*pt1. The Craving*
It was at around 3 pm that I felt an odd sensation in my stomach.
As you’d imagine growing a human inside your womb would introduce your body to quite a few odd sensations and having been 4 months pregnant, my body had become accustomed to such uninvited guests.
There was a time, not too long ago, that I’d have to go to a job. When I became pregnant I opted to take my maternity leave and began staying home. To pass the time I dug up my old hobbies from their shallow graves, where they were laid to rest but never forgotten, such as painting and crocheting. Led by the dreams of my baby, I painted little pictures or crocheted little toys for him.
It was gradual, the way in which my will to do things left me. My hobbies, little shards of myself, were slowly forgotten. As the time passed me by I began sitting around a lot more. I became aware of every little whim my body produced. Sometimes it was for a burger, and other times it was for anything that tasted sour. My husband welcomed my moods with open arms and brought me anything I asked for.
That was until one day, when an unfathomable feeling crept upon me. The closest thing I could relate this feeling to was a craving. Though most cravings come to me wrapped in a letter which informs me of what it is I so crave, this particular craving, that has made it a habit to visit me every day at precisely 3 pm, comes with no such mark of identification.
Each afternoon, I begin yearning for something that I can’t quite put a finger on. As the clock strikes three, it’s tentacles kick and turn within my mind, blinding me in a confusion. It wriggles for my attention but I’m still lost on what it wants. A ferocious growling arises from within my bowels leaving me feeling incomplete in its wake. Pain shoots through my body then fades away just as gradually as it appeared.
“Hamburgers?” My husband’s voice wades through, clearing some of the mist. I mull it over. I conjure the picture of a patty glistening with oil, nestled between two lightly toasted buns, with a few slices of tomato and onion peering out cheekily from within, but my heart flutters not. My stomach seems full just at the thought. I shake my head and my husband’s chin resigns to his chest in thought.
“Then how about a liquid craving?” his eyes light up, confident he’s standing at the precipice of the correct answer, staring into its eyes – “Coffee?” All of a sudden the smell of a freshly made pot of coffee invades my nostrils, but like all the previous suggestions he has been doling out for the past few days, this one is a no go as well.
This is a new ritual that we share as a couple. Every afternoon, when my cravings kick in, he sits beside me on the couch and begins listing names of foods or drinks he knows I like. But not one of the items he calls out seems to satisfy the craving that grows within me.
He brews himself a pot of coffee and brings a cup of it along with him as he sits down next to me. He begins talking about something or the other, hoping it’d distract me from the calls of this cursed guest that knows not what it wants, only that it must crawl out of me in the most painful way possible.
*pt2. The Kiss*
The distraction doesn’t work. My pain boils my attention into a lucid state and my eyes wander over to his lips.
He was passionately monologuing – his eyes half closed and his hands shaking with the energy carried by his words.
In this moment, like my husband lost in the fervour of his words, I was in a losing battle with my urges. Pregnancy has been taking me on an inescapable roller coaster of emotions. Not often does this happen but every now and again my libido would begin gnawing at my insides. Right now I needed his warmth, more specifically his touch, to put out the fire raging within me.
Eyeing the gap between his lips I lurched forward, angling my head slightly. My hand cupped his face and my lips kissed his. He froze, caught off guard, then kissed back a moment later. His mouth tasted different – the same one I had kissed a million times over - why did it feel so much warmer than before?
In my confusion I bit a little harder and he moaned lightly into my mouth.
His spit, as it slid down my throat, tasted sickly sweet. I thought of a Tiramisu as I pulled him closer into me. My tongue slid over his shiny white teeth before meeting with his. I felt his hands grip my neck, bringing a chill down my spine, but the fire grew hotter still, burning through the innermost layers of my skin. It’s only just begun, I think to myself as I pulled on his collar.
The craving washed over me in waves, then finally, it let out its first cry from within me and burst to life - my stomach writhing in pleasure – and my eyes shot open before something unnatural came over me. His hands felt heavier against my skin as they slipped towards my breasts. I caught his hand and lightly pressed it down against my collar bone as I pulled my face back from his.
“Let’s take this upstairs, shall we?” a voice pushed out from within me. It was mine, and yet it felt so old – like the distant echo of something ancient.
His eyes, naively, glistened in a resounding yes.
