His mother was many things, but she was no cook. It didn’t really matter. Those evenings, he would eat like a king. In his kingdom, chicken nuggets or mac and cheese were all he needed. More often than not, despite his mother’s best attempts, the food wasn’t always heated all the way through. But he didn’t care.
When Matt became an adult, his picky eating didn’t exactly do him any favors, and he never learned to cook for himself. Instead, he took meals at strange hours of the day, take-out binges brought on by exhaustion from work or an episode of depression. He never ate in bed, at least. That idea repulsed him, much like wearing one’s shoes in bed. Bed, he avowed, was to be a clean place.
But now, on the unforgiving cold of the concrete floor, he knew what hunger was.
Being chubby and being gay made him feel like a freak. To society it seemed you couldn’t add to the world unless you were thin. To be thin was to have it all. His build rarely worked to his advantage in the dating scene, as much as he tried.
Then just two months ago, the blue glow of his cell phone lit up with a new prospect, a prospect that started as commonplace.
Pic?
This had happened before. He was conditioned to warn himself, to warn others, of his mark of Cain that plagued his world: I’m a big guy. That would sometimes be followed by, How big? As if they, on the other end, were worrisome of him actually being the Elephant Man. The exchange was dread incarnate: The pic would often result in instant rejection. The masses had decided his fatness made him unfit for human life. On weekends, he would stay up well into the night just staring in the bathroom mirror, often in the dark. He would distort. His skin would sag endlessly. He would look like he was melting. Then, as the ultimate violation, he would feel his breasts.
So when that one word—Pic?—came through, he was prepared for the routine.
He could never have imagined the hunger.
His suitor, whom he would later come to know as Jamie, was alarmingly kind. And out of his league. Tall, incredibly lanky, like a scarecrow, Jamie had facial hair that hung from his chin like cobwebs at some haunted house, but he seemed proud of it. Why shouldn’t he? He was skinny. The world was his. Small talk became talk. Jamie proudly revealed his nature as a “chaser,” with Matt as the object of the chase. Jamie had an almost supernatural fixation on what he referred to as a “belly” or a “tummy,” and he would remark favorably about Matt’s.
At first, this unnerved Matt. His belly hung over his belt like an albatross, certifying him as grotesque, like his man-tits. Matt wasn’t used to positive reception of his girth. In fact, any and all flattery would often be met with rash decision-making. Flattery rendered him totally submissive.
Flattery had brought him here—to the hunger.
A companion was just what Matt needed, and he and Jamie were perfectly content spending time together at home—Matt’s home. Of course, Matt did notice that they never went to Jamie’s place, but then again, he never asked.
Later, Matt realized he should have asked. Only too late, he would learn that Jamie’s house was the house of hunger.
Now, lying on the bare, concrete floor of his prison, pangs roared Matt awake and shook his bowels. What day was it? He didn’t know. Maybe, twice a week if he was lucky, he would be brought food. Matt had figured out a few things, for one, that a garage was the locale of his captivity, though Jamie never parked a car inside, and Matt wasn’t even sure Jamie owned one.
But the more important realization—now that Matt had all the time in the world to think—were all the red flags that he had brushed off or outright ignored. Chiefly, how they always met up at Matt’s apartment and never went anywhere together. He had never seen Jamie’s place, had no idea if this garage belonged to Jamie or was somewhere, miles away from anywhere, any help. For all he knew, he could be a stone’s throw from his very own apartment. He also had time to wonder if anyone was looking for him. Maybe that question would matter, in time, but here and now, it was the hunger that drove him mad.
To make matters worse, Matt was absolutely helpless. Despite his build he was too short, too out of shape to be formidable to anyone. Even fueled by desperation, he didn’t think he could fight his way out. Then again, he never tried, really. He never tried to resist Jamie at all, on anything. Even that last night together, when Jamie spoke in a flat tone that unnerved Matt, they had passed a normal evening—at Matt’s apartment. Then, Matt’s memory went blank, and he was here, an animal in the house of hunger.
Now, Matt knew, that’s all that he ever was to Jamie, an animal, a pig.
“Heeeerrre Piggy Piggy …” Jamie called in his mock-hick accent, scuttling in from the door that lay just out of Matt’s reach. He was chained here, gagged by a dirty bit that hurt his teeth and reeked of vomit.
“I cleaned up the poop chute for you,” Jamie chided. “You’re welcome.” The so-called poop chute was a white bucket, and it made a cupping sound when Jamie set it on the floor. “I must take good care of this pig … I know that when I am one, I’ll want someone to take good care of me, too. You chubbies are such powerful animals!”
