chinese frenzy

Not a scrap of your angelic lunch remains undissolved, unmelted, uncrushed. A sweet little thing, she glugged messily all through your internals, and now thickens in the lower loops of your ileum. Half of all her goodness has flowed into your blood and begun to deposit about your body. Other than what you’ve taken, then until more of her is pumped up your ascending colon, there’s a brief period where her remains are entirely below your belly button.

Which is another way of saying that you’re hungry.

When you come through the front door I greet you with a New Yorker and an uncharacteristically shy smile.

Ice clinks as you take the glass from me. There’s a moment where you don’t say anything, just study me. Then you part your lips and settle them in a perfect crescent on the rim of the glass as you walk past me into the kitchen.

So much for apologies and forgiveness. You follow the scent of food.

I follow you. “I thought she might not be filling, so I ordered in.”

You eye the stacks of trays and bags, and hear the oven whir as it keeps others warm. “Yes, I can see that.”

It’s Chinese. There’s no smell like it. A combination of scents—deep fried, sweet and sour, sesame, five-spice—combine in an Anglo-acceptable mish-mash to announce Cheap, Cheerful, Tasty and Plentiful.

“Oh Raven, it’s good to have you home!” In a sudden burst of affection you find yourself gripped as best I can around your waist, hugged tight, and then spun (with care to avoid jostling your glass) into a whirling impromptu dance. The childlike enthusiasm I show at your mere appearance is so absurd you can’t help but be charmed, and you play off of me, and soon the working day feels a long way away. We talk and laugh and you pour us both more drinks as I set up your feast.

You’re ravenous, for all that your body is still sucking the digested girl’s body dry. Even before I’ve finished laying down starters you begin to eat, cheekily snapping up prawn toast even after I playfully bat your hands. Crisp and yielding, savory with MSG and somehow prawny in a way that owes nothing to the sea, each bite cripples you with ever increasing hunger pangs. It’s like you’ve never eaten.

So by the time I’ve uncovered the shredded duck and you’ve found the pancakes and hoi sin we’re both making duck rolls as fast as we can. Every time you make one or disappears in two bites and you don’t even wait to swallow before grabbing another pancake; every time I finish one you purse your lips and I slide it straight home. Your teeth snip together with a finality that tells me if my finger followed then I would lose it to you. So accustomed are we to your nature that this doesn’t strike us as worthy of comment.

A wet crack of a belch announces that half the duck has gone; and it’s only when the whole bird has been portioned, adulterated and consumed that you seem to lose the I’m-going-to-starve intensity and replace it with a standard, run-of-the-mill lethal predatory focus. No more banter or jokes. When your eyes turn to me I know that you must make a conscious effort not to consume me.

Speed waiter time.

There are other starters. You’ve never been one for crispy seaweed but I watch you shovel it down in handfuls. Salt and pepper ribs you begin by shredding with your teeth, then switch gear and begin pressing them whole into your throat, swallowing them bone and all.

Your eyes on my are a challenge, now. Fuck, I was counting on those to buy me some time. You watch me scan through trays, searching for the next course. I’m not going to just throw food in front of you out of order, but that gesture of respect could actually make me dinner, tonight.

As you gulp down the last rib I slam down two trays of chicken balls. Your hands don’t even hesitate, just switch to the new food source. I start pairing dishes together, a trifle unsteady on my feet, wishing I hadn’t let you make me that second Tom Collins.

I turn from the kitchen counter to see you swallowing down deep-fried chicken from both hands. Grease makes your lips shine in a way that makes me shiver. Hunger throws sparks in your eyes, gives them a terrifying intensity as they remain trained on me.

We both know there’s precisely one meal in this room that will satisfy your hunger swiftly and completely.

Your gut rumbles like a galleon in storm. Adrenaline pulses through me: a fight or flight response that so far has not served me well.

You’re clearly going to kill me. In case it’s just the frenzy I decide to fight for my life. A plan crystallises and I act on it.

The special-fried rice slams on the tabletop to get your attention, break the hyperfocus on me. It works, and when I push a spoon into your hand you begin shovelling hot, fragrant rice into your mouth. Anything to fill the aching void.

I run. Not away, but upstairs. Toy drawer. Find stuff. Not rope, that takes too long, you’d eat me before I finished a tie. Ahah. This. And this.

I skid down the last few stairs and run to the kitchen. You’re almost done. The next dish I pile high with chicken in a spicy sauce over fried rice, which I delicately present by slamming the respective containers down on the plate. This I place in front of you. Spice and numbing Szechuan peppers don’t bother you in the slightest: this dish, too, begins to follow the rest of its departed brethren.

It gives me a second to get behind you. With the sound of selotape I extend a roll of something. When I take your hand I murmur, in the manner of one speaking to a dangerous animal who has not yet decided to attack: “Raven, I’m going to tie this arm up. I won’t stop you eating. Then I’ll tie your other. I will keep feeding you. You’re going to be full. Do you understand?”

You don’t answer, but you do let me take that hand and loop bondage tape around it. Like heavy-duty black clingfilm it self-adheres. Once the purchase around your wrist is fixed I move it behind you and fix it to the chair, then throw a few loops around your belly and the chair, too, for good measure.