*pt3. The Best Sex of His Life*
His back pushed against the bedroom door and it swung open. We stumbled in, my body wrapped up in his so closely that I could feel his warmth mingling with my own. I fell – back first – onto the bed as I fumbled with his shirt buttons.
He traced the shape of my mouth with his thumb and then at the first parting, slid his thumb in. His thumb slid past my lips and my tongue embraced it as though it was meeting an old friend. It had a slightly salty taste to it.
I opened the top button of his shirt.
The craving, which I was trying to hard to ignore, had begun seeping into my every thought, tainting my vision with a thick sludge. The fight was over before it even began.
His second shirt button was easier to open than the first.
The taste of his thumb sent ripples down my spine. The entity within bore its fangs. Now that it knew what it wanted, it ripped through the only rope keeping it at bay. My lips curled around the base of his thumb as I felt it moving around with the currents of my tongue, as though dancing. He looked down at me with authority, ordering me with his eyes.
I flicked open his third button. His chest was now in full view, a line of sweat pouring down his pecs tracing their way to his nipples.
My eyes glazed over and I lost control to the being within. The craving that was once a crying guest had grown up, and before I could even realize what I was doing, my teeth came down on his thumb, unwilling to let go. I bit so hard I drew blood.
Just a second later, that’s how long it took for his brain to sense danger, his brows drew closer and his eyes grew wider. He began yanking his hand out. He rested his knee between my legs and then used his other hand to pull harder but I didn’t let go. He drew his whole body back and let out a scream.
“You’re hurting me,” he whimpered.
When that didn’t work, he ordered “LET GO.”
I bit down harder.
It was a tug of war that lasted about 1 minute before he was able to pull out his thumb from within my mouth, with a few pieces of his skin missing.
I chewed on his rubbery skin. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. When my gaze drifted up, I saw myself in the mirror opposite us. My lips were red from my husband’s blood with a thin crimson streak dripping down my chin, my iris now a primal shade.
He was taken by shock and before he could move I grabbed onto his neck with both hands and got on top of him. I began applying pressure on his wind pipe. He flailed his hands around trying to knock me off of him but I held on with a strength wholly unknown to me.
By now I was nothing but a distant thought in my own body. Everything that was happening felt like a bad dream.
The ball of fear in my chest unfurled into a torrent of emotions. My face blushed with excitement for the first time in so long. The blood pooling in his face made me salivate. His grip slowly loosened and he let go of my arms. His eyes slowly rolled back.
He looked like he just had the best sex of his life – red-faced, sweaty, eyes rolled back...
I bent down and sunk my teeth into his right cheek. It was hard to bite off and my jaws shuddered just a bit. I began pulling my face up slowly, pushing his face against the bed with my hands. One second the flesh hung on to his skull and wouldn’t let go and then all at once it tore off and my head snapped back. I gnawed on his raw flesh.
My hands didn’t feel like my own, rising and falling at the whims of invisible strings as I went back for another bite. The more I wanted to stop the less will I had to actually pull away. As I opened my mouth i felt my warmth slowly evaporating, just like his already had. It was only when my teeth sank into his frozen flesh that I noted: my stomach coiled in pain no more.
Author's Note (cont.): AND THERE IT IS. The Craving. Was it alright for my first attempt into cannibalism horror? Did i manage to strike a palatable balance between horror and gore? idk...I did enjoy writing this piece. This might seem edgy to some, and ig i can see that but I believe the difference betweeen edgy and, ig, not edgy, is if there was intent behind the writing or not? Did the author actually mean something? Is there some kind of message to be found? That is what separates this from just an edgy story, at least in my head. I actually had a message i was trying to pass on through this. Though what that message might be, I'll leave up to your interpretation of this piece. How well that message came across is up for debate as it always is when you're mediocre (at best) at writing. In a story like this, trying to balance the shock of cannibalism and still making the story palatable enough so that the readers can look past that shock and actually derive their own meaning is pretty damn hard. But I must continue to experiment like this if I want to improve as an author. I might as well say this now, my first novel is going to be set in a famine-ridden society where cannibalism is a thing. This is because I am intrigued by the metaphors that cannibalism can represent so that is what I hope to explore in my first novel, whenever that happens. I do have some form of plot but I just don't know how to tackle something like that yet, so consider these pieces as a practice for when I actually write my first novel.
Also, I know I haven't written in a while, but I hope to be writing more frequently. I have quite a few stories I wish to write in the year 2025!! I'm excited and I hope you'll like at least a few of them. :))