Matt didn’t feel powerful. He was a blob, breathing into the floor with a deep and steady echo. A bellows.
“Feeding time!” Jamie was always intensely interested in everything. He seemed to treat each moment of his life as one prepared for with rigorous rehearsal. Jamie sat down on the floor, childlike, his legs stretched out. He put his arms under Matt’s upper weight, hoisting him to his feet, indulging his clammy hands to cop a feel of Matt’s tits. To their touch, Jamie trembled.
“I’ll take your power,” Jamie said, his voice husky. “I have to do it this way. It will never be given to me. But I know that power and grace and beauty aren’t for everyone. For some, it really weighs on the mind, fucks with it … some don’t want all that majesty, all that they bring to the world. But I can handle it, I think. I’ve waited long enough.”
While fondling Matt’s chest with one hand, Jamie began to violently spank him with the other, squealing deliriously. After doing this for a while, Jamie declared, “I need a breather,” still huffing, amplified as a hellish barnyard. “I need to be fat. I deserve to be fat. I’m weak without it, and you can’t live life weak. When I get you thin, like me, you’ll feed me. And I’ll be the prized pig. I’ll be beautiful.”
From a plastic bag at his side, Jamie removed a metal ring. He extracted the bit, and Matt had just a moment of relief before Jamie shoved the ring into his mouth, forcing it open wide. Matt’s maw gaped, tongue swirling, a distorted maelstrom. Jamie breathed heavily and rhythmically, with purpose. From the bag he next produced a corn on the cob and used it to caress Matt’s miserable form with the care of a maestro’s wand. Then, he thrust the ear of corn into Matt’s anus and proceeded to rape him with it, still breathing erratically, his eyes cast skyward.
“Piggggy Piiiigggy Piiiigggy … let me come in …” Jamie slobbered through the words as he continued to ram, driven by some invisible force, envy, perhaps. But Matt cared little to speculate on Jamie’s motivation. He screamed, tried to clench his teeth, but the ring held his mouth open. When after what felt like an eternity, Jamie withdrew the cob, Matt fell forward, fatigued, exhausted. His stomach decided to roar again. Jamie positioned himself in front of Matt’s mouth. Matt barely possessed the energy, and was powerless against the metal ring, but on sheer reflex he tried to bite. Jamie responded firmly with a slap across his face.
“Fuck you, fatty …” Jamie’s words slid out, as if made of slime. He grabbed Matt by the back of his head and shoved the bloodied, beshitted cob into Matt’s throat. Matt’s neck pumped. Jamie clapped with joy, moving inward and underneath Matt’s face. Matt heard more than felt the gurgling in his gut. Jamie opened his own mouth like a baby bird about to be fed—he was ready for the gush—and welcomed Matt’s projectile vomit. When he was done feeding, Jamie removed the mouth ring, replaced the bit, and licked his fingers. He ate the corn, his face a mask of ecstasy.
When he was done, Jamie said, “Soon you’ll be like me, and I like you. Very, very soon.”
Later—Matt didn’t know how much later—Jamie left.
~~~
As the weight melted off of Matt, Jamie grew frustrated at the lack of progress on his front. He knew he couldn’t be fed yet, either, at least not in the excess or decadence that he wanted. He felt like a farmer, raising a pig for the slaughter, thinning him down so that he, Jamie, could be reborn. Let Matt live disgustingly for a while: Jamie had been there. Now, well, he might as well have been a walking skeleton. He felt dead. Yes, he could gorge himself, but that’s not where the thrill lies. The real thrill is when someone else gorges. And he knew that he could count on Matt to return the favor, to be tender and caring as Jamie undergoes his transformation. But Jamie did feel some reservations, some worry. With Matt being so weak now, so delirious from hunger, maybe he couldn’t perform the task at hand. If Jamie wanted results, he would need to act fast.
He toiled all day to get ready for the feeding, eating every hour on the hour, making a point not to stop even if his stomach objected. If anything tried to come back up, he forced himself to swallow it again. He hadn’t checked on Matt in two days, leaving him in the garage to be nice and presentably starved for the ritual, which would begin tonight. In preparation, Jamie enlisted a door delivery service, making sure to have a tip ready and that his order would be big enough to put his mind at ease. Jamie hoped that by the time he woke up—or more aptly, awoke—tomorrow, he would finally feel a belly down there. The ticker on his phone assured him that the delivery would arrive in forty minutes. The feast was Italian, too, nice and hearty. Jamie unzipped his pants, and with his greasy hands he jerked to the pictures saved in his phone: the perfection of fat men. He might even stick his penis in the garlic butter for the additional thrill.
