The Hunger

by Ryan Casey

  “Sure,” Stuart said, following Jonny to the table. “Tireder than I thought.”

  The pair of them sat there for a few minutes. Stuart could see that his son’s attention was elsewhere. In fact, it was at the bar, his eyes barely moving from Sarah.

  “Got yourself a crush?”

  Jonny shifted his attention to his dad and blushed. He scratched at the edge of the wooden table with his overgrown thumbnails.

  “It’s okay. She’s a nice woman. Bit old for you, though.”

  “And a bit young for you,” Jonny said. He was smiling. Here was his son, actually making a joke with him.

  Stuart laughed. Funniest part of the joke was that he could still remember the taste of her sweet cum all over his tongue.

  “Here you are, boys,” Sarah said. She appeared out of nowhere, and plonked down two coffee cartons on the table. She smiled at Jonny. “Two mochas. Stuart, I’ll catch you later some time. Just heard back from work and I’ve really got to go.”

  She patted him on the shoulder, lifted her phone to her ear, and walked away with a coffee in her other hand.

  Stuart couldn’t help but turn around. He watched Sarah walk down the middle of the room, open the door, and leave.

  He watched her walk across the lobby area of London Euston station, disappearing into a sea of miserable faces and cheap suits.

  “Don’t stare too long,” Jonny said, taking a sip of his mocha. “Might start to think you’re the one with the crush after all.”

  Stuart didn’t even respond to his son. His heart thumped. His hands tensed into a fist.

  Sarah was with them, and then she was gone.

  What the fuck just happened?

  Sarah kept her phone to her ear until she was halfway down the escalator, and even then she had to look over her shoulder to check she wasn’t being followed.

  Her heart raced. People’s faces blurred past, riding the escalator upwards in the opposite direction. She’d done what she had to do. She’d done the only realistic—the only logistical thing—she could do. She’d thought long and hard about what she was doing last night—the shady morals, the weight of responsibility on her shoulders if she were to convince Stuart’s kid to come along to these fake TCorps trials—and she’d decided she was being foolish.

  It was too much of a risk. She was already in trouble at work. Trouble that would almost certainly cost her her job, and could even cost her any other job in the future. Risking bringing TCorps’s name into Jonny’s HIV/AIDS antidote test was suicide. Not just career suicide, but actual, real-life suicide.

  She thought back to the way she’d spoken with Stuart on the phone last night. The way she’d acted towards him. Blackmail, he’d accused her of. And y’know, he was right, in a way. It was blackmail. A desperate attempt to save her career—to save herself. His son, well. He was just the vessel of her saviour.

  The escalator reached the bottom. Sarah almost tripped. She was so out-of-focus with the world, it seemed to be moving at two steps ahead. The realisation of what she’d just done. The risk she’d taken—not as big a risk as the risk she was planning, using TCorps’s name to imitate a medical trial. But a risk nonetheless.

  She sipped her coffee as she walked towards the tube. She looked over her shoulder—Stuart was still nowhere behind her. No doubt he’d text her soon, when he got the chance to get away from his son. No doubt he’d call her, asking what the fuck was going on.

  He’d find out soon enough. Maybe it’d be days, when Jonny started feeling a little more… alive. Or maybe it would be weeks, when Jonny finally went for another CD4 count and noticed a miraculous improvement. Maybe it would be months, when the HIV completely diminished. A miracle. A survivor.

  She’d played her part. She’d moved her chess piece. Now, she just had to watch and wait. Wait to hear from Stuart again. Wait until he found out—in days, weeks, months—and put two and two together. Wait until he realised exactly what she’d done; what her new plan had been, and how she’d carried it out.

  She took a final sip of her coffee and looked at the carton. Jonny would be sipping it now. It would be entering his system, springing to life right away, fighting and fighting for authority.

  Maybe she’d never hear from them again. Maybe Jonny would die a normal, AIDS-induced death. That was the worst-case scenario. The antidote would simply crumble upon entry. In which case, she’d move on and move forward. Nobody would ever know any different. The world wouldn’t end.

