CRAVEN
© 2002-Destiny West

Humans are obsessed by food. Fast-food restaurants are spreading like an infectious disease across the urban landscape, and these days food is not just eaten for survival; it has gone beyond that. Now it encompasses so many mediums – including fashion and the desire to experience. Society is fast becoming absorbed by the very notion of food, and the more of it the better. Every day mankind crawls ever onwards in its quest for satisfaction, more often as not seeking quantity over quality; a grail quest seeking the holy words: “All you can eat buffet.”
I eat only to survive; I have no particular food ‘tastes’. I will take what is offered and benefit from the sustenance. Food to me is nothing more than nourishment. However unlike you, I can only eat what has already been digested.
I am not like a newly hatched bird or the wolf cub that requires it’s parent to regurgitate eaten food into my eagerly awaiting hungry mouth; and the thought of eating such, or feasting on vomit disgusts me. I have never been so desperate as to have to seek nourishment this way; though I have known of others like me who have lowered themselves to such levels. I cannot fathom accepting anything that one person can not keep within themselves.
So now I have intrigued you – how do I feast?
My days are spent in my quarters in the dark. I live in the bowels of your tunnel systems that wind their way under your feet where you work and shop and dine.
Once access for trains, these now closed areas of the underground are the corridors in which I dwell.
Yes, I can see in the darkness, for my eyes are by now accustomed to eternal blackness and – unfortunately for you- are most comfortable in this state.
From deep within my shadows I watch you, gathered on your platforms – obsessed with your own little worlds; standing in your relative safety staring wide-eyed into my darkness. And I can smell your fear.
You live only for yourself and the ones nearest and dearest to you; and yet I often wonder how you can be so intolerant of your own kind? Perhaps it’s because you see your own faults reflected back at you. The truth has a way of making the strongest man or woman squirm.
I watch the grossly obese amongst you and know that I shall be fed well.
When you walk alone down the corridors of imitation light I am that shadowy movement you catch within the corner of your eye. I am the truth – I am part of that sub-species that lurks beneath your feet, forgotten as reality and now existing only as fragments of a nightmare or in the hushed tone of the darkest children’s stories.
But you are wrong. I am a reality – and you are nothing.
You are one of billions of parasitic creatures that abuse their host, and in the grand scheme of things you don’t matter. You die anonymously, with a million others waiting in the wings to take your place. Whilst I am still walking this mezzanine of blackness, you will be a forgotten memory – just another rotting corpse: a banquet to an infinity of maggots and worms.
I can walk into your world and come and go as I please. I can do this without fear, I am invisible to your weary eye, and though I stay in the shadows, I pass you every day. It is my breath that makes the fine hairs on your neck stand up, I am the feeling of someone walking over your grave.
I share my home with your other “outcasts” – the rats and cockroaches. And down here, there are others like me – we are aware of each other’s existence, but we do not require companionship or; as you so fondly put it, ‘love’ to survive.
“Mercy” is not a word I can appreciate or respect. Your snivelling and begging does not affect me whatsoever. To me you are like the Styrofoam container that encases your Big Mac: a worthless and ecologically unsound piece of rubbish that contaminates the Earth.
The offer of trinkets and money does not appease me, nor will it save you.
Hunger comes in your dark hours, and at these times I am free to roam your world- the world above. Then, under the cover of darkness and your sodium glare, I walk your streets and alleyways; waiting and watching for my next meal. Mainly though, luckily for you, I choose to remain in this, your man-made labyrinth. When the bustle of your “working day” is over, these passageways become an eerie maze of clinical grime: tiled walls and floors encased in human filth, echoing to the murmuring of the tunnel winds, and the distant scratching of a thousand tiny clawed feet.
At these times you are forced to enter here alone. Walking down these vast tunnels to the platforms or exits, the only sounds are from your shoes upon the cold dead floor and the beating of your own heart; and you’re scared. Never knowing what may greet you around the next corner, or is waiting for you at the bottom of these seemingly endless stairs.
Then, your screams are only echoes – swept away and forgotten by the roar of the passing trains.
And you are mine. You will never see the light of day again. By the time anyone notices you are missing you will already be dead.
Your body will lay in it’s own faeces and be dined upon by rats. They will burrow into the wounds I leave inflicted upon your blubbery mass. They will swim in the acids of your stomach and writhe their way through your intestines like I walk through these tunnels. Their sharp teeth will tear into your flesh and be stained red by your blood. But your vacant eyes will not see this- your skin will not feel this- nor will your ears hear the gnawing on your bones.
Within days all that will remain is a carcass of decaying tissue, and within months your bones will be sucked clean.
I have no interest in your flesh, I do not crave the taste of your blood. I’m not that type of monster: All I am interested in is what lies in your stomach, and what you have eaten during the day.
And here I am: dragging you into my darkness, my hand trapping the gurgling screams that try to escape from your mouth.
Your legs and arms kick out in protest, but I am stronger than you. Your eyes are wild with fear, and even in your world of eternal optimism you know that I am death.
The light is now fading; you see movement on the platform another human looking into this blackness enveloping you. And to them you are just strange noises coming from the yawning abyss. No, they will not come to your aid – would you?
You still struggle with futile effort; experience has shown me that it is a trait of mankind to do so until the end.
You will hold onto life with all the force and effort that you can muster.
Amazing. What is it about death that scares you?
After all, you enter sleep every evening, releasing control of your life from your own hands – never knowing if you shall awaken. So why is this so different?

