The Cure for Hunger - A Horror Short Story

Photo by Markus Spiske.

I know, I haven't been posting much lately, but that's partly because I've been working on several different projects. This short story you're about to read was taken from an upcoming weird horror collection called "Club Hellhole: Stories of Horror and Weird Fiction". I'll post here about it once it's done, but until then, I hope you'll enjoy this short piece of taster (pun intended).

THE CURE FOR HUNGER

AT THIS POINT, I’M ONE HUNDRED PER CENT CERTAIN. There is not the slightest doubt that this insatiable, uncontrollable hunger is my body’s revenge on me. For what, I’ve yet to find out.

For a while, I thought it might be the symptom of a different underlying health problem, but several visits to various types of doctors and psychologists made me give up on this theory eventually.

“Fortunately, there is nothing apparently wrong with your health,” the doctors said. “Just try your best to maintain a healthy and balanced diet and do some light movement every day, and you’ll do fine.”

I would be lying if I said I’m the healthiest person on the planet, but I wholeheartedly believe that I take decent care of myself. I do try my best, at least.

But this hunger—it keeps eating at me. As I sit here, I can already feel it getting stronger again, and I know that when it reaches a certain threshold, there’s absolutely nothing I can do from that point on. There’s no stopping it. It’s like the hormones controlling a normal human’s hunger and fullness are simply no longer present in my system, as my body isn’t capable of producing them anymore. Leptin? No, thank you. Cortisol? Ghrelin? Yes, please. As much as possible.

I’m in a constant state of being hungry, just getting fatter and fatter, feeling increasingly worse and despicable and helpless each day. 

“Try to move more, do some sports,” they would say, but what they do not know is that my hunger grows in direct proportion to the physical activity I do. My body demands those lost and wasted calories back, and I have no choice but to obey and eat until I’m sick of myself. So, I don’t move, and I don’t do sports. It doesn’t help. I only sit here, feeling sick to my stomach.

Sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick.

And hold on, wait, what’s that feeling again? Oh right, of course, here we go, here we fucking go again, it’s back. The hunger is back.

First, I shove a plate full of oily, greasy BBQ ribs and mashed potatoes into my fat face, then a second round, then just a little more of it with two glasses filled to the top with sugary soda in between, and now come and give me that container of salted-caramel ice cream from the fridge, yes, that’s right, that’ll do it, but now it’s all gone and the container is empty and still, nothing has changed, I’m still starving, oh my God, why does it never fucking stop, think, think, I can’t think, there are still a few doughnuts left in the cabinet, I take them out and pop them into my mouth, one, two, and I don’t even chew them properly, then three, four, and they have a chocolate coating with tiny pieces of colourful marshmallow sprinkled on them, and wait, now I feel like the hunger has begun to subside just enough to be able to think again.

Finally, my body lets me lean back in the kitchen chair. I feel disturbed and disgusting and right now all I want to do is fucking throw up, so I stroll into the bathroom, fold a towel in half then lay it on the floor in front of the toilet bowl, then kneel, lean over the toilet bowl and vehemently push my fingers down my throat. I struggle and cough and tremble, but I can’t seem to keep my finger down long enough. In my agony, I can feel the tiny blood vessels popping in my eyes and all around my face due to the tension, but no matter how aggressively I try, my body doesn’t let me do what I want to do.

After these minutes of misery, I fall to the clean tiled bathroom floor and pull my legs to my chest. I’m tearing up. I’m defeated.

I lie here for a while, lost in my head. Inside, there’s a tornado raging, made of thoughts of helplessness and self-loathing. It goes on for several minutes, maybe even an hour, I don’t know, but it doesn’t really matter either. Sometimes, I think I might be possessed, and there’s a malevolent entity inside my body that demands to be fed. Maybe it’s not the doctors’ help that I need, but priests to do a thorough exorcism on me.

Then, slowly, a feeling begins to creep up on me from the shadows. Again. It’s here again. The hunger. It’s back. It hasn’t let up yet. But this time, with the hunger, I can feel something else also grow inside me. It’s hatred. Anger. Fury.

I scrape myself up from the floor, march back into the kitchen, pace around, I’m mad, I’m so fucking mad, I’ve just eaten and I don’t want to eat again, but what the hell do I do about it, so now I walk to the kitchen furniture, and I can feel my left hand rising, reaching toward the bag of toast bread, but it’s not really me who is moving it, and my hand is getting closer and closer to it and I can’t pull it back, no, but then unexpectedly something in my head clicks and I gain control over my right hand, then with it, I grab my left and drag it away from the bread and towards my mouth, and my left side tries to fight but somehow I am stronger now, and I take my index and middle finger and force them into my mouth and start to bite and chew and munch on them, my decaying sugary teeth tearing into the raw meat until they meet bones and stop, and now I can feel my tears rolling down my face, and I want to vomit my stomach out and yell while doing so, but I’m stronger now, I keep it inside, and when I’m done with the chewing I go on and swallow, and gag, then swallow again, and now the only thing left in my mouth is the metallic taste of my own flesh and blood.

I take off all my clothes, wrap my bleeding left hand into my t-shirt and walk to the large mirror in my bedroom to take a look at myself. 

There’s so much I want to change about my body. All that fat on my belly and my ugly thighs and my laughable, overbearing double chin. So much is wrong. Everything. But now, I know the way. Standing naked in front of the mirror, I can’t help but smile.

Reuse. Circulation. Reinvestment. It works. Finally, there’s something that fucking works.

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