  She tossed the coffee cup into the bin.

  Maybe, just maybe, she would hear from Stuart and Jonny again.

  And when she did—as soon as she did—she’d know that she’d saved his life, she’d know that she was about to save so many more lives, all thanks to that spiked mocha.

  Daddy would be so proud.

  Jonny took a sip of his warm, chocolatey mocha.

  He didn’t know it, but it was happening.

  II: RISE

  — Some rise by sin,

  And some by virtue fall.

  — William Shakespeare

  13.

  Jonny Ainsthwaite woke up the following morning with a strange freshness looming over him.

  The emotion was completely alien. He’d never been a morning person, not in all his life. Partly, that was self-induced. The wild nights out made for some sorry morning-afters, and then when the HIV came along, it was more the motivation—the idea of getting up and living another normal day—that got to him the most.

  Today—Friday morning—he sprang to his feet. The muscles in his legs didn’t feel weak or heavy, not like they normally did. The sense of nausea that typically loomed in his stomach—the sheer dread of emerging from his stinky pit at some point of the day—was gone too.

  That’s when he did something he hadn’t done in months. He opened the blinds.

  Light bolted into the room, illuminating the floating dust particles upon contact. The window was filmed in heavy condensation, and little spores of mould grew in the corners. He’d have to clean it up. Make it look nicer.

  Strange thought.

  He looked around his bedroom. He’d spent the majority of the last five months of his life in here, barely living and more existing, and yet it felt as if, with the light shining across it, exposing all its flaws and imperfections, he was seeing it for the very first time. The dust that coated the top of the computer monitor. The mound of beheaded flies on his bookshelf. (Beheading flies was a measure he resorted to when the fly spray didn’t seem to work. He didn’t like to leave them there, lying on their backs, wriggling for life. Rather give them a dignified death by way of a fast, clean beheading with an old debit card) The stench of sweat and spunk was ripe in his nostrils.

  The room really was a shithole. Everyone who came in here was right.

  He grabbed a dustpan and brush, ironically coated with dust, and got to work on the room. He wanted it to be clean. Fresh. Hell—he wanted it to be something he was proud of again. Something that wouldn’t always define him upon eye contact. He wanted it to look good when Mum and Dad got back.

  As he rubbed the windowsill with a cloth he’d found lying around in the bathroom, he thought back to yesterday’s London trip with Dad. Strangely, it’d been alright. They’d had a real touristy day—the London Eye, 10 Downing Street, Piccadilly Circus. It had been fun. Something he wouldn’t mind doing again some time.

  An hour or so later, he looked around at the room. No beheaded flies, barely a speck of dust. Pride ran through his body. No matter what happened with the HIV, he might as well make things as comfortable as possible for himself. No point sitting around and moping. He was still young. He had a life to live. So much fun was still out there to be had.

  He heard his stomach churn. Probably the loudest noise it’d ever made. He hadn’t even realised how hungry he was when he’d been preoccupied with cleaning his room, but now he was weak at the knees. He needed food. He was salivating at the thought of bacon, egg, sausages—fried food, juicy,
runny, dripping in fat.

  He couldn’t contain himself any longer. He ran out of his room, as if he desperately needed a shit or something, and dashed down the stairs and into the kitchen. Dad and Mum were both at work, so the fact that he was only wearing his boxers didn’t matter so much. He sprinted towards the fridge, pulled out all the eggs and bacon and other food he could find, throwing it all into a frying pan with no real mannerism or skill. Fuck, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had an appetite like this. Had he ever had an appetite like this?

  When the food looked cooked enough to warrant eating, he tossed it all onto a large plate and stuffed his face into it. He ravenously indulged in thin, crispy strip after crispy strip of bacon. He ate eggs whole, the luscious, runny yolk dribbling around his mouth. He chewed on sausages, crispy-skinned but so soft and so tender in the middle. He ate and ate and ate without even thinking, until the plate of food was gone.