~~~
Just as Jamie was eager for the hunger, so, too, was Matt. Delirious at this point, barely hanging on, Matt lay in his own sweat and tears on the cement floor near that poop chute bucket, his stomach rumbling, agonized as souls of the damned. He needed to eat, and he needed it now. He had, for a moment, considered his own flesh. But the texture of his skin, dry and wrinkled, was as appetizing as a gum wrapper. Maybe if he prayed, if he was a good pig that did what good pigs were supposed to do, food would finally come to him.
And maybe, maybe, Jamie was now plump.
Isn’t that what Jamie said he wanted?
Matt hadn’t seen him for days—who knew how much time had gone by. Face to the floor, he opened his eyes. The concrete echoed back from his breath, and he observed the strange texture of his skin … it was looser now and it hung slack off his arm, like Jamie’s beard. Matt felt his own neck as it, too, vibrated with want. A collar. He remembered. A leather collar was what Jamie was using to chain him to the wall. If Matt could bite into it, taste it, like a good piece of jerky.
~~~
At night, all streets look the same. It doesn’t make the job of a delivery man easy, especially in this part of town, where one road or alley unfurls into another and another, and the houses are identical. Even with GPS, finding the correct residence at this hour was a hassle. The delivery man had been on this job now for a few months. The house numbers were always too small, or obscured by shadow, or hiding on some fucking mailbox. But he lived with it.
Luckily, this was his last stop of the night. But still, he was grouchy. This was a large order, stinking up his car to high-holy heaven. He would look for a house with a cluster of vehicles—an order like this had to be for some kind of party.
But when he pulled up to the address, he looked at the GPS, confused. The house was isolated, set back from the street and surrounded by a huge yard. Behind the house lay dark woods, and beyond that, an orange haze of light from the nearby highway tipped on the edges of the trees. Only a single vehicle, a van that had seen better days, sat parked in the driveway.
He stopped his car, checked his phone. This couldn’t be the right place. But the GPS matched the house number: 1615. He gathered the order, packed into a bag big enough for people to mistake him for Santa Claus, and texted the customer to signal that he’d arrived. Sometimes, customers wanted to walk out and get their orders themselves. Sometimes he had to bring it to the door. He would wait five minutes, and if he got no reply, he would call the number provided. Honestly though, it looked like nobody was home. All of the outside lights, if there even were any, were dark. Behind the van, the bleak garage sat, equally dark. He checked the time. Guess it’s time for a courtesy call, he thought. The line rang for a few awkward moments. A low voice answered.
“Who is this?”
“DiSallo’s. I have your order.”
“Order?”
“Um yeah, some subs, a couple of different kinds of pasta, three pizzas, and an extra-large order of breadsticks …”
“That sounds … great,” the voice said in a flat tone that unnerved him.
“Yeah,” said the delivery man. “I—I can bring it up to the door if you want. It’s all in a big bag I have here along with the case for the pizzas.”
“Could you bring them to the garage door?”
“Sure thing.”
“Delicious,” the voice said.
After a moment’s hesitation, the delivery man started up the driveway toward the garage, hoping he wouldn’t have to stay out here in the cold for too long while this stupid fucking customer took his time. The noise of the automatic garage door opener startled him, but when he peered in as the door raised, he saw no one there.
The smell hit him right away, and he recoiled. There was a bucket, a dog chain with a beat-up, chewed collar and some kind of dog toy on the floor. And … was that grease on the floor? Oil? It was smeared, though there wasn’t a lot of it, and he thought maybe that was the source of the smell. He had been to some unusual houses before, but this took the cake.
“In here,” he heard. The voice came from a partially open door leading from the garage to the house. The delivery man shifted the food so he could use his elbow to push the door open the rest of the way. From inside, he heard, “Are you okay putting it on the table? I’m getting ready.”
“Whatever, sir.” He stepped into the house, and the smell—far worse than the odor in the garage—stung his nostrils. It was horrid. As he reached the end of a small hallway, he found himself face to face with the entrance to Hell.
He dropped the food and froze. An emaciated, feral-looking man with chew wounds on his forearms, completely naked and perched on a faux leather love seat, leaned over the body of another skinny man, eating his throat, tearing at muscle and fat, making ghastly chewing noises. The dead man’s penis had been eaten, and parts of his right leg. Blood was splattered all around the living room, even on the ceiling.
Quietly, the delivery man stepped backward. At the slight sound of his footfall, the feral man’s head jerked up. He peered at the delivery man and squealed. As the delivery man let out the final screams of his life, Matt leaped on him like an animal and sank his teeth into the man’s face. He had been a good pig.
Dinner was served in the house of hunger.