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There is a house, concealed from all the misery in this tattered world by an old camera with a broken lens.
Inside the house, lies a man. Perhaps to call him a man is misleading, for it has been a long time since he was constrained by the rules that govern the lives of most men. But if he looks like a man—except for the way a wandering gaze snags on his form, a slight bending in the air around him that betrays the presence of a few too many eyes. And he acts like a man—except for when he calls down upon a victim the profound scrutiny of his patron in a blinding, revealing act of Beholding—then it’s easier to call him a man than anything else. Especially now, in this place, in this house protected by an old, cracked camera, where he is doing none of those things that would make him anything more than a man.
Said man is asleep, but his eyes are not closed. Neither do they see the sleeping face of his partner beside him, nor the thin slivers of moonlight that slip through the blinds to trace what is perhaps the last place on this ruined world that is left for them. No, he is sleeping and dreaming and seeing, but not Seeing, his dreams. Dreams that are not of the kind he has dreamt since the world changed, not those overflowing, rapturous feasts of terror and dread sent by his master. No, not here, so far out of the exultant, sickening stare of the Ceaseless Watcher. These dreams are different.
In these dreams, the man is hungry. Maybe this hunger has always been a part of him, but only now, sheltered from that landscape of unending fear, hidden from the relentless banquet of glorious, vile terror syphoned from his patron, can that hunger crawl to the surface and unfurl its many legs into every corner of the man’s being. Now, in his dreams, the hunger coaxes him along, tugging at his limbs like strings on a puppet, and he considers taking steps he never otherwise would, anything that could take the edge off this tickling, creeping compulsion.
For the hunger wriggles and grows the longer he lingers on it. It squirms through his veins, writhing and parasitic as it burrows in and out of his skin, always just out of reach, an itch that can’t be scratched. He can feel it, multiplying within him, like thousands of little pests wiggling and twisting over, under, around each other inside him, waiting for a moment of distraction to devour him entirely.
If he follows one of the wriggling little parasites, hoping to find its start or end to grab and yank it out, he won’t find it. All he will find is its spiralling, twisting form leading down, down, down forever as it winds impossibly deeper. The warped whorls and contorted coils feed on themselves in a bewildering ouroboros, constantly consuming, but never satisfied.
At times, it seems that the all-consuming need to consume is burning him up from within. It kindles and flickers and grows, desperate for resources to fuel its expansion, heedless of the limitations of its pyre. As it grows, it scorches through the man, a scalding, searing, blackening trail of destruction, setting the man alight but offering no comforting light in return. It is at these times that the man desperately wishes for a way to snuff out the ravenous flame, and he thinks with the last parts of himself not yet scattered to ashes by the hungry inferno to deprive it of fuel, to cast it into a void where it can burn no more.
And with that thought he finds himself plummeting into the vast emptiness of the void within. The burning, scorching pangs are gone, extinguished in the vacuum as the man falls and falls and falls, and in their place is simply… nothing. Nothing to distract from that pervasive emptiness, a hollowness that can never be filled. In the immense expanse, the man is an infinitesimal speck, but within him yawns an impossible cavern of yet more emptiness still. Inside and out, there is nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing but the knowledge that he is somehow still falling, the space still gaping, vertigo from the height he cannot see leaving his stomach to churn and drop—
—into the waiting jaws of a predator. The man stills. The fangs? Or are they claws? A knife? presses to the delicate skin of his throat as he swallows only air, and a thin bead of blood trails lethargically down his neck. The hunter thirsts for it, and the man knows he is nothing more than starving prey, too weak to escape or defend himself. The hunter knows this too, and it savours the terror of the trapped prey, hoping that maybe this one will finally slake that sick thirst of the chase. But the hunter knows that its thirst will never be quenched, and the man knows that this will not be the end of his own hunger either, so he closes his eyes and prepares for the bite of a fang or claw or blade at his throat.
