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Ungrateful child.
To feel hunger—to feel anything at all!—is a privilege that I chose to bestow upon you. But it seems that the gift I grant has been wasted.
Spoiled I found you and spoiled you remain.
All of these endless complaints about hunger—the true meaning of which you know nothing—will not earn you satiation. Powerful I may be, but not even I can remove from you the burden we share. What you don’t understand, my boy, is that the hunger does not end.
Witness, as I demonstrate what it means to truly extricate such desire.
* *
These doleful eyes—so much larger than your stomach—incite desire for what they see. I will liberate you: observe my hand before it skewers the source of your torment, how I twist and pluck free these wretched organs from your skull.
You scream, you pathetic wretch, but have I not freed you?
And look! Even now, nothing is satisfied when I consume your sight. The eyes are soft, they pop and gush between my teeth like delicate desserts, and yet they satisfy nothing! Their brackish juice does naught for either you or I—who spit them upon the ground.
* *
The blood and tears running down your nose tempt you still, baiting you with the promise of prey you will never taste. You’ve begged me to sate this hunger that I cannot, but I will end it, for I am gracious.
Throw back you head—further, my child! Craving cannot be satiated, it is as eternal as I, but it can be quenched. Bile and acid will burn away the torturous perception left in your nose. You will no longer sniff about like a whining dog begging for scraps.
Don’t choke and splutter! This is what you asked of me!
* *
How you grasp at the air for purchase upon that which cannot satisfy. The wandering of your precious fingers betrays your hope of finding a means to an end. You forget yourself—you are the means, and there is no end. Reach all you want, you will never find a morsel worth seizing—
Don’t cling to me! Not even I possess the power to silence your need.
It appears that my mercy is not complete. What is the purpose of hands except to cling and bring empty promises to your mouth?
Away with these hands. Their removal is efficient.
Begone!
* *
The marks of the gift I’ve wasted upon you are useless now. So I will pry and tear them from your skull, taking back for myself their unappreciated ivory and porcelain. What good are teeth to one who rejects sanguine hunger?
And pointless, too, is your tongue. What use is such a thing when taste exists only to excite the appetite? I will not leave in your head the organ with which you spit daggers of endless prattle and complaint. I have suffered enough of it!
Yet even now, your mouth remains like a hatching’s, an open and wanting void.
* *
And you attempt to feed yourself the sound of your own pitiful wailing. Have you learned nothing? Am I such a poor teacher? But you will hear my lesson! I will pierce those ears with the picks you think you can hide from me, and today they may unlock something worth opening.
Can you hear them now, the sweet cries dripping from your lips? No, not over the sound of these metal toys scraping against the inside of your skull pushed in past the drums of your ears. You’ve never listened to me before, why complain that you can’t now?
* *
The removal of your hunger would not be complete without the extraction of that most offensive organ. I will be swift, and penetrate only where I must.
You delicate thing… your flesh gives like rice paper under my nails. And like the rest of you, this stomach is small and never satisfied. I’ll tear this burden from you, and all associated organs—
So much of your body comes spilling out at our feet! As if the hunger is the whole of your being! Do you understand now?
What a mess you’ve made, and you howl still with so much wanting!
* *
You continue to bleat like a sheep when you should be silent as a predator. Your voice is wasted on pointless cries for release. But I have promised to deliver you from this yearning. You shall want for nothing, not even air!
An opening is already made, so I will take this from you, the use of the lungs that fuel your cries like bellows. Rent open they will cease to blow air over the fires of your senseless squalling.
Is this better, my child? There is little left of you to hunger, and that gift cannot reach you now.
* *
Even now, you crave release and would seek to run. What you hope to satisfy by scurrying into a hole, I cannot guess. Your idiot mind still doesn’t comprehend my lesson.
I will release you from this temptation. It’s a crude measure, reducing your legs to stumps, and it’s a shame, like cutting off the heads of delicate flowers and leaving naked stems in a vase. But it seems I must!
Reduced thus, unable to act on any impulse, it appears I must carry you. How spoiled you’ve become. But the desire, craving, and hunger are gone—are they not?
* *
The seat of your wanting lies beneath these pretty curls everyone is so fond of caressing.
What convenience—there already are two openings through which I may reach. It is nothing to penetrate your mind. The defenses are brittle. This thin shell your thoughts lie beneath gives like an eggshell—hush—writhe no longer.
There, a soft thrust into your mind and the hunger is no more. Is it better, my child? Is this the relief you’d hoped for?
No, because hunger defines and shapes you—it is you.
For without my gift, there is no proof that you exist.