It began with cake. A finger-shaped slice of golden sponge cake wrapped in a slimy cellophane jacket, it tastes of resounding mystery: calcium caseinate, calcium sulphate, sodium stearol lactylate, polysorbate 60. This boy likes to eat. He licks up that creamy filling with his tongue, like a lizard after flies. When every last golden crumb has disappeared down his throat, washed down with foaming drafts of brown cola, he is still hungry. He looks round for something else. So, what else is there? He grasps a packet of cheese snacks and tears it open with sticky fingers. His heart is beginning to beat faster. Corn Meal cottonseed sunflower soybean or canola oil, whey, salt, cornstarch, calcium carbonate, monosodium glutamate, Yellow 6 Lake, Yellow 5 Lake all of this is wonderful tastes of bright light yellow tastes of salt lakes yellow rivers sunflowers weary of sun – it’s a melt-in-your mouth great taste experience! The boy is still hungry. What to do? In truth the wrapper doesn’t look bad. It’s delicate and shiny, a softly rustling empty chrysalis. He eats that too. Still hungry. The boy takes another swallow of cola and looks at the empty table before him. In the afternoon sun the faded colours of the oilcloth have begun to glow with a digital intensity. The boy puts one corner of the oilcloth in his mouth and bites down on it hard. It’s good! It tastes of even more resounding plastics and calls in a low, growling voice to the shining red and yellow lakes inside him – ‘Eat me! Eat me!’ So he does.

Now the boy begins to grow, bigger and bigger and bigger until he is so big the chair collapses under him into a thousand tiny splinters, too tiny even to use for kindling. They come with a special chair for the boy, a chair with wheels that will take him wherever he wants to go. Where do you want to go, boy? To the refrigerator. The boy is still hungry. He rolls right up to the refrigerator – what have they got in there? Ooh! lovely things… the boy eats all of them, then he eats the packets as well. He likes the packets best. Now the rolling chair begins to creak and whine – ‘Get off! You’re crushing me! You’re too big!’ says the rolling chair. They move the boy to a special reinforced bed where he can be cared for twenty-four hours a day. A special hydraulic arm lifts and turns him so his immense body can be wiped clean from time to time. A robot sits at the side of the bed and feeds him from a series of metal trays that are magically replenished – no sooner has the boy emptied one of these trays than another appears, filled with things to eat. The boy eats and eats. If he pauses at all, the robot will suddenly pipe up, ‘Eat your food, boy! Waste not want not! Clean your plate!’ The boy eats all of it. He’s getting tired now. It’s hard work, all this eating. Perhaps he ought to sleep a little? The boy falls asleep, propped up by an army of hardy pillows – the pillows don’t complain, they’re used to this sort of thing.

Now that he’s asleep what do you suppose happens next? That’s right, the boy has a dream. In the dream the boy is very hungry indeed. He’s so hungry, he’s actually starving to death, and there’s nothing, no nothing anywhere on the face of the earth to eat. He runs from room to room searching for food – in the dream the boy is still able to run – but every cupboard is bare. He runs out into the street, surely there will be something somewhere but no, there is nothing, he sees no one, meets no one, the streets are all as empty as the cupboards, he is alone on an empty planet with nothing to eat and he is still hungry.

***

Grace Andreacchi

Grace Andreacchi is an American-born novelist, poet, and playwright. Works include the novels Scarabocchio and Poetry and Fear, Music for Glass Orchestra (Serpent’s Tail), Give My Heart Ease (New American Writing Award) and the chapbook Elysian Sonnets. Her work appears in Horizon Review, The Literateur, Cabinet des Fées and many other fine places. Grace is also managing editor at Andromache Books and writes the literary blog AMAZING GRACE. She lives in London.