The Man Who Couldn't Stop Eating

Once a man woke up hungry. Hungrier than he'd ever been in his life. How could he be so hungry? He wondered. He'd eaten dinner the night before. But now, his stomach felt like a bottomless pit of emptiness, a gaping void, a vacuum, black infinity imploding on itself. Hunger in its fiercest form. 

He got out of bed and flung open the fridge door. Its golden light blinded him briefly. Then he set upon its contents, ravenously. He pulled everything out and laid it on the table, a motley banquet of jars and Tupperware. He found some bread and piled on ham and cheese and mayonnaise and mustard and wilting lettuce, squashing it down into a sandwich. He ate it with the ferocity of a wild beast, a hyena scarfing a zebra carcass. It hurt his throat to swallow down the big, solid chunks he hadn't chewed. He washed it down with half a carton of milk. 

For a few brief minutes, he felt sated. Then the hunger came back, stronger then ever. He put the last two slices of bread into the toaster. That should do it. Whilst he was waiting for it, however, he opened a foil box to find leftover chicken madras from over three days ago. He ate it with his fingers. Then the toast popped. He spread on a thick layer of butter and another of raspberry jam. He ate it upside-down so he could taste the jam better. There. 

But then he saw a jar of gherkins, and fancied one. He savoured its sharp, salty taste, its fresh crunch. It cleansed his palate. He ate another. Then he finished the jar. Afterwards, he ate a few slices of cheddar to mellow out his mouth. Then he took a swig of orange juice to cut through the dairy-coating on his tongue. And then he opened a packet of kettle chips just because they were there.

Hours later he was lying on his sofa, still eating. He wasn't getting any fuller. Just sicker. But he just kept eating and eating, and when he'd eaten all the food in his house, he ordered in a pizza, with a side of garlic bread. And when he'd finished it, he stopped eating, not because he felt full, but because his jaw hurt, and his stomach hurt, and he was tired. 

The hunger was still there, though. The emptiness inside him, that cavernous void. And food hadn't managed to fill it, because food wasn't what was missing from it. But he would never see her again. He would never get her back. The hole in his heart, in his soul, would not be filled by salami or Ritz biscuits. It could only be filled by her. And that would never happen.

The next day he walked round cradling his emptiness like a newborn, craving everything but nothing in particular, tears falling not from his eyes but rising as saliva in the back of his throat.