Does death ever come easily? Does any man welcome its release? I think not.
I am death’s companion: you fear us both, for we are the unknown, and people do not like what they cannot understand.
You humans usually expel what you do not understand or can not justify in your own minds. Every second of your lives, you move closer to death; it is inevitable – yet some people just dance a little longer.
Even now if you were to escape me, you would never find your way to the ‘safety’ of light. Your mind has been struggling with the realisation that death awaits you, it toys with the methods that it may have come to claim you. To you, my world is a perplexity of gloom, and though by now your eyes may have partially adjusted to the darkness invading them; they will never be able to see as I see. If you run I will hunt you down and find you. No. There is nowhere down here to hide. I will smell your fear and my mouth will salivate from it.
Accept your death.
Accept it like you readily accept the body of Christ upon your sin plagued tongue.
Swallow it down, even though it tastes of nothing, and embrace that you are worthless scum.

The more you struggle the more it will hurt. Don’t you see that by now?
Trying to bite my hand won’t stop me either. I have the power to prolong your suffering so why irritate me further than you have already done?

Hush now…that’s right, no point to struggle anymore. Close your eyes, it will all be over soon – I will release you – to death – your new master.

I know I am heavy on you, but I have to sit on you to keep you still.

The hard ground is hurting your back? That can’t be helped.
See this? Yes, I know you can. I can see the glint of the silver blade in your eyes.
Best you look away, or close your eyes, because you won’t like what is going to happen now.
The knife strikes down into the flesh just below the rib cage, your body spasms and jerks involuntarily as your mouth screams out ‘nothing’.
The knife hacks its way down your flesh leaving in its wake a jagged gaping wound that flows profusely with blood, cutting its way down to your pubic bone – if you are lucky you have already entered deaths embrace.
The knife fights its way through the inches of lard that cover you, the fatty yellow tissue is the key: the entry into my desire.
Now, my bare hands can retrieve the prize; the focus of my craving and I can satisfy my hunger.
The sound of my hands burying into your insides are music to my ears: an aria of wetness; a threnody of succulence and moistness; and I thrill to it’s voice as I push my way past organs and intestines to reach my goal.
Your stomach, bloated and ample beckons me and I rip it from your carcass as easily as a juicy red tomato is plucked from its bush. I gaze at it as it lies in my hand, the pulpy case pulsating and slippery as I bring it to my waiting mouth. My pointed, half-rotted teeth rip into the tissues and are greeted, always, by a surprise – for I have no knowledge of what you have feasted on during your day. I sup upon my delicacy with appreciative noises of satisfaction, your stomach acids and bile flowing over my chin like juices from a ripe fruit.
When, at last, all of the stomach and its contents have been devoured I lick my fingers and sit back leaning against the arching walls, and I see that now it is my turn to be watched. I gaze at the myriad tiny eyes that all reflect my blasphemous outline. Teeth chatter, claws scratch.
‘Feast now my little friends.’ They need no second offer, and in a single heartbeat, the fur-covered masses scuttle from their secret holes to dine upon my leftovers. I no longer have any need for “you.” You are merely the casing: a worthless piece of rubbish. But unlike your cast-offs, not a single piece is wasted.