When he opens them again, the hunter is gone. The man is surrounded by a milling crowd of… people. Yes, surely they must be people. He walks among them, peering around them, hoping to catch a glimpse of their faces. But something feels… off. A faintly throbbing headache, a wrongness in his head, a creeping sense of unease that tells him that all is not quite what it should be. Maybe if it weren’t so hard to think past his muddled, unfocused thoughts, he could figure out what’s amiss. But as things are, his thoughts are a jumbled mess and his focus is split between the headache that has turned pounding and the deep, desperate hollowness that leaves him feeling less and less like a person. Head spinning, the man stumbles to the ground, resolving to rest for just a moment to catch his breath and collect his thoughts.
One moment turns into several, which turn into a lifetime, and little by little the crowd thins until the man is left alone, sitting with none but his thoughts to keep him company. In this space, with only his slow, shallow breaths and quickly beating heart to keep the time, the man is almost comforted, knowing that hunger or no hunger, death will come for him in the end.
So he sits, content to wait for the terminus he knows all things must face. He is startled, then, when he notices a faint, haunting melody percolating through the edge of his awareness. Where is it coming from? Has it always been there? He can’t place the melody—a lively marching tune? a plaintive song of loss? a triumphant anthem?—or even the instrument—drums? bagpipes? a horn? But he knows its call is a symphony of sweetly sickening senselessness, urging him to cut down anything that would stand in the way of its violent feasting. Even so, it too is soon drowned out by the rumbling call of the hunger within him, once again making itself known.
For the flesh knows it has been denied, and it craves recompense. Whether it’s the tangible pieces of itself—a rib long forgotten in a desk drawer, another erased forever along with its abductor—or the intangible nutrients of knowledge it now needs to sustain itself, the flesh knows what it’s missing and it aches for its return. It won’t find it. Not here, but maybe, if he just takes a peek outside—
No. The man refuses to bow to the whims of his patron or the Puppet Mother, denies the urge to leave the haven where he and his partner find themselves. He won’t do that, won’t force his partner to abandon this paradise for the sake of satisfying a little hunger. So he buries it, embeds the hunger deep beneath the earth, where it can never be found, where the crushing weight of the world holds it in place, immobilises it, prevents any hope of escape. No one trapped here has ever escaped this weight, except… except—
No. Then he must conceal it. Hide it in the shadows, envelop it in the blackest night, so dark that it would surely blind all who gaze upon it. Here, it will be safely hidden away to languish in obscurity forever, for if he can’t see it, it must not exist. And no one could possibly peer into that deepest darkness and hope to see, except…
No! Then—then he’ll simply leave it! Abandon it forever in the foggy recesses of the mind, leave it behind, let it be forgotten and forlorn and forced into a place where it can do no more harm, cause no more pain, because as it is, this hunger just keeps weaving and crawling and twisting and burning and falling and hunting and hiding and dying and ripping and bleeding and choking and blinding and never ever leaving—
“—on. Jon!”
He snaps awake. A hand is gently shaking his shoulder, and he registers a warm presence nearby. Martin is leaning over him, a wrinkle in his brow and a small frown pulling at his mouth.
“You were sleeping, but your eyes were open, and you were muttering under your breath, and I thought, I thought—” He cuts off, peering closely at Jon. “Are you feeling alright?”
Jon’s stomach doesn’t growl. But his hands still shake when he reaches for Martin’s and his mind is hazy as he tries to focus past the emptiness gnawing behind his eyes. He slowly drags himself upright. A tentative breath in, an unsteady breath out. Another breath in as he gathers his wits. Jon sighs.
“Nothing serious. Just feeling a bit… peckish?”
“Oh!” Martin says, grasping Jon’s hands more firmly. “Breakfast, then? I know you still don’t fully trust Annabelle’s cooking, and to be quite honest neither do I, but I could really go for some tea and toast right about now.”
Jon tamps down his hunger. Stomps it down hard and tries to ignore it, as if anything short of leaving this paradise and returning to the hateful gaze of the Eye will satisfy the void inside him.
He smiles wistfully and huffs out a soft laugh. “Yes, Martin. Breakfast sounds lovely.”