Hunger

An offbeat tune of an unsung song was whispering in my ears. Wacky and crazy as it was, it rendered some embellishment to a dead site which until few weeks was just an ordinary house. The tune was echoing pangs of agony and despair, clubbed with an absolute sense of alienation with my own being. I was getting consumed by this vast emptiness that comfortably had spread itself in the house. With each passing moment my sanity was getting compromised, leaving behind a meaningless existence at the brim of its decay. Uncertainty of time and day seemed liberating to this obsolete lump of flesh which continued moving into an elusive blankness. An intricate work of fainted lines was surfacing on the skin, while my mind was still held captive to the new design. Notions, reasons and ideas no longer were allowed to cross the barricade. Faith in the end slipped away from the hand, and hope instead argued its way in. This hope which grew in the land of destruction only could have thrived in the darkness. Even if tried I couldn’t come to an agreeable story of the beginning or the continuity of these events.

Recollection of the events only faded away the memory and further increased its distance from the reality. It began a few weeks ago, when my body started resisting the essence of survival and the very core of existence came crumbling down. It was an ordinary day, just like any other day when a thought of a peculiar smell got stuck to my head. I remember tiredness induced sleep took over my body, and I skipped the dinner. I had a usual morning the next day, every aspect of it was plain ordinary and nothing seemed to have changed expect the fact that I wasn’t feeling hungry. The day was hectic and I got absorbed into my work, something that facilitated and complimented the mundane existence. It was not until that night, I realised the unusualness amongst the ordinary. I hadn’t eaten anything for more than a day and still there was no sign of appetite. It was rather strange that in these so many hours the thought of food didn’t occur to me even once. I remembered one of colleague from work, who mentioned that work had wrecked his appetite. My whole body was in pain from tiredness and I couldn’t sustain my interest in evaluating my appetite.  Two nights in a row I slept without having food, and my body and mind appeared to have taken no serious note of this blasphemous act. 

Next day in the morning astounded by the realisation of a unique design which had engulfed my senses, I prepared some egg sandwich. Appetite was a mere mechanism to drive oneself in a lane incurious and unquestioned; avoiding any distraction might put forth by awakening of consciousness. I stared at the sandwich but couldn’t reach a point where I could hold it close to my mouth. There was no hint of my body reacting to this change in an unpleasant manner, rather I felt liberated in a strange sense of way. Hurriedly I packed the sandwich and decided to have it for lunch. I wanted my body to give an indication of a desire for food. The lunch time passed and still there were no symptoms, I didn’t have an appetite. It was the first time I felt a little unease and I decided to review the series of events in order to understand this sudden loss of appetite. All the events appeared as ordinary as they could be without a slightest clue for further investigation. That night I tried to forcefully gulp some food and I ended up throwing up the whole night. I had a bitter taste the next morning and I knew any pressure to eat would only make the condition worse for me.

I confided in a friend of mine about the recent events and sought his advice which proved to be comforting in that moment. He suggested being patient, since it was not holding me back from any of my routine work; and I must wait for my appetite to come back just like the way it went uninformed. It was the fifth day when I tried to force feed myself again and like the first time resulted in multiple puking sessions. This loss of appetite was taking over both my conscious and unconscious mind, and I submitted to it with a faith that it would come back taking its own course. For one thing, I started sleeping peacefully from the day I stopped eating and this correlation between the two made me grow fond of this new design. There was no indicative change in my daily behaviour or routine and hence, I didn’t hold it as a misfortune or even a cause of an alarm.

Few days later, I got a severe pain in my stomach and I could feel the muscles contracting and then twisting. It was certainly an unbearable pain that had completely took over my being. With every cramp in the stomach, a shriek escaped from my mouth. I held a towel in the mouth biting it strongly with my teeth, while I could sense my legs forcefully beating the bed. I could feel an electric current passing through my body emerging from the stomach, and my body, each time, responded with a shiver. The helplessness had submitted itself to this inevitable agony and it melted down my cheeks in a stream of tears. I was admitted in a hospital for the next two days where the medical world took charge of my body and force fed me through the needle. Half a dozen of saline was now freely moving inside my blood trying hard to recover from the new design, and there were definite signs of improvement which were verified by the physician.

