The Hunger

2052. Hunger so fierce, it ripped us apart. You look good enough to eat. they would say. We don't laugh anymore.

 

You look good enough to eat, he’d said. 

 

I remember the glint in his eye, the smirk on his lips. 

 

I remember him stretching forward to nip me, gently, on my lips, leaving a faint, buzzing sting.

  

I remember a small laugh, a covert glance.  

 

I remember happiness.  

 

. . .  

  

The first one to fall was Amelia Radcliffe. The morning of 15th June 2052.  

 

I remember the hint of autumn crackling in the air, crisp and sharp.  

 

Of course, there was no autumn leaves that year, no leaves to fall from the trees that didn’t grow. 

 But we could sense a phantom sensation of the seasons as they whipped by- a whisper of Winter that melted as soon as we leant into it, an Autumn tang at the tip of our tongues, the fragility of the Spring air.

 

Memories so distinct, we would taste them.  Each one blurring into the next, fading in and out, tinges of colour on red, red hot.  

 

The first one to fall, Amelia Radcliffe; she set it off, the Hunger, as they called it. It wasn’t her fault, no, but we blamed her nonetheless.  

 

I remember that morning in pictures only, sudden bursts of clarity from a nebulous grey.

 

 The television, a news channel, a picture in the corner of the screen, beside a reporter.  

The bones. Stacked up between two walls, gleaming white.  

So normal. Like dog bones. Or what was left after a good stew. A brief flashback of the times where we could afford meat. I remember smiling. A voice droned from the television.  

 

Horrifying… it can do that to you, you know, drives you crazy… but still, I mean, the lengths they’d stoop to…

 

It’s strange, now that I think of it, but I’d stared at this, the bones, and told myself that this was it, it was all over.  

 

You learn to make these connections, you teach yourself to hope, putting together the disjointed, the jumbled fragments of the world to build your own reality.  

 

I told myself: they’d found it, a storehouse, of meat, water, food, for all of us. A few weeks later, we’d sit down with a platter of everything we could ever need and laugh, gravely, about how scared we’d been, how paranoid.  

 

Insane… it’s the hunger, I’m telling you, it does things to you… a terrible day to mark for the world…

 

We’d joke about the once-in-a-week-baths, the sorry state of our teeth, the painstaking sips of water from the one-litre bottle that would last us a month. What a luxury it would be, to take things for granted again.

 

Brutal… what we’ve stooped to… she was only twenty-one… unbelievable…

 

Another snapshot: A skull. So pristine, like the skies that had stretched above us that morning. Not a speck of red on white. Bone gleaming, almost as if it were polished, or like a silver plate licked clean.  

 

The image floated around me, glassy and white, dead eyes staring into mine. It was over, it had to be over.

  

 I slipped into my suit, a hideous orange jumpsuit that crackled, like paper, when I bent too much.

 

Our houses were insulated, of course, but the air outside was too hot to breathe in. A mask covered my face, the only strip of skin exposed around my eyes, which were shielded by strange, goggle-like glasses.

 

We heard stories of people who didn’t wear the masks, the suit for a few hours; and the next day, they were found dead, their lungs fried, or so they tell us. I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.  

 

The fear kept us in our place, like dogs.  

 

It was 9:00 in the morning when I stepped out, and a man in a white suit strode towards me, hand gesturing for me to wait. Government officers. They were everywhere those days.  

 

I remember the skies that morning that was a single sheet of glass, a silver dome stretching out far beyond us.  

 

I ’d looked up, through the windows that open only partly, the heatproof glass, and I couldn’t help it. It was the first thing I thought, despite everything: the skies that morning were pretty, so pretty. Pure.  

But perhaps that is only a reconstruction.  

 

There were no leaves to fall from the trees that didn’t grow, but we taught ourselves to see what isn’t, to feel the unreal.  

 

Snatch these fragments of the past wherever it appeared and scurry away, hoarding it so no one could steal it from us, coddling those memories, as though they were moths in the cup of our hands, feeling the flutter of their wings, trying not to crush it, so fragile, so delicate.  

 

They were all we had left.   

 

In some ways, I think that was the worst of it, the beauty of the world around us while we ate into ourselves.

 

Ma’am, we’ve just received news that there’s a dust storm blowing in, he said. We’d advise you to stay in for today. We still don’t know when it’ll hit. 

 

Nineteen, I’d guess. Barely out of college, if they were still open. His voice came out muffled, through the mask.  

 

I’m just heading to a friend’s house, right over here, I said, gesturing to the house on my right a few feet away. I won’t be too long. 

 

He hesitated then, and after a second, nodded, taking a step back to let me pass. 

 

I walked away, my stride short and choppy, as though I was made of plastic.  

 

I knocked on her door, Lilia; we’d studied together, before.

 

It was only a few years ago, and a lifetime. Under the thick, heat-proofed doors, Government Issue, I could hear nothing. I imagined the sound of her shuffling feet, a distant ‘coming!’, and the click of the doorknob before the door whirred open.  

 

Instead, she cracked the door open a few inches and then pulled me in before slamming the door shut.  

A wave of dust whooshed through anyway, falling like snow on the stone floor.  

 

She looked ruffled, as she always did, her hair piled haphazardly on top of her head, glasses teetering at the tip of her nose.

 

I smiled, a strange lopsided smile that slid down the side of my face.  

 

My hands clutched her shoulders, bone on bone. We were so thin; just flesh on ivory, dust and shadows.

 

It’s over, I whispered, maniacally. It’s all over, Lilia, it’s over. 

 

She took one look at my face, and then pulled me to the sofa, arms wrapped around me, my head resting on her shoulder, patting my back again and again as I’d laughed, and then cried, and she was crying too, though I had no idea why.  

 

It’s alright, she’d murmured, it’s alright.

 

I couldn’t understand, why we were crying, but I was sobbing, soon, my body shaking as the tears wracked out of me.  

  

. . .  

  

You look good enough to eat, you’d told me.  

 

I remember the glint in your eye, the smirk on your face. 

 

I taste the warm, metallic tinge of blood as you nip the skin off my lips.

  

The next day, you were gone.

 

Author's Note

Hey,

Thank you so much for taking the time to read and critique.
It truly means a lot.
This is a dystopian short-story about The Hunger, as the title implies.
I'm not going to say anything else.
Let the story speak for itself.

When you're done reading:
Did you get what was going on?
Was it too unclear? Too vague?
Did the vagueness create the sense of horror it was meant to?
Or did it fall flat?
Was it overstretched?
Too much thought and not enough action?
What do you think was this story's strongest point?
What was it's weakest?
Tell me everything.
Thanks, again, for being here.