Hunger

## **Hunger** *by Scarlet Meap*

“Hunger.

Hunger is one of the essential needs for existence. Every animal consumes some kind of nutrient. From the tiniest, most inferior Fly species to the big supreme species of humanity, they all have to eat. Most beings have some restraint to their sense of hunger; however, there are some, who cannot control their sense of hunger. They would eat all the time; they would eat everything that they come across.

They must eat.

They must devour!

Sometimes, even their own kind.

I’m one of those…”

My name’s Matthew Williams, and I am about to tell you my story. My life was pretty much your typical vanilla life before it happened. I used to work as an editor at a local gazette. I was married, and I had a four-year-old daughter. Like I’ve said, your typical middle class vanilla everyday life.

That was so until the day *it* happened.

It was just another workday at the gazette, well at the beginning of it anyway. I was drinking my coffee and reading the articles I that I had received, wondering what should I include in that day’s newspaper.

Frank was walking around in the hallway screaming at his phone, “What are you, a God damned idiot?! Sell it to him for no less than a hundred thousand.”

After he said that he shut his phone down and turned to me, he realized I was staring at him and shouted at me, “What are you looking at, moron?”

“Nothing, sir”, I murmured.

“Good”, said Frank

“Now get back to…” Frank froze in his tracks, his eyes flickered for a moment and then went completely white, and his irises were gone. His eyes did not roll to the back of his head they simply disappeared. Once his eyes went white, his body came crushing and burning towards the floor.

“Frank!” I shouted in shock, he was already fallen, lying there, motionless on the floor.

We called an ambulance; by the time medics arrived, it was too late. Frank was already dead. All the doctors could do was exanimate his body and find out what was the cause of his death. They’ve tried, I swear, they’ve tried, but they could not find any possible explanation to Frank’s death. No matter what they did, it was all pointless. It could not be said he died of old age; Frank was thirty-seven at the age of his death. He had a healthy diet and on top of that, he was into fitness. One bright day on God’s green earth Frank’s eyes whitened and he just fell dead on the floor.

The whitening of his eyes bothered me no less than the unexplainable cause of death. During the following day after Frank’s death, back at the office, I could not concentrate on my work so I’ve gone on Google and typed “Unexplainable death, whitened eyes” into the search bar. I’ve found a blog page that described something similar to Frank’s death scenario; Walter Underwood, a young man, twenty six years of age convicted of a few drug offences, fell dead on the ground in the middle of a street on the fifteenth of May two thousand and nine. His eyes went white. Pedestrians present at the time of his death noted he was threatening someone over the phone, shouting he would kill the person if he did not get his money.

Now I was knee deep in this story. I came to find out that the blog I have found recorded dozens of other occurrences just like these.

People fall dead on the ground, white eyes, no explanation.

Maria Jackson, a real estate agent who was selling people unsafe housing units. One of those sells ended up with the death of a young couple. They were standing on the balcony of their new apartment on the sixth floor of the building; the balcony simply fell down… The couple fell to their premature deaths with it. This story did not stop Maria from keeping on selling unsafe housing units to unsuspecting people. She was about to sell another dangerous unit to someone and her eyes whitened, and suddenly she fell down on the floor of her office – dead.

After reading about some more of these strange deaths, I began to notice a pattern; apart from the whitening of the eyes and great health, all the people who died this way – they were a terrible folk. This could not be the reason of their deaths, could it?

I’ve became obsessive about this.

It couldn’t be the reason of their deaths, simply couldn’t.

I think I thought so because I was afraid… I was scared somewhere deep inside that my moral compass might betray me as well, not that I’m a bad person or anything.

Due to my obsession one night, I found myself inside the big archiving building of the gazette. I went through thousands of pages, papers, every tiny bit of ink. I did not know where to begin with – but I knew one thing, I had to find it. I had to find the explanation to this phenomenon. Luckily, the archives were neatly organized, so many categories! One of the files was named, “Death cases”. I opened the case and began reading about the death cases from the recent years.

Two hours after starting, I was over a hundred cases and I had not found anything. I was ready to give up, ready to close the case and simply go home. Maybe if I had done so my life would look different now, but I did not and eventually I came across the case that changed my life – it seemed like a typical case with the familiar pattern; a corrupted businessman who falls to his death as his eyes whiten. However, there were two things uncommon in this man’s case; the first, he wasn’t that corrupted. After he was caught once doing illegal stuff, he faced his charges and changed his ways. The second uncommon thing was, his eyes returned to their normal state for a short time. Perhaps there’s a connection, I thought to myself and as I continued reading, I found that the man allegedly said, “God hesitated” during the short period of time that his eyes returned to their normal state.

I shiver ran down my spine as the pieces of the puzzle all came together.

Now the picture was clear.

Of course!

Who could kill people for being evil if not the Almighty himself?  After all, it is he who judges the souls of the wicked to an eternal damnation of suffering in Hell.

“I’ve to get out of here…” I whispered, “What have I done?!”

That’s when I heard a low voice say, “You’ve gone too deep, Mr. Williams. I cannot let you walk out of this room alive.”

I looked back and saw a young man in a white suit smiling at me. It does not take a genius to understand whom I was sharing the room with. I broke down in despair; I began whimpering as I fell to my knees.

As the tears streamed down my cheeks, I began whispering repeatedly, “I’m so sorry…”

The person before me stared at me, surprised, “Why are you sorry, Mr. Williams? Curiosity is one of the fundamental building blocks of human nature.”

I did not dare to answer.

“I’m sure you’ve a lot of questions, so go on, don’t be shy, and ask away!” said the person with a smirk smeared all over his visage.

I have come across a few people in life, unfortunately for me; I knew that smirk of his was merely there to hide incredible cruelty and maddening blood thirst.

“Okay…” I raised my voice slightly, changing my tone from whispering to normal.

“Why didn’t you punish those people after they died of natural causes? Why did you end their already short and pathetic lives yourself?”

The person’s smirk grew larger into a satisfied grin, “A reason, you want a reason? Why didn’t I wait until these people died of natural causes?”

"Hunger is one of the essential needs for existence. Every animal consumes some kind of nutrient. From the tiniest, most inferior Fly species to the big supreme species of humanity, they all have to eat. Most beings have some restraint to their sense of hunger; however, there are some, who cannot control their sense of hunger. They would eat all the time; they would eat everything that they come across. They must eat.

They must devour!

Sometimes, even their own kind.

I’m one of those…”

I was shocked, “You mean that… you… you devoured them…”

The deity nodded in sickening approval.

Then it hit me, the last part of his explanation...

“Even their own kind” I repeated in a whispering tone.

“You are clearly a smart one!” he chuckled happily.

“You’re the God… that’s not… possible” I uttered.

“Well, I am now, technically, the God, but in the past I used to be just a god. So, what do you conclude out of this?”

He used to be a god.

Now he is the God.

He used to be god.

god…

Not the God.

Just god.

That means there were more of them, more gods.

“Even their own kind”

I stared at God frozen with terror.

He is going to kill me

He is going to devour me.

It was all in front of me, the puzzle was complete in front of my eyes, but the sheer fear I’ve been drowning in clouded the answered from my mind.

God noticed my sudden uncertainty, “Let me help you” he said.

“Why, do you think humanity transition from Polytheism to Monotheism all of the sudden?”