  He only realised it was all gone when his fingers tapped against the yellow grease-stained base of the plate and nothing but crumbs were there. Strange. He could still feel that emptiness inside him. That longing for more and more and more. Maybe it was the lack of food he’d eaten over the last few months. Maybe his body was fighting back, reaching out for a lifeline.

  He lifted the crumby, greasy plate and licked off every last bit of residue.

  Then he returned to the fridge and ate a bowl of Frosties with full-fat milk, but that didn’t even come close to hitting the spot.

  Still, it didn’t bother him too much. It was a good thing he was eating. Plus, it was Friday. Friday was the night of Anita’s party. If he was going to drink again—have a good time—then at least he was laying down some nourishment, or the booze might just go right through him. He was renowned as being a lightweight back in the day as it was. Couldn’t end up pissed after a sip of Becks, that was for sure.

  But this hunger. He held his head in his hands and leaned onto the circular table in the middle of the brightly lit kitchen/dining area. The hunger was like nothing he’d felt before. He examined the sensation. It was less of a hunger, actually, and more of a throbbing numbness. He imagined it was what he’d feel like if he hadn’t eaten for years.

  Except he’d just about eaten a full week’s worth of calories in the space of half an hour and he still wasn’t satisfied.

  He checked his phone. 11.06 a.m. Shit, what did people actually do in their mornings? He couldn’t do this every day. He’d go insane. And there was still a good ten hours before Anita’s gathering started. What the fuck was he going to do to keep himself occupied for ten hours?

  He felt his legs shaking inadvertently. A numbness spread through them. The urge to stretch them. The urge to run. What was happening to him? When the hell did he ever run?

  But just like the food had gotten the better of him—just like the body’s cry for nourishment had overridden all of his conscious mind and forced him to eat a plate of food—he found himself throwing on some clothes, jogging to the front door, opening it up, and letting his legs carry him down the street.

  Something was happening to him. A shift in attitude, or perspective, or whatever.

  He watched the seagulls flap around in the grey sky as he ran and ran and ran, down past the detached houses, out of the cul de sac and onto the main road, breathing air he hadn’t breathed and tracing steps he hadn’t stepped for weeks, months.

  He smiled.

  Something was happening to him, and whatever it was, it was fucking good.

  She just couldn’t get the flappy little shit past that 34th hurdle.

  Donna Carter stared at her iPhone. She was sitting in her office. Light peeked through the window. She’d stayed in here all night, but she wasn’t exactly sure why. Well—she was. She was playing this new iPhone game called Flappy Bird. Hardest bloody game she’d played in ages.

  But still, she didn’t know why.

  Whenever she diverted her attention elsewhere, or let her mind wander, she felt that intense coldness coming over her again. Her stomach churned, but she wasn’t hungry, she knew that. Her legs wouldn’t stop shaking. She’d thought it was a cold at first, but now she wasn’t sure. Her focus, her attention—it had to be occupied, or the feelings would return.

  She knew she wanted something. She wanted something very much. She just had no idea what that something was.

  A sharp ring from her doorbell. It made her jolt upright. Her hair felt greasy, her cheeks sticky. Her heart pumped. Shit. She really had spent the whole of last night here. True, she had nowhere else interesting to go, not really. But what had she actually done? What productive, work-related things had she done all night? Nothing. But had she slept, like she should have? No. She’d sat in this chair, forming an indentation in the leather, tapping the greasy iPhone screen trying to beat her high score.

  The doorbell again. This time, twice in quick succession. Whoever it was knew she was in here. Whoever it was wasn’t giving up. She’d have to show her face, but she really didn’t feel up to it. She worried what she’d say in this sleep-deprived state. Yes—that’s what these feelings were. Sleep deprivation, nothing more. She was tired. Stressed. Lonely. She just needed to sleep.