The following week of hospitalization, I sensed the same smell on my way back home from work. This time the smell was too strong and unbearable, and I could foresee the events held in queue. The new design had evolved after the last episode, now it was not that I just didn’t have an appetite but I had become averse to food. Every time I stepped out of my house I could smell the disgusting smell of food on the streets, at the traffic signal, outside the restaurants, anywhere and everywhere. I loathed going to the cafeteria at work, in fact I hated to be in its radius. The smell was now stronger and sharper. The aversion for food only grew in the later days. While I was trying to escape from the smell of food in the outside world, I started sensing a similar smell dwelling in my own house. Every time I crossed the kitchen, that smell created a churning sensation in my stomach. The smell had a sickening affect on my body and I started despising it more. I had to get rid of any and every source of that smell from the house, as it was a legitimate demand of the new design. I poured down every bit of eatable in a large bin, emptied the refrigerator, the cabinets, jars and bottles. I started sniffing inside the house in search of any remaining source of that smell; indeed it was a horrible smell that made me feel nauseated. Even after getting rid of all the edible items, I could still sense the presence of that smell. I kept mopping the kitchen till the point I could only smell the disinfectant.   

With each day I started entering further into the design. One day standing in front of the mirror I realised my cheek bone protruding out and the facial skin falling loose. My eyes sunk in, giving a strange appearance to my face. On examining I noticed I had lost weight near the stomach, on the calf-muscle, and on the arms. There was this looseness in the skin that made it appear darker and also aged. For certain it was a horrid sight in front of me and my eyes had not been accustomed to it. I was getting conscious of the ill-looks and now that image started haunting me. The body had been captive of this design for few weeks, and now the mind also prepared itself for submission. After the food, I got rid of all the mirrors in the house, as it was an appropriate thing to do in the light of this new discovery.

My body in this captivation started to look feeble and I had to give up work. I started feeling exhausted as I lay in the bed staring at the ceiling. I was losing weight with a greater speed, and I noticed the skin on my fingers sliding while the bones appeared distinctly. Like a loose thin film, my skin now was hanging on the bone-structure. I had lost count of the days since I gave up my appetite, and honestly there was no desire to attain any knowledge in this regard. One night, I experienced a similar pain in my stomach. The muscles yet again curled and twisted, and a shudder and spasm ran through the blood. I was soaked in my sweat, and the noiseless shrieks gushed out of my mouth. With all strength left in me, I tried to move my limbs like in a slow-motion movie. I could feel the pain moving inside me piercing through everything and intensifying. It would have been the first time that I sensed my body with this attention to its minute detail. In the noiseless shrieks, I was getting more aware of my own body. Tightly I tied up a wet towel on my stomach, and eventually the pain subdued in few hours. I didn’t sleep that night.  

Since then the events were repetitive, the usual cramps and shrieks, the loosening of the skin, the nausea and the heaviness. I knew there was something vile that was building inside me. In the empty stomach nothingness had started to breed. The void continued to grow bigger like a dark hole entrapping everything around me and inside me. I was scared I might lose my mind, and at once I locked myself from inside the house and threw the keys away. There was no away I could try to escape or any smell could enter to defile the house. I had succeeded in separating myself from the outside world. I preferred ending up in company and awareness of myself than being part of mob outside striving for meaning and a place. I was more aware and lively at the end, than I ever was in the outside world. I didn’t even feel necessary to inform anyone about the new design. It was possible that I could alarm the ones I knew about the design and the predicament, but no one would have believed me. I was the first one who got trapped in the design as I was the weakest member in outside world. The faith had died long ago and even the hope had taken an informed leave. Consciousness was awakened, and once again I could feel that peculiar smell but this time it was closer and much stronger in its intensity. It didn’t take me long to realise that it was coming from within. My body had begun to rot and the organs were decaying giving out an offensive smell. There was nothing natural about the process, the world outside even if take a closer look at me wouldn’t be able to see the design. But I could see this evolved design clearly in front of me; it was well thought of and neatly executed with no loose ends. I had shrunk considerably in these few weeks and now it was time for the final cleansing, liberating my being from the futility of existence. The design had found a perfect guinea pig to begin the end.