The Restless Famine

A Story by rafaelcorreia_aa

Would you confess that you long for something you've always had?

02:06 a.m. I wake up, sink my teeth into the paper, hoping to kill one of my hungers.

I collect many cravings, some of which I must admit I don't know the purpose of.

I have a hunger for knowledge, a hunger for revenge and even a hunger for a pen with endless ink.

The process is simple: when I recognize a new hunger, I extract it with a syringe and attach a note that identifies it.

But some syringes I didn't fill myself and I don't know what they are because the note is in a language I don't recall ever learning.

However, there is a special hunger.

This one isn't attached to a syringe but to a gas mask that I can't get off, it's like it was hammered into my skull, but I don't remember putting it on, I must have been born with it.

All I know is that the more I breathe the hungrier I feel, but even that doesn't help me identify its name, I feel hungry without knowing what to satisfy it with, and again the note is in a foreign language.

Today I met some people with gas masks just like me, but those notes I can read without a problem, some say hunger for attention, respect and even love.

I wonder if my mask is similar to one of these.

I break my collection of syringes to build a mirror with its glass, accidentally cutting myself and feeling all my hunger devouring my stomach, which is now trying to consume the rest of my body.

Starving and rotting, I look at my reflection intact, with no mask and no expression. Next to it, on a previously empty table, I see a gas mask that has just been built, still without a ticket.

In one hand I have a few nails and in the other a blood-stained hammer with a small amount of white fluff.

The reflection stretches its arm out of the mirror and forces me to read the note on my mask.

I try to explain that I don't know the language but I choke, the gas mask has melted into black ink and is overflowing from my mouth, after which I throw up a broken pen that is stolen from me by the reflection.

Satisfied with the pen in hand, he writes a note and sticks it to his gas mask while putting it on.

The mirror begins to crack and I see that I understand the language of his note as I lose my breath while drowning in ink.

02:06 a.m. I wake up, sink my teeth into the paper, hoping to kill one of my hungers.

But this time the paper is a note stained with black ink, and it says:

“Hunger for Stillness”

© 2024 rafaelcorreia_aa

Author's Note

I originally wrote this in Portuguese and my vocabulary isn't the best, so I apologize for any confusion.

My Review

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Reviews

Richard🖌

Rafael,

I see this story was posted in September of this year, but because this is my first opportunity to meet you, I'd like to say, "Welcome to the Café, Sir." And, that I cannot believe I'm the first to review it for you.

Your skills in English grammar is commanding, and I find your imagination to be amazingly authentic and emotionally powerful, with the unworldly imagery of a master painter in the medium of words.

Too, combined with all the brilliance you've so adroitly made dance upon the page, I'll enviously admit to wishing I'd written the climactic mystery revealed: “Hunger for Stillness”

As a simple poet, I read and review very few stories, because I don't feel I have the expertise to do them justice, but your title and introduction line drew me in, nonetheless … gratefully so.

Thank you, Dear Author, for sharing your stellar writing skills.
Sincerely! ⁓ Richard🖌

PS: If you tolerate poetry, I invite you to my pages for a taste of poetic fare.