“More,” you manage, warning me about low food.

Any normal human would be fainting full right now. Your body seems to be expecting a live meal. That’s the only thing I can think is happening.

There’s no way I can bind your active hand. You’ll kill me before you stop eating.

The solution I come up with isn’t perfect. You look up from an emptied plate to see me approaching, cradling one of my two house rabbits. You’d fed him cabbage leaves and booped his nose hello every time you passed him when he happened to be out of the cage.

You welcome him with wide, dark mouth. Your fangs skewer beneath his fine clean coat and anchor him deeper and deeper. Human flesh is infinitely preferable, but the way his powerful hind legs kick satisfies something primal in you, at least until they are squeezed into stillness by your throat.

It gives me time to work. When Barney has plopped into a stomach already close with barely-chewed food you realise both your arms are tied behind you, and you are fixed to the chair. A ravenous fury makes you tug at your bonds, intensity similar to the rabbit’s frenzied kicking that does more for breaking down your food than your teeth did.

No time to dish up something else, I sacrifice my other rabbit. Sleek black Banks squirms and fights but ends up swimming down your throat like a fish. She picks up where Barney left off, kicking hard enough to give you a couple of hiccups, culminating in a belch.

Even in frenzy you still breathe a tiny “‘scuse me.’”

I’m in front of you. There is good on the spoon I am holding it. You close your mouth around the food and swallow. Something something beef. Flavour not important, just something to fill you up. There’s another spoonful ready. Good. Your body relaxes as I feed you hand over fist.

Dimly you become away of a stinging stretch in your middle. The rabbits are dead, on their way to becoming chyme, but the sheer quantity of food causes your stomach to distend. Good. Good.

Spring rolls. A hand brings spring rolls. You take them eagerly, scarcely chewing but relishing the crisp crack when you do. You want to eat. Eat and bite and chew and drink. Another roll. Another. And then the hand comes too close.

You shoot forward too fast for me to pull away. My whole hand is in your mouth and your fangs are buried as deep as they can go into my forearm. I stare at you, astonished. Your tongue plays against my palm, seeking out where my blood trickles down there.

When you rock back in your chair the fangs pull me with you. A snap of your jaws and another two inches of my forearm is gone. More blood flows from more puncture wounds, and I can stroke the opening of your oesophagus.

As I watch, frozen, you take another swallow. I’m in your oesophagus now. You’re so tight. It’s so warm inside you.

This is how you take me.

Is it?

No. This is the frenzy. I picture you waking up, cradling your belly, full and satisfied but distraught, like a regretful drinker. I don’t want that for you. I decide, again, to fight, even as you begin to take another swallow.

Even with the knowledge I’m trying to spare you pain it’s still almost impossible to pull out. Your fangs part skin and muscle with a sound like tearing silk. I guess I scream as I do it; and when my hand leaves your mouth, you cry out, too, for the sense of loss and the desperate greed denied.

Immediately I feed you my blood. I’m on my feet, swaying slightly, your beautiful long hair held tight in a brutal fist pulling your head back. My twin fang tracks gush blood and it patters hot upon your upturned face as I hold the mail mauled limb above you. With your mouth open you catch a rivulet of my life and drink it down, noisily and messily, joyous for the heady, heavy taste of it.

As you lick your lips, making a clean spot in a face painted with gore, I hurriedly prepare the next plate. Pleased, strangely joyful, you take the next dishes peacefully. Mouthful by mouthful you weigh yourself down like you’re trying to bury your lunch, pack her so tight inside your guts.

I see it when the frenzy passes, lulled by hypnotic repetition. You gasp and let out a terrible belch, almost at the same time, and then look at my arm. I have wrapped it in a tea towel and stopped the worst of the bleeding with pressure, but the towel is still bright red.

“Andrew, are you—”

“—did you mean it?” I interrupt. “Is today the day you want to take me?”

You lick your lips again and look between the arm and my pale face. Finally you shake your head.

“… glad I made the right choice. Wouldn’t want you… to think that…”

I manage to fold as I collapse, avoiding a precipitous fall and head injury or something. You sever the bondage tape with a casual flick of a shadow-borne knife and are there to catch me before I hit the ground. The sheer quantity of food in your system makes it hard to bend over. You feel like your entire front from tits down is packed solid.

No need to take my pulse. You can hear it, thready but in no immediate danger. You lift my wounded arm to your mouth and lick it clean, sealing the wounds caused by your fangs and filling your nose with the perfume of blood.

“You silly fool.”

My eyelids flutter but don’t open. I smile faintly. “… there’s dessert in the fridge.” A shiver runs up and down me. You decide to pull me up into your lap, sharing body heat due in large part of the work of digestion. “If you give me a minute I’ll—”

“Finish that sentence and you’re dessert.. Rest. Lie down.” You exhale slowly. Digestion is catching up on you. You feel heavy and warm. And the lunchtime angel is suddenly applying pressure on the exit. “I think I’ll be joining you.”

“… enjoy?”

“Mhmm. Shh, rest. Put your head on my belly, there you go.” You lie back against a cupboard, eyes flickering shut. “You have to get your strength back. I need a tummy rub.”