  She walked over to the door. Doing so was like walking across a gangway, as she wobbled from side to side, the door seeming further and further away. When she finally reached it, she plonked her hands on the wall beside it and hit the button to open it up. The metal doors slid open as she leaned on the wall, and she saw the familiar, shiny black shoes of Mr. Belmont.

  “Mrs. Carter? Are you… What’s wrong?”

  Mr. Belmont’s voice was fuzzy, too loud for her sensitive ears. She lifted her tired neck and looked at him. His face, missing its trademark smile, was blurred, and he seemed to be shimmering. She tried to open her mouth to speak, but the words just weren’t coming, her lips refusing to budge. This wasn’t right. She wasn’t usually this bad when she was ill, was she?

  “Mrs. Carter, I… I came to speak to you about the Sarah Appleton case. Came to congratulate you on your professional manner of dealing with things, but… Mrs. Carter, I think you need to rest.”

  She felt a hand touch her back. A warm, hard hand. She could feel the blood pumping through it, swishing around, so warm and juicy and delicious and what the fuck was she on about? Why the fuck was she thinking about blood in this way? What was wrong with her?

  Her knees got weaker and weaker and before she knew it she was on the floor. She pressed her head against the floor, the cold tiles cooling down her head, sending the cool sensation rushing right through her again, reminding her of that longing, that hunger, for something.

  “Mrs.… Donna, what is it? Is this—is this something to do with the rat incident yesterday? Is it…”

  Mr. Belmont’s speech descended into words. Mere words, jumbled and out of focus and irrelevant. Like he was speaking foreign all of a sudden—an ancient language, nothing more than incomprehensible noises and grunts. So tired, so tired…

  She wasn’t sure how long she lay there with her head on the ground but soon she felt more hands, more warm, hard, blood-filled hands lifting her frail body upright, a bead of saliva dribbling down her chin. These men were dressed in blue uniforms. She could see their mouths moving, their faces out of focus. Mr. Belmont standing there in the background, arms folded, not smiling, not smiling like he always did. His mouth was moving too, but no sound came out. No—some sound came out, but it was drowned out by the buzzing in her head, the intense rustling, like television white noise on full blast and transmitting direct to her ears.

  And then she was floating. Floating away in these warm, hard hands. Her feet were off the ground and she was moving toward something she didn’t know or didn’t understand.

  When she looked back at the door to her office—the place where she’d been lying—she saw blood. She tasted it now, too, in her mouth and behind her teeth. She was about to ask herself whose blood it was when she felt the stinging of her tongue,
twiddled the front teeth against it and felt the gaping wound as more and more thick blood oozed out, down her throat. Her blood.

  But it didn’t bother her. It didn’t scare her. She was too tired to be scared; too tired to analyse the situation in her head.

  34. Why couldn’t she just get Flappy Bird past 34?

  Now she was flying too, flying down the corridor and down the elevator, flapping her wings and flying on and on and on, to someplace better. There would be someplace better out there for Flappy Bird. There must be an end in sight for it, or what was the point in its life? There must be an end goal, and there must be somewhere to go for her, too.

  As the elevator doors opened and she flew even further forward, she felt warm tears running from her heavy, stinging eyes.

  Something was happening to her, and whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

  14.

  “I’m not criticising you, Jonny. Just it… Well, it seems a bit sudden, that’s all. You sure you’re feeling okay?”

  Jonny was flat out on the white leather sofa. His legs ached. His head pulsated. He was still sweating despite getting back from his run well over an hour ago. A shock to the system, that’s what it was. He’d been out all afternoon and he’d only realised when he’d looked at his phone that that was the case. His mind had been elsewhere. Distracted—no, fixated. Completely and utterly fixated on the act of running. Unlike anything he’d ever experienced before.

  But now he was back, crashed out on his sofa, he needed distracting again. He needed something to keep the hunger—the numbness, or whatever it was—away. Like hunger, it was eating at him, begging him to go out and do things and keep himself occupied. He figured this must be a good thing. A wake-up call. Some kind of divine intervention, if that shit existed, getting him out of the house and into the world. Getting him living.