He was right. 28th January—it was always the 28th frigging January. She should have known. She should have been aware. “How’s it looking?”

  Mr. Belmont interlocked his fingers and smiled again. He lifted one of his hands up and tapped on the black folder. “Got it all here. All right here. Want to know how it’s looking?”

  Donna paused. “Erm, yes… I just asked—”

  “$23.46 billion. That’s a whole $3.12 billion down on 2011. A whole $3.12 billion.” He knocked the black folder across Donna’s desk, sending one of her photographs toppling over in the process. “Dark times, Mrs. Carter. Dark times. People just aren’t getting sick anymore.”

  Mr. Belmont stared out of the window. The sun was low, and an orange hue glowed over the fields.

  “You know what we need? We need an epidemic. I’m not talking bird flu, swine flu, even fucking SARS. I’m talking real, full-blown epidemic. We need to kill a bunch of people off and get people on their knees outside TCorps begging for a cure. That’ll sort profits out, long-term.”

  Donna didn’t say anything. Best not to interrupt Mr. Belmont when he was off on one of his rants. She knew he was only being half-serious—or at least, that’s how he liked to believe people saw him. But Donna could see it in his eyes. She could see it in the shaking of his lips.

  He didn’t give a shit about anything else but profit.

  “In 2009, we were the fourth biggest pharmaceutical company in the world. Revenue total, please. Revenue total?”

  “Um, $45.8… 83?”

  “Yes. $45.83 billion dollars revenue in 2009. Swine flu was a godsend for all the companies, but especially for us, being first to concoct a vaccine. But the pigs, Mrs. Carter. The fucking pigs. They just got better, and so too did everyone else. Not enough people suffered with swine flu. That $45 billion, it was just a temporary boost. We should have seen from ’08 and ’0
7 where things were headed. We really should have seen.”

  Donna took a moment to consider Mr. Belmont’s words. Strange perspective when you worked in a pharmaceutical company, really. Viruses, epidemics—they were a financial goldmine. Some of them, which Donna obviously could not disclose for confidential reasons, were even man-made. Invented. If a media report starts singing about some new breed of super-flu—throws out a few names of old people who have died from this horrible “new flu”—then people are going to pay to be vaccinated. Even if the new breed of flu doesn’t exist.

  It was a game. The real global battles for power did not go on inside Westminster or the White House. The real battles for power went on in offices much like hers. A game of eye-watering profits and people as statistics.

  Mr. Belmont lifted his shoes onto Donna’s desk. He stroked the side of them, shiny and black, but like school shoes, squared off at the ends. “If you were wearing these, Mrs. Carter, what would you do?”

  “I… well, I prefer heels, but—”

  Mr. Belmont let out a cackling laugh. Just as Donna joined in, Mr. Belmont’s face turned back to serious. “No. I mean, what would you do if you were in my shoes? Do we send out a taster? See how receptive the world are to something new?”

  “I… Well, it depends. Is there a downward trend on all company revenues?”

  Mr. Belmont nodded. “Slight downward trend. We’ve slipped down from eighth biggest to ninth biggest company now, though. Damn those wankers at Merck & Co. Crafty pieces of shit—”

  “Well, if there’s a downward trend all round, I’d say we ride it out until the next reports in two years. There’s no telling how much will have changed in two years’ time. I just think it’s a bit soon to put out another taster. The last two didn’t even make it to the ninth page of most of the tabloids.”

  Mr. Belmont sighed. “It’s tough. It’s really tough.”

  A taster, for the record, was the totally legal (apparently) practise of contacting the newspapers and media with details of a supposedly new virus or infection. The reason it was totally legal (apparently) was because the new virus reported was usually just a dressed-up or rebranded version of an old virus.